Yes, of course I saw it again. I’ve been waiting for it since I was six.
1.) I think the “this movie has no plot” line a lot of people are using is unfair. It has a straightforward chase movie plot, for the most part: once Sam gets inside the Grid the entire movie is “survive until you get to X, then to Y, then to Z.” There’s nothing wrong with it, and the movie underlays the chase element with a nice dichotomy of Flynn’s relationships with his two “sons” (Sam and CLU). A more thorough explanation of Flynn’s within-the-Grid powers would have been nice so that the ending makes more sense, but other than that the plot is really very straightforward.
2.) A fairer complaint is that the information that drives the plot isn’t what people wanted. A common issue I’ve seen raised in many places is that there’s no mention of the internet or anything similar, no serious discussion of the revolutions in computing as it relates to the TRONverse, but instead some vague technobabble about the Isos. (Actually, the movie is correct in that abiogenetic digital life would in fact be a Big Deal, but it doesn’t really explain it properly.) This is reasonable and I can definitely sympathize with it. To which the only answer that can be made is: they didn’t want to make that movie. They wanted to make this one: a story about a long-divided father and son. The sealed system of the Grid as ruled by CLU simply doesn’t work with the internet, and if Flynn had been in digital form on the net he likely would have been able to talk to his son somehow.
3.) On a second viewing I really appreciate Jeff Bridges’ dual performance more. Shifting gears from maniacal, desperate-to-prove-himself CLU to Zen Kenobi Flynn couldn’t have been easy, but he really pulls off both roles; CLU’s cover of his own personal insecurity is particularly evident in Bridges’ body language, and the Flynn performance manages to be magnetic without sacrificing the essential techno-hippie nature of the character. He really manages the awkward bits of dealing with a grown son magnificently, too.
4.) Daft Punk’s score for the movie ranks in my top five artistic achievements in film for the year. It really is absolutely superb: it both matches itself to the story and stands up as a musical work in its own right to boot. They need to score more films.
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I concur. Though I do need to get a second viewing in… too many movies coming out! And unlike the summer, these look to be Good movies!
In my second viewing I found the same thing wrt Jeff Bridges. Really, it was three characters: Young Flynn, Zen Flynn and CLU, and he did each really well.
Before I saw Tron: Legacy, I thought the soundtrack was good, but not great. Since seeing the movie, however, it’s changed into something amazing. I can’t stop playing it. 🙂
Although I haven’t seen the film, I have noticed many self appointed “reviewers” remarking any film with a straight forward narrative has “no plot”. I think everyone has become so accustomed to convoluted, non-linear storytelling they expect “more”.
SPOILERS IN THIS COMMENT. REPEAT. SPOILERS. IN THIS COMMENT.
My main issue with the film is that The Big Threat is revealed to be complete BS.
So… We’re supposed to be worried that CLU and his scary army are going to warp themselves into the real world and do…. Something. What that something is isn’t very well-defined. And then at the end of the movie, Olivia Wilde is teleported into the real world, and doesn’t retain her disc or anything else.
So CLU and his scary army would end up being just a bunch of regular dudes with no weapons or anything else in the real world. Does this make Tron a parable about the dangers of illegal immigrants? Did CLU want to terk our jerbs?
@Sparkle: She doesn’t have her disk when she leaves the grid. Flynn does. Also, she’s an ISO, so it might work differently for her.
Sam bleeds in the techno-world, maybe CLU is still physically-incorporated digital information is the ‘real’ world.
Even if CLU can’t teleport his LightTanks into the real world he can take over ENCOM and release his grid army on the internet (And maybe this was the thread Flynn was actually worried about. Flynn vanishes in, I think, 1989, that’s enough time to be aware of the world wide web, or maybe the TRONiverse had the tech bubble a decade earlier).
Enough fanwaking. The movie kicked-ass.
@Sparkletone: Flynn said: “With my disc, it’s possible,” so it’s possible. My only plot issue is how did CLU page anyone? He’s trapped in the computer with everyone else.
it doesn’t reference the internet because Flynn made the grid a universe unto itself in 1989. It isn’t connected to the internet as we know it and it would be weirder if it /were/.
I agree on the Daft Punk. I’ve heard complaints that it wasn’t present enough but I thought it was fantastically used.
I liked it quite a bit, and was glad I saw it without spoilers. But, did anyone else wonder, if CLU and his troops, or even Flynn, made it to the real world, wouldn’t they have just freaked out over the sensations? The sense of touch, of air and having to breath, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have to crap on the Grid. (Stephen King had a story about a similar effect.)
I expected nothing from the film because I only saw it because I was bored, and an completely impressed, especially with the music. Since the whole thing about CLU’s plan has been brought up already I shall mention something else. Are most reviewers not understanding that it takes place in a digital world, because it seems that the main complaint they have is that it, as a movie comes across as cold and barren. And it should because computers are emotionless machines that do not care, and that needed to be reflected in the film as well. Did I mention how awesome the music is, because it cannot be mentioned enough. Think Star Wars Ep. 4-6, Indy, or Conan the Barbarian (yes Conan had phenomenol music).
I loved it. Then I realized it was a not at all veiled gnostic allegory, and I loved it more.
I agree with Sparkletone and I’ll take it one step further; it’s not clear at all that the flesh taking/making laser thingie (and I don’t remember the first Tron very well at all, so I don’t know if how it works is explained) doesn’t just make humans when you come out of the Grid. Which means they just completed CLU’s ISO genocide.
@otheronetruegod
The same way the MCP was able to buy up agencies in the first film. There’s a relationship between the virtual universe and the real world, one that Flynn tried to contain by isolating the Grid on his own server.
I guess Clu had finally figured out a way to circumvent that – hence paging Alan.
After watching the movie, I thought of the Grid as a Parallel Dimension, with some connections to ours. I was thinking of this becuase the farther out from the created City our heroes go, the more the landscape gets more alien and organic looking.
You guys realize that you’re making up an argument against what’s essentially told to you in the film?
“Well, the movie narrative tells me it’s possible, but I don’t like that because it doesn’t work that way in my imaginary Tron world.”
What you’re complaining about is like saying the rebels winning in Star Wars is a major plot hole because their space craft don’t follow real world physics.
I thought the movie was pretty great. I get the feeling that most of the people complaining about the movie wanted it to be bad, or wanted it to be something else.
That reminds me, I hear a lot of people complaining about CGI young Jeff Bridges looking like a character in Mass Effect. The thing is, I didn’t even think about the character being all CGI, and the people I saw it with didn’t believe me at first when I told them about it.
Tron: Legacy wasn’t the greatest movie ever, but at this point I feel like people are TRYING to find reasons to hate it.
CGI Bridges looked just a bit fake to me in the real world scene. However, CLU’s fakeness blended with the otherworldliness of the grid in a way that was really appropriate.
Regardless, it did the purely-cg-characters-and-background thing much better than, for example, the new Star Wars trilogy. I’m ready for a sequel with Cillian Murphy as the bad guy now.
My only real complaint about the movie was
(and I’ll assume everyone reading this page has watched the movie, else WHAT ARE YOU DOING)
that Tron’s Heel Face Turn seemingly came from out of nowhere. It was as though he just has an evil/good switch that was flipped at random.
Also, everyone making the same joke over and over again (“Why’d they call the movie ‘Tron’ when he’s in it for about 5 minutes total? They should have called it Flynn hurr hurr hurr”) makes me spill with hate juice.
My more accurate complaint is that the movie is called “Tron” because Tron is awesome, and we should have gotten more Tron because of that.
I would like to have seen more Tron as well, but it is a minor complaint at most. It is a great film and I had a great time watching it.
As to CLU’s potential threat to the real world, the guy effectively centuries to plot, plan refine his powers and abilities. He called the pager at that point because he was confident that he could conquer the world. If Flynn thought CLU was a threat rest assured CLU was. I think the director and Bridges both did an effective job making CLU feel like a menacing badass, sort of like Darth Vader before the second trilogy.
I think it’s pretty clear that CLU did the same thing to Tron that he did to all the programs he enslaved as the Black Guard. And I think the idea of an evil Tron/Rinzler made the threat seem even more dire, which was cool.
And you gotta feel like cheering when he finally breaks CLU’s control or you have no heart. “I FIGHT FOR THE USERS!”
I thought this movie was pretty great. Obviously it was just a popcorn movie, but it did very well as one.
Or alternatively, you haven’t seen/don’t remember/don’t care about the first movie, and therefore don’t give a damn about Tron.
My problem with the film is that they set up some ideas that were interesting with little to no follow through. I was engaged and entertained for the first 80% of the film, then that all went to pieces. I just stopped caring because the story seemed to get derailed and forgot what it was doing and where it was going. I can’t put a finger on exactly why I tuned out, but I know for me that happened and I just couldn’t reintegrate into the grid, if you will. And call me a quitter but I’m not about to spend another $13-$25(New York prices, regular price to IMAX3D price) to find out.
But it was pretty and exciting, even coherent but only up to a point.
CGI Jeff Bridges worked best for CLU, who had a constrained emotional range. And when CLU steps out of that (with his face visible that it) the CGI fails a bit a conveying it. But acceptable, certainly, and for CLU, perfect. I’m guessing they still need to work on facial muscle modeling, especially around the eyes.
Tron’s switch was a bit out of nowhere, but you can chalk it up to an accumulation of audio clues (his recent encounter with Flynn) and the high stress of the fight. A nicer conversion would have been nice. And perhaps a final hurrah.
I’m pretty sure Tron switched back because up until that exact moment, he hadn’t physically attacked a User yet. Note he stops fighting at the beginning the instant Sam bleeds.
Why couldn’t it just be because Tron hadn’t seen Flynn in years, and this was the teary reunion?
Though it would have been better if Flynn had said something to him instead of just exclaiming, “What have you become, Tron?”
After listening to the MP3 samplings on Amazon,the music is less impressive to me since they used the same violin chords in every dramatic scene.
Was anyone else a little dissatisfied with the ending?
“So you met your father, huh? How is he?”
“Oh I guess he merged with himself and then exploded. I’m gonna go drive motorcycles and bone my sister.”
And yes Cora is basically Sam’s adopted sister. Creepiest romance plot since Star Wars.
I thought the ending was decent. Sam has focus and purpose in life now that he has resolved the abandonment issues plaguing him since he was a kid. He seems somber when he speaks to Bradley, even mature. And by downloading a copy of the grid it is obvious he is eager to continue his father’s work.
And who is to say Cora was Flynn’s adopted daughter? Perhaps Sam inherited his father’s mistress? 😀
Kyle, the problem is that the movie narrative doesn’t actually explain anything. I’m okay with a macguffin not being explained in detail, but the movie was all macguffins.
You know what, Tom? “Stepmom” isn’t that huge an improvement over “sister.”
Creep.
The pager thing: that was part of an ARG leading up to the movie. Participants in the game, framed as a worldwide search for Flynn, wound up creating the conditions that allowed CLU to send the message.
The no-internet thing: this is a no-brainer. Flynn designed the new Grid as a haven for his accidental creations. There was no possible way he’d have it hosted out in the Usenet/Internet/whatever where unknowing Users would alter or delete Programs, or Programs would tear down the human-purposed infrastructure to suit their own needs, or most likely both at once resulting in a horrific cyberwar. Of *course* the Grid is isolated.
The real mystery is how it was kept running for twenty years without a breakdown. 🙂
Why does he have to end up with Quorra? What’s with this intense obsession of Olivia Wilde, anyways? In the third one he could always end up with the rerezzed version of Gem. The male lead doesn’t always have to hook up with the female lead, why is trope mandatory?
This is reasonable and I can definitely sympathize with it. To which the only answer that can be made is: they didn’t want to make that movie.
I think that’s my major complaint with this film. Not that what we got was badly-made: it’s an enjoyable popcorn flick (which, really, puts it on par with the original). But there were some genuinely interesting concepts being thrown around here, and I kept wishing we’d get to see them explored in a hard science-fiction format.
In regards to Tron/Rezzler’s face-turn, I thought the moment was nearly pulled off well; but for it to work for me more completely, we could’ve done with a shot of CGI Boxleitner – the man can sell a line like that with his facial expressions.
Lastly, I thought the film needed more Cindy Morgan. Olivia Wilde’s performance was fine, but Quorra as a character wasn’t much more than a Magic Pixel Dream Girl for most of the story.
Lighten up, Marvin. I put a little smiley face next to that sentence to show I was kidding. For all we know the relationship between Flynn and Quorra is mentor/student and nothing more.
People get bent out of shape over the most irrelevant things…
Tom: I’m not being serious, either. I simply neglected the emoticon.
Shh… It’s a secret to everybody.
Well, it wasn’t connected the network, because it wasn’t ready yet. They were building it when Clu went bad.
I do would have liked for Tron to pull off the Rinzler helmet at the end when he turns face, but I suppose that’s what sequels are for.
Sometimes I think reviewers drag out the “no plot” stamp for any movie where the emphasis is on the visuals. Either they’re distracted or they think “Well, nobody cares, so why waste column inches on it?”
If anything it’s a stronger plot than the original, which was a more straightforward good guys vs. bad guys thingy without the emotional hook. It did feel a little… barren character-wise, like there was economy of character with a vengeance. Would have been nice to have someone like the short-lived accounting program in the original.
Totally agree on the score. It was remarkable.