The Movie Hobbyist

Rating: * * */5

The movie’s been out for a while now and the buzz has died but international releases haven’t happened until now so I might as well turn out some words about Tron: Legacy.

I wasn’t expecting much. I felt beforehand much of the film was being overhyped, and even though I’d never actually seen the original, I felt the fuzz was just another whole lot of nerds gleeing over nothing. In fact, Disney seemed to agree. The refrained from releasing a blu-ray version of the original Tron for Christmas as a reminder of the new film. That alone, says enough about the campy value of the original. Also, the other noteworthy thing the first film can be remembered for is the fact that it was disqualified from the Oscar Best Visual Effects race because of the dominant use of computer graphics. Different times indeed.

With such diverse expectations imagine my surprise that the movie was quite spectacular at times and worth the effort, even though the plot is incomprehensible and the script is laughably bad, there’s a few tricks the movie has up its sleeves.

The opening flashback had me slightly irritated with the blatant product placement of Tron-related toys, and the movie starts out very slowly and quite silly. There’s quite some cheesy moments here, including Bruce Boxleitner uttering some brutally idiotic dialogue. The movie doesn’t begin to roll, though, until the virtual world of Tron is entered. Of course, that’s all anyone going into the movie cares about as well. They’re really pushing how long they could drag the movie before that. But once the virtual latex fetish starts it becomes an entertaining spectacle.

And the latex is quite dominantly present, especially with the ladies. It’s strange to watch such out of date costumes, referring of course to the original film. The rest of the visuals in the film are truly great. The 3D is finally put to good use again and the colour schemes, with the good guys wearing one fluorescent colour and the baddies another, help keep the characters distinguished. The shoddy incomprehensibility of the script to explain what is going on is partially compensated with these simple but compelling visual tricks.

The whole look of the film feels like an ultimate cross between Blade Runner, 2001 and Star Wars. There’s so much detail in every facet that’s on screen, you’ll need to see it twice to fully comprehend what’s really going on all over the screen. (Not that the story would be any more clear the second time around). The one poor visual element though is the plasticity of Jeff Bridges’ digital (and younger) alter ego. There’s ghostly sense of fakery emanating from that character, one that’s instantly distracting, and perhaps the reason the movie didn’t get an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects again. Perhaps not such different times.

There are some other things to enjoy about this film though. There’s a wicked cameo by Michael Sheen, who looks so ridiculous and out of place that it almost ruins the film by another mile but it’s his sheer lunacy that makes it work, channelling David Bowie via Jabba the Hut. Or something.

Arguably the greatest asset of the film though, as I had already expected it would be, is the mightily spectacular musical score by the duo Daft Punk. Their music not only consists of the expectedly cool electronics but also of a surprising amount of beautiful orchestral arrangements. The music really lifts the film to another level and kind of saves the day. It’s so brilliantly fitting to the atmosphere of the film, it makes their snub by the Academy a total outrage. Here is a score that is really one for the ages and one to be heard in trailers for years to come. Oh, and their cameo is pretty nifty as well, though a bit obvious.

Tron: Legacy isn’t entirely the disaster I figured I would be in for. With it’s philosophically alluding script (Id, Ego, Superego is a major theme) the movie falters most of the time with a ridiculous script and laughably poor dialogue but the day is saved both by the stunning visuals (except for the Bridges double) and the towering music provided by Daft Punk.