Escape to the Movies: Tron: Legacy

[Koroviev]

I dont have so much issue with that. You cant really tell whats good and what isnt in a movie through monetary support. As long as (if) this grows to be a series, I just dont want to to grow stale and diluted, turning from tech and little inside nerd jokes (that really arent that bad and you can learn about in five minutes of a computers class), to some mediocre run of the mill action flick that only has the resemblance to the Tron culture and original by its name. If that makes any sense.

I guess to sum that up, i just dont want this to be a hit and watch it go south fast to appease and appeal the general movie going audience.

I agree with you 100%. Commercial viability does not necessarily translate to critical viability (see: just about every foreign film released in the US).

Oh, I see. Well, it's a fine balancing act, to be honest. On one hand, a franchise will not be continued in the absence of monetary support. In other words, a studio, even one as big as Disney, is not going to promote something that is a flop (in financial terms). However, as you point out, the makers of a franchise may misinterpret success as a call for them to appeal to a wider audience, which essentially amounts to a big "fuck you" as it concerns the original fans. I think a good example of this is Mass Effect. While I thoroughly enjoy both installments, numerous people have complained that as a result of the first one being successful, Bioware decided to dumb the second one down to appeal to a wider audience.

Let's just hope that Tron doesn't go the way of Pirates of the Caribbean <__<

 

[no oneder]

"I'll be important in the sequel"... T-shirt material or what??

 

[emeraldrafael]

Snip

Hear hear and agreed. Though as odd as it is, I didnt really hate PotC after the second and third movie. I just changed my expectations after the second movie.

Snip

I'm one of those people who its hard to pick up on satirical parody, so it was more then likely me.

Its not that I hold the original tron on a great parallel to other movies that were/are great by review of critics (I would say Inception, but as blasphemous as it sounds, I didnt enjoy Inception. But then again, public opinion and bothersome questions from the average movie goer ruined it for me more then anything else), its that, well, like i said, it kinda defines our generation. its really one of the closest examples of gamimg successfully transcending mediums while still keeping the audience it was meant to appeal to. And its also one of the few movies of its kind (video game movie) that was wasnt a shameless cash in to make money, something i would say its only equaled recent with Prince of Persia (everyone know its could have been much, MUCH worse *cough*doom*cough*).

With the new tron, yes, it gets its effects and visual update, which only helps seeing as how you cant be limited by the tech like it was in the 80s. However, that visual update brings in that average movie goer as well (thats not an insult, i swear and I'll explain shortly), who looks at it as the shiny action flick of the month. Which makes me cringe, because, as I stated here:

I guess to sum that up, i just dont want this to be a hit and watch it go south fast to appease and appeal the general movie going audience.

Mainly, I dont want tron to change to something in a complete 180 of the original, since it means something to me and most of the cult following gamers in the States. As Koroviev said, I dont want this to turn into PotC. So its not really that I have a problem with the general public having knowledge about the movie, I just want them to know that this is more then a revamp/sequel of an 80s movie about video games that greased the axles of the movie industry to make these kinda movies. Its something that should be kept true to a large degree of the movie's plot and point.

And maybe thats why you didnt know. I figured since it didnt get much international success (as well as domestic) you were American, since I've asked my foreign friends about tron and tehy give me the dead fish eye glassy stare. Its not that I think America is best, or everyone should be from it that holds a good opinion, I'm just used to the people that know about tron being American. So i do apologize abou tthat.

Long and short of it, I dont want this to be a cult classic again. This needs to get out so there's a voice for the nerdy group besides comic book based movies. I just dont want this to be serialized(? right word to mean be made into a series?) and then two or three movies down the line be diluted and only recognizable to the original by name and characters.

 

[Jackel86]

Actually the one thing that immediately told me that they used CG instead of makeup to make a younger Jeff Bridges and CLU was the mouth. People have idiosyncrasies in facial expressions and even though they got it very close a couple times, when CLU isn't talking or making a teeth bearing smile then the mouth seems lifeless.

Spoiler

The thing that got me was that Tron (the character) had sudden change of sides at the end with nothing leading up to it. I was following this story pretty well (if you can say that it has one besides getting out), and when Sam was pitted against him in the disc battle I said "Bet me that's Tron." Then when CLU pulled his coup and Tron gets a second disc from an enemy then the screen cuts away before we see what happens to him when CLU is about to strike I said "Who called that? Oh, wait... ME! But bet me that there's still a piece of the 'good' Tron left." Sure enough we see that his disc is 'battling' the CLU's full take over of his identity. However, at no point did we ever see anything that tipped the scales for that internal battle. So jump from one side to the other was pretty out of the blue.

The other thing that they didn't explain was what the hell Quorra's race ever really did (besides build stuff peacefully) or what they would do in the real world. I was wondering if they were trying to set it up for a sequel (it's not like the world needs another sequel of something >.>) by explaining nothing beyond 'We need to get out but not let CLU get out.'

So with Quorra in the real world and Tron being the only survivor it did seem that they were setting up for another; it's just a shame that they couldn't tell a good story for a single movie and not one you need to buy the box set in order to truly understand anything out of the storyline.

Oddly enough, when it was closer to the end of the movie I was thinking to myself that it would have been a nice mini-series if they used the same production quality, at that point I wouldn't mind certain things not being explained at first. But aren't sequels and trilogies just mini-series in disguise?

Spoiler

What made Quorra special was that she was an evolving computer "life form". The ISOs proved that computer programs could evolve the same way living beings do. (I'm assuming that if you're nerdy enough to like TRON then you believe in evolution.) Similar to NASA's recent arsenic-based life form, it shows that life can exist in ways that we didn't believe possible. The implications for that would be staggering. You could basically use their "DNA" (bits, bytes, etc.) like stem cells, hence the talk about disease no longer being an issue. At least I think that's what they were talking about.

 

[S-Unleashed]

Well I'm logging in.

 

[Dectilon]

Just came back from seeing it. Frankly, I didn't like it much. It's flashy, but what isn't these days, and it steals so much from other franchises (like star wars and the matrix, and I don't mean the concept, I mean more like characters, deliveries and tone) that it doesn't quite manage to be its own thing. There are various problems with more or less all the concepts introduced and I think that's the biggest issues: they introduce tons of neat concepts, and then they just sort of ignore they ever did. Maybe they're planning to expand on them in future films, but when you're watching a movie you don't want to wait to the sequel to find out why something is important if they claim it's important in the present.

Basically, it was entertaining as sci-fi action (for the most part anyway), but I don't think it managed to really establish a universe one can care about. The programs and what makes them different and interesting didn't even get a place in their own universe

 

[F-I-D-O]

For those of you who use Netflix, don't bother trying to get the original Tron via this source. I've had it in my queue since they announced Tron 2 about a year ago, still haven't received it. They have it listed as "unavailable."

I got it from netflix...haven't looked to see if it's on instant play though, you might want to try that.

little snip here

Maybe the people went to see expendables because they wanted an action movie and not (let's not kid ourselves here) a RomCom?
Anyway: The movie looks good, I just hope I don't have to play the game to understand all the flashback stuff. It's probably intentionally vague as the game/comics were designed to fill in the gaps between the two, but still...
Going to have to see this in IMAX 3D, thoroughly ruining any home theater set up for me in the process because it looks SO DAMN COOL on the big screen...sigh...

 

[emeraldrafael]

For those of you who use Netflix, don't bother trying to get the original Tron via this source. I've had it in my queue since they announced Tron 2 about a year ago, still haven't received it. They have it listed as "unavailable."

I got it from netflix...haven't looked to see if it's on instant play though, you might want to try that.

little snip here

Maybe the people went to see expendables because they wanted an action movie and not (let's not kid ourselves here) a RomCom?
Anyway: The movie looks good, I just hope I don't have to play the game to understand all the flashback stuff. It's probably intentionally vague as the game/comics were designed to fill in the gaps between the two, but still...
Going to have to see this in IMAX 3D, thoroughly ruining any home theater set up for me in the process because it looks SO DAMN COOL on the big screen...sigh...

Yeah, I understand that. But its when they bring that ideal back to different series. I dont know, maybe I'm alone on this, but I've worked in movie theatres (i know, wooo good for me) but i've seen series slope down and go to all hell because they filmmaker wanted to get more profit and completely ostracized the original group that made it so loved and voiced for another movie. I just dont want to see them ruin tron, since its one of the few untainted things that is still dear to me and to others who liked the movie when we first saw it cause it showed that you didnt have to be an action star. You could just be a geek.

 

[Meark]

Just to point out, Tron made more than 33 million domestically. It was made for 17 million. Most consider that to be a box office success.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=tron.htm

What I mean is, do your research before using a false statement that supports your thesis. People saw Tron, it's just that as you pointed out, 1982 was a great year for movies, and it was 25 years before people seriously started talking about a sequel. Now, i'm not defending it plot-wise, but Tron: Legacy has done EXACTLY what the original did. Beautiful CGI and nifty action sequences. And *that* is what most expected. It's a bonus that Daft Punk will probably get a oscar nomination for their soundtrack, and that it wasn't a terrible movie.

 

[GameGoddess101]

No mention of Wendy Carlos and that makes me a sad panda.... Wendy Carlos composed the original score and, according to an interview with
Daft Punk and the sound designers of Kingdom Hearts 2, was the key inspiration for their jumping off point AND consulted, or so I'm told.

Personally, I don't think most of the mainstream audience would have cared enough about Tron: Legacy if not for Kingdom Hearts 2, if it only reminded people that "Oh yeah, hey! Tron was a Disney movie... huh."

I want to see it. My husband wants to see it, so that's probably not gonna change now.

I knew that this one wouldn't be able to live up to its original expectations. It's a sequel 28 years in the making, pretty damn close to 29... so yeah... Great review Bob, as always.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I still need to go back and give the original TRON a fresh look.

Me, too. I feel like I'm missing something by not having seen the original Tron.

Unfortunately you're not. I know I'm the one guy who hated "Casino Royale", but the original "Tron" really is so much more boring than it has any right to be.

"Hackers" showed how to make a cheesy sci-fi computer movie great (and some of the old-school tech stuff is hilarious today - my favorite bit is when Matthew Lillard, the only human being to have evolved from lizards with prehensile tongues instead of apes, talks about a laptop computer and its "million psychadelic colours!")

If you want a techno-thriller from the same period that's actually grounded in reality rather than high camp (as "Hackers" is) then I'd recommend "Sneakers" (underrated techno-thriller starring Robert Redford, Sydney Poitier, River Phoenix, Dan Ackroyd, Ben Kingsley, and... do I really need to say any more here?) This is a quite ridiculously good film.

But "Tron"? Nope. Save your money and your time. It ain't worth it except for pure curiosity value, sorry. Hopefully the sequel is better.

 

[Zechnophobe]

thinking you should keep your thoughts out of your pants for one video... maybe.

It would be nice wouldn't it? I mean... do we really need a video reviewer to tell us that the girl is hot? Seriously? He's not reviewing porn for godssakes.

 

[[Insert Name Here]]

Saw it on the day of release. Easily one of the best movies this year.

 

[Reaper69lol]

Watching it again soon its an awesome movie.

 

[Vaccine]

I liked it, saw it last night, certainly not the best film this year, but I enjoyed it and it was worth the money.

The only thing that threw me was lack of Tron himself and lack of MOAR LIGHTCYCLEZ.

 

[Kitteh]

i lol'd when he said "obi-wan lebowski" so much.

 

[holographicman]

saw it and clu was badass
i want 1 of those winged glider packs now...