Tron Legacy lives up to the hype, looks great, sounds great and the 3D’s up to scratch so go see it on the biggest screen you can find.
I toyed with the idea that the sentence above would be all I wrote for this review as I felt that with a blockbuster of this nature, the audience that wants to see it will see it anyway. The target market I suspect is 11-year-old boys who will drool over the visuals and the fetching curvaceous women in tight fitting bondage gear. And it’s for their dads who were that age when the original Tron came out 28 years ago and want to relive a little chunk of their youth.
There’s no need to get bogged down in the plot, it’s reasonably irrelevant – the experience is what counts. For those of you who know the original film with its groundbreaking effects mixed with naff 80’s dialogue and cheesy real world production values, all you need to know is this is exactly the same film given a hefty modern upgrade with much improved accessories.
Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Flynn, a brilliant computer games designer who inadvertently transports himself into a firewall system his work colleague has designed. His digital self battles malevolent computer programmes and a tyrannical real world corporation boss but stays trapped in that world.
In Tron Legacy, his son Sam has grown up and still nominally in control of his dad’s empire (echoes of the Bruce Wayne storyline here) and through a series of similar circumstances (designed to get us quickly into the action) is himself transported there. In this universe he finds his father living in exile and at war with a younger cloned self that wishes to take over the real world with an army of digital drones. He has to find a way out whilst helping his real father bring down the bad guys. Got it? It's perfectly silly, but only in this kind of a movie does such a daft premise seem natural.
And it really is quite a visual feast. Sam is quickly kitted out in the appropriate gear by a quartet of supermodels wrapped in white PVC and has to put his real world skills with a motorbike and base jumping into use as we get into an exciting light cycle race alongside kinetic and lethal Frisbee duels.
The rest follows on predictably with father and son coming to terms, a hint of love interest and some unexpected philosophising about peaceful non-resistance and the nature of creation. I wondered if I’d strayed into one of the Matrix films. There are nods to design and storyline elements from Star Wars and in one of my favourite scenes, a quiet dinner takes place in a room almost identical to the one in which Dave Bowman ended his days in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Bridges as Sam’s real father is essentially the Alec Guinness version of Obi Wan Kenobi right down to the robe but his dialogue is more from The Big Lebowski. After a hectic battle scene in which all but escape with their lives, Bridges looks down at Sam and says ‘Hey, you’re messing with my Zen thing man’ which got a fair laugh from the audience. There is however an unfortunate scene where he essentially becomes Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and I was waiting for him to also utter the immortal line ‘YOU- SHALL-NOT-PASS!'
But the real misfortune and most distracting element cropping up half way through, is the arrival of Michael Sheen as Zeus, a rather effete and flamboyant nightclub owner with a dubious peroxide hairdo. As great an actor as Sheen genuinely is, here he is horribly miscast, uttering daft dialogue and flim flamming around. He’s essentially a corrupter version of Rick in Casablanca territory, negotiating safe passage for the worthy.
It’s the one role in the film that might have worked really well in providing a nice contrast to the logical and digital world he inhabits if it had been given to a performer naturally disposed to a bit of camp insanity.
If Anthony Newley or Joel Grey were still around they’d have nailed it. Even the men whose performances they later influenced - David Bowie and Alan Cumming respectively might have pulled it off. I even imagined Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show mode could have stolen it but here it’s forced and frankly a bit embarrassing. It occurred to me that if Sheen had been allowed to improvise and try different things out it might have worked.
But the real highlight of the film apart from the visuals is the score and sound effects. Daft Punk’s mix of electronica, thumping beats and orchestral strings elevates the film to a new level. It had hints of Jean Michelle Jarre and Vangelis and they’d have worked just as well but without the score Tron Legacy would be half the experience. As a colleague pointed out the film is essentially one long high quality pop video.
As anticipated the 3D is top notch. It’s not on a par with the Avatar experience but unlike many films of late – Clash of the Titans, the latest Narnia film and the upcoming Gulliver’s Travels, the 3D hasn’t been clumsily tacked on in post production. It was also a surprise to discover substantial chunks are in 2D. It begins with an explanation and requests you keep your glasses on throughout. Fortunately the transitions between the formats are seamless. Ironically, one of the best 3D effects in the entire film is the Walt Disney logo materialising before our eyes in a digital form.
And so to end as I started, it lives up to the hype, looks great and sounds great, so go see it on the biggest screen you can find.
Dylan Matthew
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