TRON:LEGACY is a Visual Stunner But Leaves Some Emotion on the Grid

DECEMBER 3, 2010                    REVIEW BY SCOTT WEITZ                           3.5 STARS

TRON:LEGACY is a visual miracle of modern filmmaking telling a deceptively simple story with panache and energy, reconnecting to its origin story 28 years later with mind-blowing imagery and a plot flawed by human imperfections, just like the digital world it depicts. Saying you've never seen anything like it is both true and false, since it bears strong and sometimes ironic resemblance to its 1982 progenitor film TRON yet demonstrates a stunning mastery of design and effects which make it iconically unique. Buckle up, programs, this game is on!

Heartache was the legacy left to young Sam Flynn when his father, genius programmer and ENCOM figurehead Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), disappeared in 1989. Now 27, Sam (Garrett Hedlund) still retains his majority stock holdings in this father's software company but shows little hands-on interest in ENCOM save for his periodic cyber-hacking attacks against its runaway corporate greed: a son's attempt to keep his father's altruistic spirit alive. When Kevin's former business partner Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) tells Sam he was paged by his father's old office above Flynn's Arcade, Sam investigates and unwittingly gets laser-digitized into the virtual world of Tron still running on Kevin's private computer server. Now trapped on the other side of the screen, Sam is rescued by a program named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) who aids him in finding and perhaps saving his father from the virtual reality he created but no longer controls.

Just as there are two main plots happening in Disney's highly-anticipated sequel TRON:LEGACY, there need to be two approaches to reviewing it: praising the film's jaw-dropping visual wonders and examining the human adventure at the heart of the matter.

Let's get the easier, obvious angle rolling first since that will be TRON:LEGACY's immediate draw when it opens: director Joseph Kosinski manifests a towering, dark and brooding world which embraces the kinetic best of the original TRON film while literally revolutionizing both the look and technique of making it. This computer chip-based, post-cyberpunk world rezzes up solidly and spectacularly before your eyes, delivering all the expected Light Cycle racing, Identity Disc battling action its long publicity campaign has promised: ticket value achieved. Gone are the early CG barriers Steven Lisberger ran into (and over) in his 1982 video game adventure, whose visual effects definitely appear old school by now yet charmingly so. Kosinski and his design crew take full advantage of the tools in their command, expanding this glowing, high-speed, techno-sexy universe in all dimensions across the screen thanks to its sumptuous 3D release. On that note: do your best to see this film in 3D IMAX on your first viewing as the immersive sense of depth and scale offered in this mega-format cannot be overestimated.

While TRON's original CG work, cutting edge as it was in '82, clearly defined the video game world from the real world with bold, bright geometric shapes, the digital domain of TRON:LEGACY drops this artifice and conjures up a self-illuminated cityscape of light, sound and game grid fury unlike anything imagined before. Expect the awesome cool factor of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, without the grime and urban decay of his dystopia, married to the quad-processor computing speed of today's best video game action played larger than life. Fellow geeks rejoice and behold the cinematic cyber-high of the year.

While viewers may not need to have seen TRON to follow this father and son story, familiarity with the original will double your appreciation for the subplot of how Flynn's virtual world has evolved in 28 human years, and so how CG visual effects have evolved in parallel to this story. Kosinski and team wisely harken back to TRON in countless designs and details to underscore how Kevin Flynn's computer-based universe has grown over countless server-cycles of time, and indeed how it's now spun out of his control. Yet none of this silicon reality is beyond Kosinski's grasp as the on-screen results — from the beefed-up Light Cycles and their glassy, glowing jet walls to the acrobatic, sudden death Disc Wars — are utterly flawless and quite beautiful at times. In fact, so masterful is his visual presentation, these CG wonders risk becoming common place by the end of the film to the point that viewers may not fully appreciate what they're seeing. This is good, because it means the effects aren't repeatedly taking you out of the story to demand attention on their own clever merits, as lesser effects extravaganzas tend to do. Prepare to be deliberately, skillfully dazzled by a luminescent panorama that will take multiple viewings to see and absorb fully.

Naturally and fittingly, the human equation in TRON:LEGACY is more difficult and complex to solve, both for the characters battling for self-preservation on the grid and for the filmmakers hefting this epic electronic tale onto the big screen. At the heart of the story, returning TRON star Jeff Bridges fights to resurrect Kevin Flynn after nearly three decades in limbo, and his campaign is mostly successful. Though an older, more mature man, his Flynn still retains aspects of the arcade jockey/wunderkind genius who programmed computer code like a wizard and spoke like a surfer dude. Once he's reconnected with his humanity after reuniting with Sam, Flynn still navigates his cyberworld with a "hey, man" attitude while demonstrating his philosophical prowess in digital guise: as the Tron world's godlike creator, Flynn mutters to his son, "I'm gonna go knock on the sky" and he means it in all the phrase's deified hubris.

Of course, this is also the central conflict of the subplot as his virtual alter-ego Clu (a CG de-aged Bridges circa 1989) has taken command of Tron City in his programmed quest to achieve a perfect existence, now dictatorially destroying all imperfect programs on the grid. Blend themes a man versus superman, Frankenstein's monster and Olympian gods and you've jacked right into the Flynn/Clu subplot. Clu himself is less convincing as a villain only because the not-quite-perfected digital de-aging of Bridges diminishes Clu's palpable reality. Though the character is certainly a forward step in the technological quest to accurately mimic a living, breathing human character, Kosinski and his CG fall just short of achieving this digital effect holy grail.

The soul of the story exists between Sam and Quorra, two outsiders struggling to reconcile Kevin Flynn's best intentions with his worst, shortsighted side effects of creating an advanced cyberworld as a template for improving the real world. Garrett Hedlund sufficiently carries the story on his back, looking and acting somber and disillusioned as the story demands even if audiences might desire more fun moments with him. Sam's emotional high point comes surprisingly early in the film when he reunites with his father, and he never quite tops the moment again. Still Hedlund embodies enough of Kevin Flynn's mental swagger backed by his brawnier physicality to make Sam a believable heir to his father while becoming his own man. Olivia Wilde simply shines in the role of Quorra who is the heart of the story, maintaining Flynn's humanity across years of isolation while remaining dutiful and loyal to his higher aspirations of hope for a world she's never seen. Wilde's stunning beauty is celebrated and enhanced by her slinky cyberwear and post-modern punk stylings, but the actress surpasses such fanboy-pleasing trappings with a standout performance. With TRON:LEGACY bowing soon and Jon Favreau's COWBOYS & ALIENS debuting next year, expect a breakout period in Wilde's career starting here and now.

Just as Kevin Flynn's revolutionary quest to improve the human condition contains human flaws he can't avoid programming into it, the conceptually intriguing script by LOST alumni writers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz misses some marks which would better relate their techno-philosophy to the human spirit. Like the original TRON, occasionally the story gets caught up in advancing its theory and loses its grip on dramatic elements which would impel the story forward more smoothly. Without giving anything away, one example is the scene where one main character recovers from an injury: the life-changing "miracle" which Kevin Flynn has discovered on the cyber-side plays out effectively, but only implies how it can relate to the real world as he intends. A simple line of dialogue directly connecting the virtual concept to the living world would have benefited audience understanding of why Kevin has obsessed over his quest to the point of forsaking his own son, whereas its lack leaves that important point left for divination by viewers who may not make the subtle connection amid this dazzling light show.

It is pleasingly ironic that by embodying such forward-thinking, abstract ideas far beyond our current abilities, Kitsis and Horowitz draw the closest parallel to the original TRON yet: a story ahead of its time which risks leaving its viewers behind by grasping beyond our collective reach. Lisberger's TRON has remained relevant for proposing a digital frontier so unimaginable in 1982 that phrases like 'virtual reality' weren't a part of the storyteller's vernacular to describe it. The world has finally caught up with TRON in order to tell its sequel. TRON:LEGACY now falls into the same trap at moments, though these failings may serve the film just as well thirty years hence in a world we now cannot imagine — though at technology's rapid pace, we may get there in ten years instead. Points to the script for not dumbing down its digital age imagining of Isos and damage codes, but working overtime to engage the story in those scenes would have yielded better emotional results. What should be uplifting to the human spirit plays out as intriguing to the intellect leaving the heart idling when it wants to pound out of our chests.

Fans will appreciate Boxleitner's return as Alan Bradley, even if his reprise on the virtual side of the script falls woefully shot of expectation. Much like Cillian Murphy's all-too-brief appearance as the son of ENCOM's former CEO Ed Dillinger, Boxleitner may be better served in the next sequel this film so clearly points toward. Michael Sheen sparks in his David Bowie-esque turn as the End of Line nightclub owner Castor, but his appearance seems truncated down to moments of sparkling cameo mired as an unsatisfying plot functionary, an the actor deserves better. Likewise Beau Garrett gets shortchanged as the siren Gem who gets even less to do except fill out a skin-tight lightsuit as Castor's confidant. Such supporting characters alternate between having too little relevance and distracting in such unfulfilled moments from the main characters' ongoing story, and this imbalance hinders the film more than a bit. One of the film's greatest strengths, however, is the superb, sublimely integrated original score by electronic duo Daft Punk, whose music adds sonic depth and emotional resonance to this 3D visual feast and earns a nomination as a top film score of 2010.

A bold, audacious and fantastically believable vision, Joseph Kosinski and cast achieve top-end visual splendor and some admirable philosophical yearnings in this long-awaited sequel, though it remains to be seen if audiences' hunger for future world speculation matches their digital desire for wall-smashing Light Cycle action on the game grid. There is definitely room for both in TRON:LEGACY which delivers on all these fronts, though on some more effectively than others. Enjoy it for the spectacle and return to mine its more subtle depths which may get overlooked amid the epic IMAX hoopla. [Side note: already early reviewers have repeated that they enjoyed the film more on a second viewing than the first, which may well imply something about its staying power in theaters.]  An ingenious if imperfect adventure, perhaps TRON:LEGACY's greatest strength is that it effectively sets up even more exciting prospects for future stories, though that code hasn't been written yet. End of line, for now.