Tron: Legacy (2010)

I’m the right age and the right demographic to have been a Tron fan back in the day: I was going into high school that summer; I was a movie buff; and we were, for 1982, a fairly computer-savvy family. An effects-driven movie about a computer programmer sucked into cyberspace should have been right up my alley, but somehow I only saw it in bits and pieces, never the whole thing. The lightcycle sequence burned into my brain. I loved Snake, and could play it on our Commodore PET until my tail filled the entire arena with only a few spaces between my nose and my tail, at which point the program invariably crashed.

In the years since Tron, of course, video games have come closer and closer to approximating reality, and computer-graphics in movies have gone further still—and, in a way, this is the problem with Tron: Legacy.

Yes, the lavishly designed, cutting-edge graphics are impressive, and there’s some nostalgia for the world of the original mixed with the generic Matrix-y vibe. Yes, the redesigned lightcycles look really cool—the lightcycle sequence is the easily the best thing in the film, almost the only thing in the film really worth looking at, unless you count the pixie-tressed Olivia Wilde in a neon-neoprene jumpsuit as a computer program named Quorra.

But the lightcycles now behave exactly like dirt bikes in the real world—much more impressive technically, but paradoxically less powerful and less cool as a weapon, which is what they are. The filmmakers are all but liberated from technical constraints, yet the characters are no longer free from inertia. This is not a failure of technology, but of imagination.

The upgraded lightcycle sequence does bring at least one cool new idea to the table, the multi-plane playing field. Why not go further? Look at the games the kids are playing today. Gravity? Who cares about gravity? Why not an Escher-like playing field in which gravity is relative and all directions are equally navigable? Why not allow jumping cycles to leave behind trails that could later be ridden on, not just crashed into? Perhaps my fellow Register critic Tom McDonald, who writes about games, could explain what’s wrong here better than I, or offer suggestions for fixing it.

The problem is exacerbated by the lightjet dogfight that comes late in the film, playing a whole lot like any dogfight scene in any action movie, but, you know, with light trails. The jets strafe each other with old-fashioned rat-a-tat machine-gun fire, which worked for Star Wars in 1977, but haven’t there been any new ideas since then? Yes, there have: On “Babylon: 5” we saw ships armed with continuous rays that sliced enemy ships instead of peppering them. Plus, the jets fly just like jets in any action movie. What’s the point of setting the story in cyberspace if cyberspace is no different from meatspace? 

If Tron: Legacy were one slam-bang set piece after another, there would be a case for ignoring everything else and focusing on the whiz and the bang. Unfortunately, after a leisurely real-world prologue and a big first-act gladiatorial sequence, the movie comes to a crashing halt—and never really gets going again prior to the stumbling, muddled climax. In between, we’re left with plot and characters, and there’s no getting away from the movie’s failure.

Look. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy Tron: Legacy as eye candy if you want to. But don’t come to me making excuses like “Hey, Avatar was all empty eye candy too.” In terms of plot and character appeal, Tron: Legacy makes Avatar look like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, okay, not Raiders, but at least Romancing the Stone. Cameron is a master manipulator, and Avatar sucks you in from the get-go. Sully’s emotional journey is eminently relatable, there’s a hissable villain, and a world that you fall in love with.

On paper, one might care about the plight of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, reprising his role from the original), whose father crossed the digital frontier in the first film, and who has vanished permanently in between films, leaving his son to grow up fatherless. Now a disaffected young hacker who chooses to play anarchic pranks on his father’s company rather than lead it, Sam remembers his father’s bedtime stories about the grid, but has no idea they’re real until one day when he falls down the rabbit hole after his missing father.

For Sam’s journey to matter, he would have to connect in some meaningful way with something in grid-world. His father, a girl, the world itself—something. Tron: Legacy tries out all the options, but nothing clicks.

No one has any idea what to do with Kevin Flynn, whom Sam discovers has grown old inside the grid-world hiding from his renegade creation, Clu (Bridges again, playing a younger version of himself through queasily semi-convincing effects magic). Bridges gets by on panache, which makes him watchable, but it’s not enough.

Kevin lives off the grid in a hidden redoubt with Quorra, the cyber-chick. Olivia Wilde gives the most unaffected performance in the movie, and has the only moment of any emotional weight whatsoever (it comes at the very end). Still, her character is an unsolvable paradox, because the movie can neither acknowledge her as available or unavailable. She can’t be available because she’s not human or even biologically alive. But she can’t be unavailable because, well, just look at her.

Attempting to get the story moving again, Sam sneaks out on his father, making for a club where he’s been told is a program apparently called either Castor or Zuse (Michael Sheen) with connections who can help him. Then the movie falls apart completely.

Turns out Sam has been inadvertently set up, which carries no emotional weight, because we don’t have any idea where the info came from or why it was wrong. Then, in the movie’s most dramatic entrance, Sam’s father dramatically appears out of nowhere, looking as bad as Iron Man thundering to earth in Afghanistan in the first movie. This is the first time Kevin has set foot outside of his redoubt in goodness knows how long, and it looks like we’re in for some serious butt-kicking.

Instead, the bad guys proceed to steal the Most Valuable Object In Grid-world from Kevin, and the good guys barely get away. What the heck? The scene’s awfulness is further exacerbated by Sheen’s showboating performance, which some critics have praised as the best thing in the film, and which might have been, in smaller doses. A minute of total screentime would have been about my threshold.

As far as I can tell, the movie has no idea exactly what identity rings are for, why they matter, or why Kevin’s has the special properties it does. It makes a great to-do about the spontaneous emergence of “isomorphic algorithm” sentient programs, most of whom have been wiped out by Clu, but can’t explain why their emergence is supposed to have such earthshaking consequences for science, philosophy and perhaps even religion.

It’s not clear exactly what the threat is if the villain succeeds in his master plan. And capping the whole thing, when the smoke clears from the final, climactic lightshow, the most basic response is not “Wow” but “Huh? Wait. What? How?” At least, that was my reaction, and that of the hardcore Tron fans I saw the film with. Feel free to enlighten us.

Oh, and where is Tron? He was one of Bruce Boxleitner’s characters in the original. He’s still the title character, but barely puts in an appearance.

Ultimately, the last nail in the coffin may be this. Would I want to visit the world of Tron: Legacy? Would I want to ride the lightcycles, chill at Kevin’s redoubt, party at Castor’s club? Um. No, not really. Give me giant trees and floaty mountains and Technicolor pterosaurs. You can keep your glowy dirtbikes and ambiguous neon chicks. Come to think of it, I’d rather play a round of Snake.