Escape to the Movies: Tron: Legacy
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
I'll be honest;Aiddon said:
"Title character" doesn't really count for a lot past the first installment of a series, especially when the sequel is this long after the first. Tron was the title character, but at this point it's just the name of the franchise. In any case, while his fate is never set in stone, it isn't left so ominously open as to ruin the story if it's never closed. After-all, he's only really in a couple of scenes anyway (a few if you wanna count flashbacks). So while it's there to use in a sequel that will maybe happen, it certainly doesn't ruin the story of this movie.
So be it the character in the spoiler text or Dillinger's son, neither case really ruins this movie's story for the sake of setting-up a sequel. All the major plot-points are wrapped-up nicely enough.
I loved this movie!
Saw it last night with my GF. though it is predictable, the spectacle is always awesome, and Bob's right, Bridges, plays his best hippie-yoda-Obiwan-kenobi role, just fun to watch.
Quorra, is every geeks fantasy girl come true.
Fun to watch, but not the best movie you'll see this year (hopefully the next one will be better).
ON asemi relatednote, seems like this has been Disney's year to try to set up a new franchise that can take the place of pirates. we've had prince of persia, the sorcerer' apprentice (ugh!, I think I puked a little in my mouth.
just noticing
Saw it last night with my GF. though it is predictable, the spectacle is always awesome, and Bob's right, Bridges, plays his best hippie-yoda-Obiwan-kenobi role, just fun to watch.
Quorra, is every geeks fantasy girl come true.
Fun to watch, but not the best movie you'll see this year (hopefully the next one will be better).
ON asemi relatednote, seems like this has been Disney's year to try to set up a new franchise that can take the place of pirates. we've had prince of persia, the sorcerer' apprentice (ugh!, I think I puked a little in my mouth.
just noticing
This movie has a shaky plot but the world itself is beautifully realized. I totally agree with Bob's review. I didn't leave the theatre shaking my head but I had J.J.Abrams Star Trek deja vu. On the other hand, I broke out laughing at the ending because I could see of my best friend's apartment buildings in the scenery. The film crew did very little to cover the fact that they filmed in Vancouver, using some of the most iconic scenery in the whole city. Talk about distracting, seeing my hometown dolled up with CG (or lack thereof).
it was boring, the visuals didnt blow me away like i had hoped. i saw it at imax and my friends agreed that the 3d was not good. go with low expectations, especially if you like the first one. oh yeah the light cycles looked slow!? lame.
Huge DISAPOINTMENT
I went to the premier with very low expectations, and even those were not met.
Do watch this movie only because you own it to first Tron. Otherwise not worth your time.
And - this is important.
DO NOT WATCH IT IN 3D !!!!
Its obvious the film was not made with 3D in mind (they even apologize for it on the begging)
I went to the premier with very low expectations, and even those were not met.
Do watch this movie only because you own it to first Tron. Otherwise not worth your time.
And - this is important.
DO NOT WATCH IT IN 3D !!!!
Its obvious the film was not made with 3D in mind (they even apologize for it on the begging)
PS TRON2.0 was 100 times better than this crapreddog247 said:My only problems with the movie are few...
1)Sam enters the digital world in his real world clothes.
2)Though it was cool to see CLU return as the new villain; where is BIT?
3)Where is TRON?" What?! They can have Alan in the movie but not his creation?
and 4) The costumes... I was expecting something more like the characters from TRON 2.0
After all; The face of the character was just to tell you who it's "user" is.
Wow, now I remember why it took me so long to get back into hanging out in geek forums online. The elitism I am seeing is ASTOUNDING.
Yeah, so you've been with the TRON fandom ever since Atari was the king of video games and 8 tracks were just going the same way vinyl would about 10 years later. So you see yourself as better than someone who might not have been familiar with the movie since it was obscure (and it WAS...mostly because A) it came out in 1982 against a lot of competition and B) that competition were better movies. The original TRON was good but it wasn't on the level of Wrath of Khan, the Dark Crystal, First Blood, or the other blockbusters that came out that year).
That's fine if you want to see yourself that way but then you go and talk down to people who either only heard about it when the sequel came out or never really cared until they saw the trailers? And you wonder why people report you as being rude? I'll let you in on a little hint: People generally don't appreciate being humiliated, mocked, or made to feel dumb. And it's that kind of attitude and thinking that you're oh so much better because you happened to have been a fan of an obscure movie back before certain other people were that are the reason why geeks tend to get the short end of the social stick.
Anyway, the movie:
I liked it a lot. It could have been better, and they could have set up certain things (I'm new so I don't know how to do the spoiler tag things yet) in a better way but I enjoyed it. It was fun, pretty, and if there is a third I'm looking forward to seeing it.
And Michael Sheen was hilarious. He was basically an albino Ziggy Stardust on crack. I loved it.
Yeah, so you've been with the TRON fandom ever since Atari was the king of video games and 8 tracks were just going the same way vinyl would about 10 years later. So you see yourself as better than someone who might not have been familiar with the movie since it was obscure (and it WAS...mostly because A) it came out in 1982 against a lot of competition and B) that competition were better movies. The original TRON was good but it wasn't on the level of Wrath of Khan, the Dark Crystal, First Blood, or the other blockbusters that came out that year).
That's fine if you want to see yourself that way but then you go and talk down to people who either only heard about it when the sequel came out or never really cared until they saw the trailers? And you wonder why people report you as being rude? I'll let you in on a little hint: People generally don't appreciate being humiliated, mocked, or made to feel dumb. And it's that kind of attitude and thinking that you're oh so much better because you happened to have been a fan of an obscure movie back before certain other people were that are the reason why geeks tend to get the short end of the social stick.
Anyway, the movie:
I liked it a lot. It could have been better, and they could have set up certain things (I'm new so I don't know how to do the spoiler tag things yet) in a better way but I enjoyed it. It was fun, pretty, and if there is a third I'm looking forward to seeing it.
And Michael Sheen was hilarious. He was basically an albino Ziggy Stardust on crack. I loved it.
SPOILERS people.
I don't understand where the B+ rating is coming from, Bob. Maybe I just didn't do a good job of keeping things in perspective, but my reaction to Tron has a lot in common with your reaction to Transformers 2.
Maybe I'm just getting old; maybe law school has crushed the childlike hyper-enthusiasm over anything dressed up in sci-fi colors right out of my soul. Maybe an upbringing that revolved entirely around Star Trek set my standards too high. One way or another, I've lost patience with films that have less ambition than the average tuna fish.
The work by Daft Punk was solid. The light cycle animation was solid. But those two things only serve to make the movie bearable. Tron Legacy is prevented from being "good," or from even approaching "good" by the formula story.
The formula story isn't by itself the kiss of death; everybody uses it these days for pretty much everything, and considering the sheer quantity of films that Hollywood-types put out every year it would be unfair to expect them to reinvent the wheel every time. But there's good formula-story work and bad formula-story work. This was bad formula-story work. The characters were paper thin and the plot kept going out of its way to do things that made no sense or had no relevance to the story. Transformers made you angry because given all the potential of the big-robots-from-machine-planets idea, it seemed absurd for the plot to expect the audience to be more interested in some unlikable kid's sex life. Tron pisses me off for pretty much the exact same reason. Why are we supposed to care about this kid, exactly? I don't even remember his name; I think it might have been Sam, but maybe that was the kid from Transformers. Maybe they're both Sam. Whatever the case, he's a jerk who wastes his life and is crippled by his daddy issues. Why would I want to watch a movie about him? Given that the girl-person never says or does anything, why am I supposed to care about his relationship with her? Why is Encom evil, except for the fact that it's a big company? And how has the grid managed to exist for 20 years, given that it presumably depends on hardware that would critically degrade during that period? How did the kid manage to drive back to the city on a motorcycle when the whole point on the non-city environment was that it was accessible only to of-road vehicles? Why did Clue go all the way to Flynn's lair if all he was going to do was turn around and go back to the city, and what exactly did he get so angry about while he was there staring at the knickknacks? What's the deal with Tron? If he was repurposed to be evil, then why do we care about him? I mean, if all he is is a mindless minion doing what Clue programmed him to do, then he's not really a character, is he? He's just a thing.
The biggest offense is the new back story. The grid produced an entirely new race of digital beings. These beings, somehow, had the potential to change the human world. And then they were all murdered by Clue in an act of genocide. Let's ignore for a moment the insane lack of specificity with which its suggested that these beings could change the world. The idea of a whole new species evolving on the grid is a HUGE, AWESOME, big-idea sci-fi concept. It's the sort of concept you could use for an entire stand-alone trilogy. But this film just uses the idea as an excuse to have a long chase scene and give otherwise uninteresting characters some sense of seriousness. Why is the bad guy bad? Uh, um, because he committed genocide. Yeah, great idea! What CRAP! That's the sort of bad formula-story work that we saw in the 2nd Pirates movie. Why is Davey Jones evil? Because, um, uhh...something about some woman who scorned him or something. Alright, great! Now we can get on with the formula story!
Every movie is going to be limited in some way by some degree of formula-story telling. That's just reality and there's nothing wrong with it. But just because you're bound by a formula story doesn't mean that every character has to be boring or that every plot point has to be either predictable or nonsensical. And this reality is by no means a license to develop really big ideas and then throw them away in a five-minute back story sequence just so that you can get on with the flashy effects and daddy issues.
I don't understand where the B+ rating is coming from, Bob. Maybe I just didn't do a good job of keeping things in perspective, but my reaction to Tron has a lot in common with your reaction to Transformers 2.
Maybe I'm just getting old; maybe law school has crushed the childlike hyper-enthusiasm over anything dressed up in sci-fi colors right out of my soul. Maybe an upbringing that revolved entirely around Star Trek set my standards too high. One way or another, I've lost patience with films that have less ambition than the average tuna fish.
The work by Daft Punk was solid. The light cycle animation was solid. But those two things only serve to make the movie bearable. Tron Legacy is prevented from being "good," or from even approaching "good" by the formula story.
The formula story isn't by itself the kiss of death; everybody uses it these days for pretty much everything, and considering the sheer quantity of films that Hollywood-types put out every year it would be unfair to expect them to reinvent the wheel every time. But there's good formula-story work and bad formula-story work. This was bad formula-story work. The characters were paper thin and the plot kept going out of its way to do things that made no sense or had no relevance to the story. Transformers made you angry because given all the potential of the big-robots-from-machine-planets idea, it seemed absurd for the plot to expect the audience to be more interested in some unlikable kid's sex life. Tron pisses me off for pretty much the exact same reason. Why are we supposed to care about this kid, exactly? I don't even remember his name; I think it might have been Sam, but maybe that was the kid from Transformers. Maybe they're both Sam. Whatever the case, he's a jerk who wastes his life and is crippled by his daddy issues. Why would I want to watch a movie about him? Given that the girl-person never says or does anything, why am I supposed to care about his relationship with her? Why is Encom evil, except for the fact that it's a big company? And how has the grid managed to exist for 20 years, given that it presumably depends on hardware that would critically degrade during that period? How did the kid manage to drive back to the city on a motorcycle when the whole point on the non-city environment was that it was accessible only to of-road vehicles? Why did Clue go all the way to Flynn's lair if all he was going to do was turn around and go back to the city, and what exactly did he get so angry about while he was there staring at the knickknacks? What's the deal with Tron? If he was repurposed to be evil, then why do we care about him? I mean, if all he is is a mindless minion doing what Clue programmed him to do, then he's not really a character, is he? He's just a thing.
The biggest offense is the new back story. The grid produced an entirely new race of digital beings. These beings, somehow, had the potential to change the human world. And then they were all murdered by Clue in an act of genocide. Let's ignore for a moment the insane lack of specificity with which its suggested that these beings could change the world. The idea of a whole new species evolving on the grid is a HUGE, AWESOME, big-idea sci-fi concept. It's the sort of concept you could use for an entire stand-alone trilogy. But this film just uses the idea as an excuse to have a long chase scene and give otherwise uninteresting characters some sense of seriousness. Why is the bad guy bad? Uh, um, because he committed genocide. Yeah, great idea! What CRAP! That's the sort of bad formula-story work that we saw in the 2nd Pirates movie. Why is Davey Jones evil? Because, um, uhh...something about some woman who scorned him or something. Alright, great! Now we can get on with the formula story!
Every movie is going to be limited in some way by some degree of formula-story telling. That's just reality and there's nothing wrong with it. But just because you're bound by a formula story doesn't mean that every character has to be boring or that every plot point has to be either predictable or nonsensical. And this reality is by no means a license to develop really big ideas and then throw them away in a five-minute back story sequence just so that you can get on with the flashy effects and daddy issues.
A friend and I caught the Midnight 3D IMAX showing. I really liked it, though the 3D wasn't really necessary though it also didn't feel over-used or hackneyed (like with bits of shit flying at the viewers the whole movie...unlike the trailer for the next Pirates movie; why the fuck is that 3D?!)
As for the soundtrack, it's good, definitely better than I thought it was going to be. I don't dislike Daft Punk, though I'm not overly familiar with their tunes, but I expected 2 hours of repetitive, blaring electro-beats. Instead, I got a great mix of orchestrated, movie-sized music punctuated with electronic bits as necessary. It was really well done...however, I still think the soundtrack for "The Social Network" from Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross is the best soundtrack I've heard this year.
I'll likely go see TRON: Legacy again, though just the standard release (no 3D/IMAX) as I can get in on the cheap ($6 @AMC before Noon.) It's worth at least one more theatrical viewing from me.
I agree that TRON's inner turmoil should've manifested a little better, and, like my friend mentioned about both TRON films: "for being called TRON it's not really about TRON at all." I thought maybe he'd play a larger role this time around or at least pair up with Sam in a battle against CLU.
As for the soundtrack, it's good, definitely better than I thought it was going to be. I don't dislike Daft Punk, though I'm not overly familiar with their tunes, but I expected 2 hours of repetitive, blaring electro-beats. Instead, I got a great mix of orchestrated, movie-sized music punctuated with electronic bits as necessary. It was really well done...however, I still think the soundtrack for "The Social Network" from Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross is the best soundtrack I've heard this year.
I'll likely go see TRON: Legacy again, though just the standard release (no 3D/IMAX) as I can get in on the cheap ($6 @AMC before Noon.) It's worth at least one more theatrical viewing from me.