When it comes to appreciation of geeky 1980s movies, I generally think I
have my bases covered pretty well. As buzz for Disney’s TRON: Legacy began to build, however, I had to admit that this was a movie with which I was almost entirely unfamiliar. So I saw the original
in anticipation of the sequel. I confess that I found the 1982 movie a
bit disorienting, but there were aspects of it that I really enjoyed,
and because I watched that first, I think I was better able to
appreciate the new movie.
TRON: Legacy stars the
little-known Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, the 27-year-old son of Kevin,
the computer genius who created the video game and traveled inside it
during the first movie. He’s an aimless hothead, but he’s really a
softie, and underneath a veil of cynicism is a kid who never quite gave
up hope that his beloved dad, who went missing two decades earlier,
might still be out there and still be thinking of him. The story in this
second movie is about a lot of things: idealism, loyalty, cooperation,
wisdom. It’s about the value and danger in trying to build a perfect
world. But mostly, it’s about a father and son, long separated,
reuniting in time to share a dream both had long believed impossible.
I’m
a sucker for stories about father-son relationships, so I had a hunch
that this movie would resonate with me on that level. It did, and it
made me smile to see that Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, two of the
main writers on the daddy issues-laden LOST,
worked on the screenplay. Jeff Bridges, who starred in the original
movie and who I’m really coming to admire as an actor, takes on an
intriguing dual role here.
As in the first movie, there are
Users and Programs, and in some cases, we have two complementary
characters. Here, Bridges plays both Kevin Flynn, the grizzled sage who
has mostly lived a life of quiet meditation since becoming trapped in
the world of the Grid 20 years ago, and Clu, the well-groomed, much
younger-looking, sinister program who Kevin designed to help him create
his virtual utopia. He doesn’t have the same aura of menace about him
that David Warner does in the first movie, but there’s something equally
unsettling about him. He looks familiar and friendly but has a dark
purpose, the true extent of which is known only to him. The two
characters act and look so different that if the movie itself didn’t
keep bringing it up, it might be easy to forget that they are the same
person.
Hedlund makes a pretty appealing main character, and I
love his scenes with Bridges as the senior Flynn, but it was Olivia
Wilde who really made an impression upon me as Quorra, Kevin’s longtime
companion and apostle of sorts. Wide-eyed and beautiful, Quorra is
naïve, compassionate and eager to learn more about the world from which
the Flynns came. Among the secondary players, it was nice to see Bruce
Boxleitner again playing Flynn’s old friend Alan Bradley. In the real
world, he and Sam share some nice, quiet scenes that remind me of the
relationship between Harry Potter and Remus Lupin, his parents’ school
chum and his favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
A
scruffy-looking Cillian Murphy puts in a brief appearance as the
soft-spoken son of the first movie’s big baddie, Ed Dillinger. I thought
that he would play a bigger role in the movie, but he’s just in one
scene as an indication that Flynn’s company is falling into villainous
hands – or at least greedy hands. Ed Jr. doesn’t really seem evil to me,
just very turned off by the idea of giving something away for free,
which Kevin Flynn had no qualms with. In the digital world, I found
Michael Sheen so colorful as flamboyant club owner Castor that I could
have sworn he was dressed in a peacock’s array of colors instead of just
white. Any time he is on the screen, he demands complete attention.
I
heard a lot of complaints about the movie’s plot, but it worked for me,
and I think a great effort was made to beef up the exposition so that
the audience didn’t feel as confused as the main character. I wouldn’t
say that watching the first movie is essential to enjoying this one, but
I think your appreciation of it will be a bit deeper if you do, and
you’ll pick up on fun references. Of course, if you’re going just to get
a visual spectacle, I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed in any
event.
The Grid is a very distinct place, very technological,
with an oppressive atmosphere of swirling black clouds that reminded me
of The Dark Knight.
In contrast to all that darkness are the stark, luminous patterns on
the vehicles, clothing and architecture. In general, white lights
signify virtue, while orange is vice. Unfortunately, we see a lot more
orange than white. Still, there is a certain harsh beauty to it, and I
often found myself thinking of Star Wars, with light cycles
battling it out instead of X-wings and characters slashing each other
with discs instead of light sabers in the deadliest twist on Frisbee
imaginable. Those discs didn’t make too much of an impression on me in
the first movie, but they’re all-important here, both as weapons and
information storage units; Flynn’s contains the key to the Grid, and as
such, it is deeply coveted by his nefarious doppelganger.
Although
all the dreariness of the Grid got to me, making me feel a bit
claustrophobic, I rarely had the sense of vertigo I got with the first
movie, even watching it in 3D (which I don’t really think adds much to
the experience). I didn’t like the score, which mostly consisted of low
droning, but it fit the tone of the movie, which is a mere PG but feels
darker. It really isn’t; there’s very little profanity, and what
violence we see is just in the form of characters pixelating away into
nothing, so it’s certainly not graphic. But the system of the Grid feels
very fascist, and there’s a message in there somewhere about the danger
of trying to keep things too uniform. Younger kids may find it a bit
too heavy; it could have used a little more humor, and I confess that I
rather hoped Sam would wind up bringing his dog into the Grid with him.
That could’ve been fun. Still, on the whole, TRON: Legacy is quite enjoyable, both eye-catching and touching, and it was a great way to wrap up my 2010 movie-going.
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