An earlier thread: Tron: Legacy reactions - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I thought it was OK. I’d enjoyed the original when it was first released, but saw it again on a library VHS copy a few months ago and it just didn’t hold up well (my two young sons were bored, and I had to admit I was, too). Tron: Legacy was nice eye candy, with terrific SFX but a borderline-mess of a plot.
Quorra.
I thought new Tron (and really, why not Tron 2.0?) sucked huge donkey. Jeff Bridges’ talent was wasted (I guess he saved it all up for True Grit). I thought the original was much better. The story didn’t make any sense. It was truly a waste, and a kick to the balls of the original.
And if it had been a better movie, I probably would have remembered that.
That’s OK. You can say “the babe in the second Tron” and we’ll all know exactly who mean.
I thought that was the coolest part of the movie from a CGI point of view. It points to a future when an actor can play any age he wants or maybe use any face he wants without spending hours in makeup every day.
I actually ended up working for the company that made the computers that were used for making Tron. Of course now days, a lot of hand held video games have more processing power and an iPhone could run rings around it.
I think I’ll link this rap by the How It Should Have Ended group. It even has the Bit!
I want my time back. What a terrible film.
I described it to a friend as the Jessica Simpson of movies. It was was very very pretty but oh so dumb. The visuals and the world they created were amazing though so even though I didn’t like the movie, I want there to a be a third one because I really would like to revisit the setting but with a better script.
Edited to add: I watched the first one for the first time (at least the first time I remember) after seeing the recent one and surprisingly while I found the new worse than I expected and the original one was better than I expected.
Good movie but . . .
If you’re looking for a true sequel of Tron, this ain’t it. I got the impression that this was a script floating around Hollywood when some producer said, “Holy crap! We can make a Matrix movie outta this!” then when his PA informed him the the Matrix trilogy was done, he said, “Holy crap! We can make a Tron movie outta this!”
Was the new Tron good?
Eh, it was neutral.
(Am I really the first to make this joke? Or did I just miss it earlier in the thread?)
It actually took me a few seconds to get that joke, Thudlow Boink. Must be stick in binary thinking.
There Will Be Blood comes to mind. No one in their right mind would count that as not being original work.
But, while I seem to be in the minority on it, I didn’t think the Daft Punk soundtrack was anything special. Even if it was the best thing about the movie (and I don’t think it was) that wouldn’t be saying much.
The main problem for me, compared to the original, is that it failed to generate the sense of an actual other computer world. In the first one, when Flynn gets sucked in, everything is foreign and it feels that way. He has to adapt quickly and learn how to work within the system. The citizens of the computer world all seem to understand a different system.
In Legacy, it’s not done well. Flynn Jr. just kind of does stuff in the world without it being shown how he knows. The world itself doesn’t seem very computery; it just looks different. It really does feel like the Matrix. I think there almost could have been something if they’d shown a more broken-down system - all the programs being dissolute and debauched, as a contrast to the purity of the isos. Michael Sheen’s fantastic bit part hinted at more that could have been done along those lines.
It’s a bit of a shame. Much as I like Tron, I certainly wasn’t clamoring for a sequel. But if they had to make it, I wish more effort had been put into it. Not because it somehow tarnishes the “Tron name” but because it could simply have been better, and you can see they almost tried but settled for flashy mediocrity.
Yes; the computer world bothered me too. The psychology of the “programs” should be radically different from human (what is the utility function of a search program?). Instead, we got your typical oppressive government and cowed populace. The same anthropic laziness applied to the physics of the place. This ain’t real sci-fi; change a few words and you’ve got your generic fantasy story.
I had fun imagining that the Zen pool that Flynn Sr. had was a small act of rebellion against CLU; that thing would be fiendishly difficult to simulate compared to say lightcycle battles, and would cause the world-simulation to run more slowly, upping the odds that someone from the real world would find or shut down the computer.
So you’re not pro-Tron, I gather.
You could say he was nega-Tron.
I just happened to catch the original on cable an hour ago, seeing it for the first time since 1986 or so. It’s very slightly better than I remembered, and quite a bit better than the sequel.
And I spotted a young Peter Jurasik, years before he and Boxleitner would both star in Babylon 5.
Was I the only one who thought cgi Jeff Bridges was too deep in the uncanny valley to suspend disbelief?
Other than that I thought the movie was ok. Not the worst thing I’ve seen. Not the best either.
I actually didn’t mind that. It was just “wrong enough” to remind you that he was computer-generated, which added a little more to his air of menace.
Except there were two of them in the scenes set back when Bridges was creating CLU and the place. Argh, I hated that CGI.
I sorta hated it too. I’ve said it before: why not just hire younger actors? What, I can’t suspend my disbelief that far in a movie like Tron?
Let me just say that I really, really disliked the creation of CLU. In the original, programs looked like their programmers as a recognition of the fact that, in real programming, every programmer has their own distinctive style. In the programs I’m working on now, I can tell at a glance which parts were written by my advisor, and which parts were written by various grad students. Programs, in that sense, have their creator’s “look”. It’s not just because programming is a process of reflecting a person in a magic mirror that makes the reflection come alive.