Tron: Legacy a Movie Review
by John Lobell
It is bad enough that movies have become so formulaic, but when they are, they could at least follow the rules of the formula.
In Tron: Legacy, we have:
– Search for and reconciliation with the father
– Travel to the underworld for the completion of the self
– Travel to the underworld to save the world
– The realization that technology cannot replace humanity
Search for and reconciliation with the father. Nobody does it better than Star Wars 4, 5, and 6 (the original three). For one thing, there is the advantage of having three movies to unfold the story, but Lucas is also a great storyteller. There is not much dramatic tension in a son finding his lost father and teaming up with him when they have always loved each other. When your father is Darth Vader, you have the potential for real drama. And even The Who’s Tommy has more tension in this area than Tron.
Travel to the underworld for the completion of the self. The makers of Tron understand that Sam Flynn has to mature in the course of his adventure, but they could have done more to show the process. He is pretty competent going in and the only change we get coming out is, “I think I am going to assert myself in the family business.”
Separation from ordinary reality (the first step of Campbell’s hero journey) by going underground (Sam goes downstairs into a cavern) has certain requirements (see my comments following Ebert’s review of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on this site). The hero should mature–specific adventures should develop weak areas of the hero’s character. Going in competent to throw a frisbee and ride a motorcycle and then coming out still competent to throw a frisbee and ride a motorcycle is not a development.
Travel to the underworld to save the world. Clu (the bad guy) is plotting to leave the grid (virtual reality) and invade our real world. Sam and Kevin Flynn have to stop him. Here there is something odd about Tron. In the beginning of the movie we see ENCOM, a giant Microsoft-like software corporation. It might be evil. And we see a hotshot programmer there. One of the requirements of a well-done underground hero journey, besides the completion of the hero’s character, is that there should be parallels in situations and characters between the underworld and this world. Thus Clu’s empire in the grid might parallel ENCOM, and Clu might parallel the hotshot programmer. We don’t get any of that, but the notion is so obvious that one suspects that it was there in an earlier version of the story line and got dropped. Probably at the insistence of suits who wanted more time for motorcycle chases. Which was dumb because according to the New York Times, Tron, among other vapid movies, is losing out at the box office to Alice in Wonderland and other intelligent movies.
The realization that technology cannot replace humanity. Kevin Flynn, the father, was unable to fully appreciate the human love between himself and his son, and sought to make a better world in virtual reality. His creation was “perfect,” but also a nightmare. Kevin Flynn comes to realize his mistake, and at the end of the movie rectifies it. One of the inhabitants of this virtual world is Quorra, a self-produced program that carries the potential to unlock mysteries in science, religion, and medicine. She reads Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and longs to see the real world. In the final scene she is in the real world on the back of Sam’s Ducati seeing a sunrise for the first time. Her reaction is the best acting in the movie.
Tron: Legacy is satisfying in visual design, characters, and story telling, but not as satisfying as it ought to be. The rules for this kind of movie are not complicated. More Tron sequels are rumored. Let’s hope they get it right next time.
The ending is a bit like Blade Runner too, when they’re flying through the forest.
Um, point three is where I had the most problems with the story. It was so clear in Tron–there’s a real world and a computer world. In the computer world programmers have parallel avatars, and everyone is in threat of a huge program that wants to control earth’s resources(as all evil computers do I’m sure). In Tron Legacy, what exactly was the Bio-Digital Jazz Man that they were creating? Was it all taking place in Flynn’s basement? Or maybe they were in Who-Ville? Whatever they were doing it was totally rad and made some totally rad bitchin sexy Artificial Intelligence chick that is now in the real world and is going to do some bitchin stuff in the human world. Like what?
A lesser quip is 30 years have gone by and the computer world and there’s not one little nod to new technology except a mention of wi-fi at one point. I know they covered their tracks in the plot because they’re in a basement from 1985(glad someone kept paying the electricity bills) and there wouldn’t be any computer updates because of that…but, you know, it’s a computer movie. One scene where they bump into an internet meme or say , “Why is this place so empty?” “It’s an old social networking site,” or some such thing.
I could go on(Why Nike Wetsuit Costume Design?)…but actually, it was fun enough. The look was expansive and didn’t look like they cut corners, nobody cloyingly annoying(Young Sam, the mop top kid, came close), young Jeff Bridges was done well enough to make you blink(even if the concept is creepy), and there were fun and sexy characters that moved the plot along.
I was really disappointed by this new Tron picture. I know it’s pointless and sort of a cheap shot to criticize films like this on the basis of their scripts and character development(a bit like complaining that the plots and performances in porno movies are ludicrous), but the visuals are not grand or imaginative enough to sustain our suspension of disbelief that what’s happening on screen is completely uninteresting. I thought the computer animation was not only modest and kind of ho-hum, but the entire design aesthetic of the digital dreamworld was completely wrong! The new “Tronworld” looks too much like an actual, physical place, like the dystopic nightmare future of Blade Runner or Spielberg’s A.I. rather than the abstract, rudimentary linearity that made the look of the original Tron stand apart from other SF films of the era. It all looks so moody and dreary. And for some reason there’s smoke and mist and storm clouds in the computerworld for some reason that just doesn’t feel right. The much hyped action sequences (all 3 of them) are all rather short and are few and far between. Like a lot of these elaborately mounted, hi-tech, CGI fantasy extravaganza’s of late, Tron Legacy gets stuck in narrative quicksand pretty early into it’s running time by plunging headfirst into “exposition hell.” There’s more standing around and yacking and explaining things that we are trying our damnedest to care about than in Tony Gilroy’s ponderous yack fest Michael Clayton. I demand more from my Tron!