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In 1982, Disney’s TRON was an eye-popping visual spectacle, astounding audiences with its ground-breaking computer graphics. Admittedly, the film hasn’t aged all that well, but with technology constantly improving—and gorgeous 3D movies like Avatar raking in billions at the box office—it’s the perfect time to revisit the franchise. Unfortunately, in making TRON: Legacy, rookie director Joseph Kosinski seems to have gotten so caught up in the cool 3D graphics that he forgot about developing some kind of a logical story.
This widely-hyped sequel picks up the story twenty years after video game designer and famous ENCOM CEO Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) mysteriously disappeared. When Flynn’s close friend and partner, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), gets a page from the disconnected phone number of Flynn’s old arcade, he sends Flynn’s son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), to investigate. At the arcade, Sam discovers a hidden passage that leads to his father’s secret office. And when he sits down at his father’s old computer, he’s transported onto The Grid—the digital world that his father helped create.
The Grid is now under the tyrannical control of CLU (Bridges), a program that was created in Flynn’s image. After a close call in CLU’s deadly cyber games, Sam is rescued and reunited with his father—but with only eight hours until the portal back to the real world closes, he’ll have to race to escape CLU’s digital army and return home.
It’s really no surprise that TRON: Legacy is visually stunning. From the vibrant, light-lined costumes to the imaginative digital world of The Grid—all in larger-than-life IMAX 3D, of course—it’s definitely a sight to behold. The set design and cutting-edge effects are truly spectacular—and it’s pretty cool to watch Jeff Bridges battling a younger (and slightly more plastic) version of himself.
So if you’re only interested in the CGI and 3D graphics, then you’ll be blown away by TRON: Legacy. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for some kind of a coherent story to go along with the flashy graphics, you’ll be extremely disappointed.
In the beginning, it spends way too much time stuck in the real world, piling on the backstory and developing Sam as a spoiled, bitter rich kid, whose hobbies include fixing up his dad’s old Ducati and biting the hand that feeds him. It’s dull and pointless stuff—but at least it makes some kind of sense.
Once Sam makes it to The Grid, however, all bets are off. The story becomes a hokey, overdone mess of Grid history lessons, senseless philosophies, sci-fi clichés, and pseudo-techno-babble. The characters are wildly over-the-top—especially Michael Sheen’s Zuse and the elder Flynn, who’s become an unsettling mix of Jedi master and hippie cult leader. It’s all complicated and ridiculous—and it comes together in a surprisingly bland conclusion.
After 28 years—as well as a couple of years of build-up—fans have been expecting a TRON sequel that’s smart and visually stunning. But with TRON: Legacy, they’ll just have to settle for one of the two.
Blu-ray Review:
Disney’s held nothing back for the TRON: Legacy Blu-ray release. If there’s a way in which you’d like to watch this eye-popping (but mostly nonsensical) 3D spectacular, this five-disc set allows you do to so. Of course, there’s a Blu-ray copy of the film, but the set is also backwards compatible (featuring a copy on DVD) and forward compatible (featuring a Blu-ray 3D copy). If you prefer to carry the movie with you in bits and bytes, there’s also a digital copy. And fans of the original TRON will also be thrilled to find that a newly-remastered Blu-ray version of the sci-fi classic is included in the set, too.
With all of these different versions of the film included in the set, you hardly need extras—but they’re here, too. The Blu-ray disc includes a number of making-of features, which cover everything from the casting to the graphics. Along the way, you’ll find some interesting little tidbits—like the original ComicCon teaser (complete with muted background reactions from the crowd), which is included in Launching the Legacy, and Disc Roars, a short feature that shows how another ComicCon crowd was recorded for use in one of the film’s crowd scenes. For more on the TRON story, meanwhile, there’s The Next Day: Flynn Lives Revealed, a mockumentary that briefly recaps the time between the two films before hinting at what might come next. It’s a little bit hokey, but fans will be intrigued by the ongoing TRON mythology.
Other features include a music video for Daft Punk’s “Derezzed” and Disney’s Second Screen feature, which allows you to connect your Blu-ray player to the Internet for more insights, interviews, and more.
TRON: Legacy may not be a spectacular sequel, but, with its dual movies, multiple viewing options, and a handful of interesting extras, the Blu-ray release is definitely impressive. Fans will be absolutely thrilled by the collection—but even casual viewers will want to give it a look.
