TRON: Legacy

TRON: Legacy was sneaked into a presentation at ComicCon in San Diego back in 2008. The crowd went wild. Cellphones were held up high to try to capture a bit of video-a segment of film that didn't even end up in the final film-to post on YouTube and keep the buzz alive. Disney didn't even worry about the copyright infrindgement.

They had stumbled across their Star Trek. Tron had legions of fans that would happily overlook any flaws and pay full price, maybe even extra for 3-D, regardless of the quality of the film. That is the beauty of Marvel comics and serials. You know you can bring those audiences in again and again and again, no matter what the quality.

The first Tron, I will admit, I was smitten. But I like to think I'm smart too. The first Tron was crappy. It was like a Tim Burton movie; it looked great and that rose above the shitty material. It was all over the map, but like a really big train wreck, it was amazing to see in action.

And it played to the geek factor. The same group of techno-saavy boys who knew how to type, were probably gay and could actually see the applications of technology in this movie. These years AHEAD of the Matrix, but pretty much covered the same territory.

And I loved it as such.

So, yes, I watched those YouTube videos.

And I remember whispering to my husOtter, "dearest, wouldn't it be great to see that movie actually IN Florida AT Disney World?"

So the movie took on a whole other quality--that of the quest of me and my family moving to Florida.

I point out all of these things because I believe a movie got lost in this muddle. Really, I do. And not only my personal muddle of moving and Disney-fandom, but in a public muddle of Generation X, still trying to find legitamcy in surviving the Reagan era, tend to celebrate things and then realize, well, they weren't that great to begin with.

I mean, a Transformers...MOVIE? Now a sequel to a mediocre movie! 

This is not The Empire Strikes Back, I tell you.

TRON: Legacy tries to be several movies at once and since it is spread too thin, it never really achieves greatness beyond visual effects. It's power was stolen by the Matrix films, the inside of a computer being elaborated on in those movies. Yes, the inside of the computer is a neon playground, we got that, and with computers being even more advanced than ever before, you could just sit back and get your money's worth watching this piece unfold.

But this is a sequel and written by people who know computers, but not much aobut storylines and energy. The film takes it's power and watches it fizzle, as if it stole the better parts of other movies. The plot goes like this. Remember how Flynn, Jeff Bridges character in the original movie, got zapped into the computer back in 82? Well, at the start of this movie, he's disappeared, but the audience figures out that he kept going back and eventually was taken prisoner. Artifical Intelligences started forming, basically 'free programs,' but because Jeff's original monitoring program was supposed to keep order, 'Clu' (a digital, younger Bridges) has been killing them off. Where's Tron? The original anti-virus from the first movie? He's now a sideline character, kidnapped and brainwashed by Clu to help rebuild the World Inside of the Computer.

Flynn is living in the computer and has been, his son never knowing where his father was. Clu, however, zaps the kid into the computer and the we're back into the system.

And, well, I liked it. I knew I would. I had moved to Florida, I had my dreams come true. I loved the texture of the film, I loved the feel of the sequel.

But I'm not an idiot. The movie has zero momentum. It starts strong enough and takes the audience into the "Grid." But then does nothing much beyond that point. It was as if they knew we would buy tickets and all they needed to do was get us to willingly buy tickets.

Here's the deal. The first Star Trek movie sucked big time. Then they made a sequel that the geeks would love, not really thinking of the others. Then PUFT, they hit big time.

TRON:Legacy would have worked better if they just stuck to their guns and just made a movie. I kept feeling like Disney was doing their product placement, giving something for everyone. The action sequences are slow, making sure you see the images;  the dialogue was stlited and humor was nonexistent. I kept wanting to see something more--Tron is patroling the Grid, becoming a police state, funded by the government. I would have loved to seen a situation more relevant than ever before--where net neutality is underfire and the technology to make people go INTO the Grid is about to go international.

Instead, I got good guys and bad guys.

I do hope there's a part three--and it's a better one!