TRON (Disney, 1982) D: Steven Lisber ger, w/ Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NNN TRON: LEGACY (Disney, 2010) D: Joseph Kosinski, w/ Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund. Rating: NNN DVD package: NNN Rating: NNNN
The original TRON is unique and surprising. TRON: Legacy, the sequel, offers okay adventures.
The main action in both movies happens inside a set of computer programs called The Grid. Legacy undercuts that premise by making its Grid a photo-real imitation of earth, with added science fiction machines. The CG is skilled but not evocative.
By contrast, TRON’s Grid looks like nowhere on earth and no other movie. An abstract space with large areas barely sketched in, it’s so claustrophobic in its obsession with straight lines and sharp angles that the curved lines near the end are a shock. Between the elegant visuals and the odd look of the people, with their goofy helmets and clunky dialogue, the original TRON feels like some tangential mating of Metropolis and Buck Rogers.
It also makes sense: a hacker (Jeff Bridges) enters The Grid to stop the Master Program from taking over the system and, not incidentally, to recover some intellectual property rights. A quarter-century later, in Legacy, that hacker’s son (Garrett Hedlund) goes in to find his long-vanished dad and then stop the army of programs ready to invade the outer world. That’s gibberish: the invading programs lack bodies. At most, they’ll ionize the air. And the father-son story, while touching, could happen anywhere.
Check out the extras to see how far people will go to get effects. The sight of Bridges playing a scene with minicams strapped to his face is as science-fictional as anything in either TRON.
EXTRAS TRON: Director and producers commentary, making and impact-of doc. Legacy: Making-of doc, cast doc. Widescreen. Both films: English, French, Spanish audio and subtitles.
