TRON Legacy

If you didn't think much of the original movie, there wasn't much point in seeing this.

Me, I just wanted to be an 11 year-old again, so that's the bar to which I held Legacy and I didn't bother to look any deeper. Not particularly going to try, either. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even if it had no particular surprises. It was a visual movie in 1982; it's a visual movie now, and I liked the visuals. Some of the visuals more than others (Quorra!). It wasn't ever going to be Mamet, so I didn't worry very much about it.
 
David Jimerson said:
If you didn't think much of the original movie, there wasn't much point in seeing this.
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It's not that I don't think much of it. Like a lot of people my age I have a nostalgia for the original that doesn't bear much scrutiny. The original may be as flawed as this movie but in a different way. Other than the silliness of the central conceit, the film actually was clever in its use of computing metaphors in its plot, and the visuals were revolutionary for the time. Also, as I mentioned, it's lo-fidelity textures are somehow more convincing than the polished visuals of the sequel. Legacy just seemed like recycled goods, from the first Tron itself to a dozen other sources. And it kept doing dumb things that reminded me how dumb the concept is...I don't begrudge anyone enjoying it as mindless spectacle. The film just could have been more than that.
 
Perhaps it could have been. But I didn't expect it to be, and never worried about it. I didn't go for philosophy. I just wanted the spectacle. I'm pretty sure that's all it was really supposed to be.

The story of The Matrix is just as stupid and falls down just as hard with any level of actual scrutiny, and that one actually took itself considerably more seriously. I'm not too worried about that, either, when I pop it in. It's just a good ride, and not every movie has to be Grand Illusion.
 
It's funny also how Neo meets Master Control Program at the end of The Matrix Revolutions, only they call it Deus Ex Machina.

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matrix-revolutions-36.jpg
 
David Jimerson said:
The story of The Matrix is just as stupid and falls down just as hard with any level of actual scrutiny.
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Some of the details of the story in The Matrix may not, but the central concept of virtual reality is much more plausible in that film than in this, where we're asked to believe your actual body can vanish from this world and be transported into a computer. And The Matrix is nowhere near as sloppy in the execution of its script (I'm not talking about the sequels here)...Anyway, I guess the only opinion that really matters is this one, and he was quite happy with the movie--

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/12/tron-guy-reviews-tron-legacy/
 
Batutta said:
I frankly thought it came out of nowhere. Flynn's abilities seemed very amorphous and half thought out. If they had set it up better maybe it wouldn't have felt like such a lazy ripoff. Yes, the Matrix was a pastiche from a lot of different sources, but Tron directly regurgitated a concept and imagery from a high profile work in the same genre, with similar subject matter, with not much variation.
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That was probably my biggest beef with the film. It felt like Flynn had the powers the writers wanted him to have at the appropriate times. No rules or groundwork, making me wonder why didn't he just 'think' good things to happen to him? Why didn't he shape the world around him? Why didn't he make bad guys explode? Why does he have to sometimes "program" a person's disk to get them to do things, while he can destroy clue like he's a Jedi or Neo? Why is there wind that comes from him!? It was strange and confusing... very lazy...

One thing that really bugged me though was the use of the Tron character *spoilers*
It felt like he was a very lazy aspect of the film, as if they didn't know what to do with the character. After all he had to be there, it's called TRON. But he was no longer a focus of the film, and he was just thrown around like that kid at a party you don't want there but are too polite to kick out. He was turned evil, then turned good, and didn't even show up at the end. I mean he seemed to survive... I thought he was going to save the day... but nope! Probably for the next one...

I agree with the consensus here. It was lacking on a lot of aspects. That said I did enjoy it. I guess I just like shiny objects, and I agree that the story was aweful, but Olivia Wilde, and the amazing visuals made for a good ride. Man that was some cinematography...

It seems like Disney is taking a stance with 3D, and saying "if it's not done well, we won't do it," and I'm very glad for that. I think it was used in a great subtle way in the film. At times I forgot I was watching 3d, but I think that's a good thing. Nothing was flying out at you, or people pointing at the camera with their swords or fingers... I also loved that they decided to make the real world 2D and Tron world 3D.
 
Jon Starr said:
It felt like Flynn had the powers the writers wanted him to have at the appropriate times. No rules or groundwork, making me wonder why didn't he just 'think' good things to happen to him? Why didn't he shape the world around him? Why didn't he make bad guys explode? Why does he have to sometimes "program" a person's disk to get them to do things, while he can destroy clue like he's a Jedi or Neo? Why is there wind that comes from him!? It was strange and confusing... very lazy...
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This probably has to do with how large-budget features are increasingly put together. You don't start with a screenplay - in fact, you don't start with characters, a theme, or a story.

You start with concept art. Pretty, pretty concept art based upon directorial ideas that may or may not ever make it into the finished film. You add a raft of producers - and sometimes, if they are high enough on the A-list, actors too - each of whom wants to and will get to add to, tweak, massage, mutilate or otherwise piss on the story being kind of randomly stuck together as they go along. Then the studio execs will add a second layer of piss (sorry, notes) to suit their tastes, and satisfy their desire to feel as though they are artistically creative people doing artistically creative things (plus of course they "know" the audience - why else would they be studio executives?) - and therefore any half-baked concept they care to pimp is guaranteed box-office gold if only the production crew would get it right. Lather, rinse, repeat through four or five major revisions (the third through fifth coming in as self-contradictory fragments throughout principal photography) and you have any number of the big hypertrophied mega-budget films that generate the sort of response that you mention.

Part of this may be driven by the fact that so long as a project's definition - what it's going to be, what it's going to mean, what it's going to say - is all fuzzy and imprecise, everyone whose check-in-a-box you need to go forward can project onto the project whatever *they* want most to see there, and will therefore check their particular box figuring that they'll steer it where they feel it ought to go (not that they actually know where they think it should go; that fun comes later). So before long you wind up with a script which has been strung together from disjointed, semi-related chunks because the power politics revolve not around having a good script but around whose genital dimensions are proven greatest via whose semi-related chunks make it to screen.

An illustrator friend and I were talking about this on the last feature (which was as good an exemplar as you'll find, for what I'm talking about) and he pointed out that when working with a pack of A-list egos, the players are rarely willing to be told here's the script, it works, it's done, it's what we're shooting. No, sometimes people prefer to start with a kind of amorphous general conception (which may or may not be in script format) and showcase their special creative genius using that general conception as a framework. Hey, when you have hundreds of millions of other people's $$$ to spend, what's the hurry?

*edit* I probably should mention that I'm not specifically describing the process on Tron, which is not a film on which I worked. Look at the finished product and draw yer own conclusions.
 
Calling it a system may be over-complimentary.

It's certainly a contributing factor to budget and schedule over-runs. I don't believe it's the primary reason for super-huge-budgeted projects, though. Those decisions get made on an estimate-basis before the process of let's make up the script as we go along gets rolling, and in fact can act as a brake on some of the more outrageous hey I just had another brilliant idea for a new battle scene, let's rewrite the script again because even with, say, $100 million or so in budget people still have to sometimes admit that we just can't afford that. Plus, a certain amount of the money is 'sunk cost' before Day One of principal, anyway: A-list actors, director, etc, producers' fees, bonds, facility reservation and of course preproduction expenses that easily run into the tens of millions on major projects.

I think that the grotesque-huge production budgets are more an artifact of the studios' conviction that gigantic blockbusters are the way to make profit in theaters/post-theatrical, and once you accept that premise the budgets naturally rise to meet the production expenses.

Anyway, efficiency is only expected from people below-the-line, and a few department heads who happen to be above it.
 
I though Flynn's powers were explained quite clearly, the more he used them, the stronger CLU became. Therefore, he chose not to do anything and just wait. As the movie progressed, and his son decided to take action, Flynn began using his powers in an effort to save his son, but he was aware of the consequences that would cause. Ultimately, he realized that the only solution was to destroy both himself AND CLU, as that was the only way to end CLU. It was apparent to me that even when he decided to take action, he did so sparingly. As an analogy to the computer world, I thought of it as a process running on your computer. He didn't want to be using up 100% of the CPU all the time because he didn't want to be easily noticed :) When your computer is having issues, you check the activity monitor, or top, or the task manager depending on your flavor of system (OSX,Linux,Win) to see where the problem is.

Granted, coming from the *story* of TRON (the first one) they didn't have a whole lot to work with in my opinion, I absolutely loved TRON: Legacy. For me, it was like being that little kid again. Even from the beginning of the film, it felt like a 80s movie with more polish on it. How many 80s movies starts out with the kid in his bedroom that looked like that! :) I though the story was fun, and simplistic like the first one, the visual effects were really neat, and the score by Daft Punk was awesome. I saw it opening day at the IMAX and don't regret it for a second.

Maybe I just went in with lower story expectations, but given the silliness of the technology, that was fine for me. It is what I expected which was why I loved it. I cannot wait to see it again.
 
Sad Max... I love your contributions to this thread. It gives me hope... (no sarcasm there)... you're solidifying my perception of what it would take to make it.

I hope I enjoy Tron, based on my childhood experience... but it's looking like a DVD rental for this guy.
 
MattinSTL said:
Sad Max... I love your contributions to this thread. It gives me hope... (no sarcasm there)... you're solidifying my perception of what it would take to make it.

I hope I enjoy Tron, based on my childhood experience... but it's looking like a DVD rental for this guy.
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For me it was worth it in IMAX. The quality of the visuals and the size were just fantastic. My home theater is 126" so I'd have probably just waiting and got in on Bluray to watch at home if I had not had the IMAX option.

If I go see it again, it will be at the IMAX because it just looks awesome that large.
 
grimepoch said:
Maybe I just went in with lower story expectations, but given the silliness of the technology, that was fine for me. It is what I expected which was why I loved it. I cannot wait to see it again.
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Hell yeah. I want to go back for an IMAX screening. As mentioned, this is Walt friggin' Disney, not Mamet. I just wanted to see some cool visuals, plot was to take a backseat. But for what it's worth, I think the story isn't half bad.

If you go, definitely catch it in 3D, and hopefully the theatre's volume is cranked, because the soundtrack is awesome. I think Daft Punk killed it (in a good way) I haven't heard a score that works so well with the visuals in a long time.

The light cycle scene was insane. Multiple levels….ramps, just great.

Look at the finished product and draw yer own conclusions.
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Loved it. All's well that ends well.

Now where can I find a reasonably-priced copy of the original? Whycome Disney wouldn't reissue Tron on bluray to coincide with Legacy? :grin: I've been watching some of the trailers & scenes on Youtube & I forgot how bizzare and amazing the look of that film was.
 
Yeah, I saw it in 3D at the IMAX and it was worth it. The volume was CRANKED and the soundtrack was awesome. Already listened to the Soundtrack that I bought off of iTunes. Was great to get to listen to again. I am thinking they will rerelease some sort of set with both of them maybe on bluray.
 
One of the reasons I prefer to watch films at home is that in most theaters, you lose the subtleties of the soundtrack. Sure, there are some good indie theaters who do a great job, but not many.
 
I saw this movie back in the day when it was released, it blew me away, specially being a huge Moebius fan and have never seen a computer generated film before. That magic stills remains in me, that is why i dont want to see a remake where digital nowadays is mainstream
 
Saw it a couple nights ago with my wife and we both found it to be kind of boring. Plot holes and pseudo-science silliness were expected and accepted for this kind of movie, but the pace seemed very slow to us.

This was directly after watching Black Swan (we literally watched Black Swan, walked to the front of the theater, bought tickets to Tron 3D and walked back in), so maybe that had something to do with it.
 
Not for nothing, but check out the title treatment starting at around 2:10. Sometimes my small brain thinks everthing cool was "invented" in the 21st century with all our wonderful editing and graphic systems.


The phrase "ahead of it's time" gets thrown around alot….

Also, as far as I'm concerned, Jeff Bridges was and always will be The Dude. He's no parody of himself, it's just the way he talks. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
Deepfocus88 said:
Not for nothing, but check out the title treatment starting at around 2:10. Sometimes my small brain thinks everthing cool was "invented" in the 21st century with all our wonderful editing and graphic systems.


The phrase "ahead of it's time" gets thrown around alot….

Also, as far as I'm concerned, Jeff Bridges was and always will be The Dude. He's no parody of himself, it's just the way he talks. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
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While I really enjoyed Tron Legacy, the above video just has something about it that is kind of magical. Same thing when I compare something like Aliens against Avatar, or even a movie like Conan the Barbarian over Lord of the Rings. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, or maybe I've overdosed on all the cutting edge digital effects of the past decade?

Maybe it is just that Tron is truly a product of its time? It is still very iconic, but at the same time, it has like other films a specific cultural shelf life. The whole arcade feel to the first movie just seems much more appropriate to me, both in the fact that we spend a decent amount of time at Flynn's Arcade, and the fact that the virtual world they enter being so much like an old arcade game. It is the same feeling that I get when I read something like Neuromancer, and wish that there was a film of that novel made in the 80's. Even with all the effects and mega-budgets of today's cinema, it just won't be the same if produced today.
 
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