I have to admit – the original Tron was a bit before my time.
The first time I went to see this movie reminded me of the first maxim of journalism: always research. For Tron Legacy, that means going back and watching the first one. While “Legacy” will certainly turn heads in its intended 3D glory, audiences are bound to get lost right away unless they have the benefit of the first film to provide the proper context for this sequel.
If not for the handy exposition at the beginning of Joseph Kozinski’s modern reboot/sequel of Steven Lisberger’s 1982 original, we wouldn’t really understand what was going on at all.
Some things are indeed explained by watching the original film – a trait important to many sequels. Those flying staple things are from a video game. Blue is good – red, not so much.
The characters are painted with broad strokes...literally. Things that have no business glowing on a person are alight in the Grid, though I suspect that modern moviegoers can appreciate the fact that digital breasts are now neon-lit like landing strips at an airport for the sexually deprived.
Some things, however, are not really explained all that well. There’s one scene where Jeff Bridges (reprising his role as a now-aged Kevin Flynn from the first film) and his son Sam (played by Garrett Hedlund) finally meet in the Grid and they sit down to eat, of all things, a dinner complete with suckling pig and fresh vegetables in a digital world devoid of organic anything.
This is bothersome because not only was it never really explained, it was never even questioned. Everyone just sort of assumes that it would be perfectly natural to suddenly have a roast pig appear. “Why yes, here on the Grid we have roast suckling pig and haricot verts lying around all the time.”
I get that it’s supposed to be a virtual world, but that’s not really an excuse for sloppy storytelling. At least “The Matrix” tried to explain how the characters made random objects pop up whenever they needed them, and while fantastical, the explanation still had its own logic and rules to it.
The problem with Tron Legacy’s kind of sci-fi storytelling is not that these sorts of things are impossible. Of course you can’t make a football field full of gun racks or a three course meal suddenly appear. That’s reality. But audiences are able to accept these kinds of impossible things because they are able to suspend their disbelief according to the “rules” of whatever the setting is.
Even an explanation as deux ex-y as “A wizard did it, it was MAGIC” presupposes that 1) there are wizards afoot and 2) they are capable of wild shenanigans of a thaumaturgical nature.
It’s sad that a film like “Tron Legacy” makes no effort to fill in these blanks because the rest of the film’s experience is absolutely spot-on. The transition from the film’s 2D scenes to its 3D scenes is exceptional, the look of the new Grid is sleek and sexy, and the soundtrack from the brains of Daft Punk made waves in mp3 players long before the film itself opened in theaters.
It would be a nearly perfect movie – if it weren’t for that damn pig.
FINAL VERDICT: This new iteration of Tron is, despite its inconsistencies, sharp and sexy. A-
No comments:
Post a Comment