The original Tron remains one of my favourite movies from childhood – in my heart, at least. I re-watched it a few years ago, and saw from an adult perspective that, as unique as the story was, there was something missing behind all the special effects. The exact same thing can be said about Tron: Legacy, the long-anticipated sequel – it attempts something ambitious, but at the expense of the film’s heart and soul.
In a prologue, set in 1989 after the events of the first story, we meet young Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), son of Kevin (Jeff Bridges), the original visitor to the world of living programs inside the computer. Kevin has been returning there, rebuilding it into a utopia with the assistance of CLU, a program created in his own image. Kevin promises one day to take Sam into the computer with him, but later that night he disappears, never to be found.
A major creative decision has been made here, and it trips the film up by choosing effects over substance. Both the young Kevin and CLU are digitally animated versions of Jeff Bridges as he looked in 1989. That makes for some interesting relationships, and the theme of responsibility for your own creations, but the animation, while impressive, still lacks humanity, and it causes too much distraction. All the other programs are portrayed by real actors, so CLU sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s supposed to be the most advanced program in the system, but he moves like there are some major bugs to be worked out.
Anyway, fast forward to the present. Sam, now a brooding hacker-type, investigates a mysterious message from his father, and soon finds himself a prisoner inside the digital world, where once again, Big Problems are occurring. CLU has taken his prime directive to build “the perfect system” to fascist extremes, purging enemy programs and bending others to his will. Eventually, Sam reunites with his now-aged father (Bridges, in real form this time, and channelling The Dude from The Big Lebowski), and together with an enigmatic female program named Quorra (Olivia Wilde), they team up to free the system and return to the real world.
You don’t have to be a Tron fanboy to see the wasted opportunities in the sequel. The original film worked best when it explored this world of living computer technology. But Legacy almost completely avoids this – instead it gives us flashy visual upgrades of the original’s best sequences. The games arena – with its flying disc fights and light-cycle battles – is back and still very exciting, but there’s nothing new here.
Even Tron himself (Bruce Boxleitner), so vital to the first film, is treated like an afterthought, as if the writers forgot he is a major character and not just a name for the world in which he lives.
I suppose the technical argument is that this computer is a closed system that could only have upgraded its existing technology, and wouldn’t have integrated anything new. But that’s the film’s major flaw – it needed to open up more to bring this story to life. This isn’t really Tron 2.0, it’s more like Tron 1.5.
