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In some ways, "Tron" was a little ahead of its time because computers were becoming more accessible and part of our lives. We were just beginning to understand the power that was on the tips of our fingers. With these factors in mind, it’s easy to see how viewers could easily forgive a thin plot and characters who were so threadbare that it was impossible to tell who was human and who was cyber.

After 29 years, computers don’t seem that exciting even though they’ve become more entrenched in the way the world works. This goes a long way toward explaining why "Tron: Legacy" isn’t any fun. Now that sitting at a computer is as everyday an occurrence as eating breakfast, all the lights and noises are pretty dull even if they’re in 3D part of the time.

The new "Tron" stars roughly ten years after the first one took place. Developer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has become a tycoon creating an open source operating system as well as a video game made from his early adventures in cyberspace, where he became part of the computer world. As Bridges drones on about his old adventures to the tot playing his son, we see a computer generated version of the actor as a younger man and a plethora of posters that look like the ones that plugged the original film.

Essentially, the filmmakers seem to be patting themselves on the back before they’ve even started. All of the posters seem to do is remind viewers that there was another film that apparently justifies the expensive monstrosity before our eyes. The new computer generated face for Bridges looks unconvincingly stiff and rubbery, as if director Joseph Kosinski wanted to make him look as if he had a series of bad face lifts.

The film doesn’t improve as it proceeds. Flynn mysterious disappears, leaving his company in the hands of a greedy board who use the company’s offerings as an excuse to fleece consumers. Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has a huge stake in the corporation, but prefers to spend his time hacking each new release of the operating system, to preserve his long-absent dad’s open source dream.

His father’s old partner Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner from the previous movie) convinces Sam to go back to Kevin’s old arcade to see if he might be able to learn something of the older man’s goals for the company in order to restore its mission. If this doesn’t sound too exciting, all the extra special effects that follow don’t help much, either.

Predictably, Sam gets sucked in, but the cyber universe is rather derivative and dull-looking. Kosinski and his collaborators have clearly watched all six of the "Star Wars" movies without figuring out what made them work or what was lacking. It’s as if he thought that George Lucas was a master dialogue writer and an expert plotter.

Sam discovers that Kevin made a computer clone of himself named Clu (played by Bridges with his same goofy rubber CGI face). Clu rules this universe with an iron hand and makes other programs fight each other like gladiators. Fortunately, he’s reunited with his dad who now has Bridges’ delightfully weathered features and a wardrobe that appears to have been borrowed from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Knowing that Bridges would be reprising his previous role, the screenwriters must have spent their time copying every bit of dialogue he uttered as The Dude in "The Big Lebowski." The new characters with the exception of a tough program in a skintight outfit named Quorra (Olivia Wilde from "House, MD") aren’t very interesting. This probably has more to do with the way the costume flatters her physique than with the script. To call the protagonists one-dimensional implies more depth than they actually have.

Let’s say they’re half-dimensional.

Some formidable thespians like James Frain ("Elizabeth") and Michael Sheen ("The Queen") have sizable roles, but make little impression. It could be argued that "Tron: Legacy" was created simply for glowing eye-candy, but the new film’s action scenes are simply gargantuan expansions on the gimmicks from the previous film. The visuals are simply cold, glowing metallic replications of the sights from "Blade Runner" without Sir Ridley Scott’s sense of gritty beauty.

The 3D, even in IMAX, isn’t that well presented, and the subject matter is so lifeless that it’s like staring at a widescreen, Dolby Digital presentation of dried grass. On second thought, that might actually be more edifying to look at.

In the years to come, "Tron: Legacy" will probably be best known for the reckless way that it consumed Disney’s financial and artistic capital and for it how it used the latest digital technology to give audiences mass fits of narcolepsy.

link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=19780&reviewer=382
originally posted: 12/19/10 15:29:23
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