Thursday, December 23, 2010

Re-rez Ram!

We saw Tron: Legacy this week. Visually it was beautiful. Story-wise, it holds up fine. There are a lot of familiar faces and a few nods to original series (look for Dumont on the shipping containers, Dillenger’s son in the boardroom, the bits on the fireplace).

While Flynn’s son is the main character, it also has Olivia Wilde from House, Beau Garrett from the second Fantastic Four movie, with Bruce Boxleitner, and Jeff Bridges reprising their roles from the original. There are also cameos from Serinda Swan (Zantanna from Smallville), James Frain (from Tudors and Tru Blood), Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins, Red Eye), and a wacky Michael Sheen (Lucian from Underworld) as Castor.

There is also a scanned version of a younger Jeff Bridges as Clu 2. Except for the flashback in the real world, he didn’t seem that odd. From a technological standpoint this is groundbreaking. Some people are having problems with it.

In fact, some people have issues with the whole movie – saying that, while visually beautiful, it didn’t have that much of a story. That said, I didn’t go to see this film to change my world view. The story was more than adequate for me. It certainly had more layers than Avatar (invaders bad – natives good), and a better story than LOTR.

My issues with the movie were few. I missed the old soundtrack – years of playing the video game have burned the old theme in my head. For a 3D film, it didn’t make a lot of use of the 3D format (unlike Resident Evil Afterlife and Journey to the Center of the Earth). With Rizler being Tron – as shown by the T symbol on his chest, if would have been nice to see his face occasionally. Cindy Morgan was missed – a cameo would have been nice.

The games were good, the visuals great, the upgrades were acceptable. There were enough nods to the old movie and enough backstory provided to cover those who hadn’t seen the original. If you enjoyed the original (which I feel still holds up fine) then you should be fine seeing this one.

As my son said – ‘Word cannot describe how awesome it was’.

1 comment:

-> Ray said...

I think I agree with every line you wrote.