Monday 27 December 2010

Tron: Legacy

Due to the adverse weather conditions my cinema trips have been few and far between these past few weeks but it is Christmas Eve and The Nerdy Trio braved elements and went to see Tron: Legacy in our towns brand new cinema.

PLOT: Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has been trapped on the Grid since 1982’s causing his son Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) to have abandonment issues which have manifested in the form of extreme sports, petty theft, driving offences and the old classic - “the yearly prank on the company”.
Sam gets sucked into the Grid and we are subjected to copious amounts of technical jargon and completely incoherent exposition.
Clu aka a CGI’d younger Jeff Bridges, which looked nothing like a younger Jeff Bridges ,has been programmed to build the perfect system which leads to the genocide of an organically created race within the Grid.
There are set pieces which are cancelled out by long stretches of absolutely nothing.
There is a wonderfully modern soundtrack which is cancelled out by it being woefully crap.
Kevin sacrifices himself to save his son and destroys everything which makes be happy which is cancelled out by the almost guaranteed sequel. END PLOT

I don’t mind a serious plot and I can buy into a serious implausible movie and totally lose myself very easily as to be honest my mind isn’t the most active but Tron: Legacy took itself so seriously it was stiff, rigid and for the most part down right boring.

The movie sacrificed the fun factor in favour of being uber serious, which can be fine, if the seriousness is interesting or even coherent. I didn’t understand the entire subplot involving ISO’s and their mass genocide and all the computer technical jargon goes way over my head. I am from the school of “if it doesn’t work, turn if off for 10minutes and turn it back on again”

The action, when it finally came, was anticlimactic and slow. The motorbike scene was much better executed that the light cycle set piece. The action on the Grid just didn’t flow right for me.

The cast were fine but completely unremarkable. Jeff Bridges had been stuck in the grid since the early 80’s yet had somehow morphed Obi-Wan Kenobi who was going through a 60’s hippy phase which was very funny although, unfortunately, unintentionally so.


Garrett Hedlund, although relatively easy on the eye, was bland. There was no spark from him and he was saddled with some god awful lines which were ripped from the Big Generic Book of Action One Liners.

Michael Sheen, who is such a good character actor, was overacting like crazy but clearly enjoying himself (at least someone was) so he gets the benefit of the doubt albeit only just.

There was a lot of hype surrounding the Daft Punk soundtrack and I listened to parts of it on I-Tunes before the watching movie and didn’t like it. After having watched Tron:Legacy I now officially hate it. With soundtracks I either love them or I don’t hear them but I have never actually disliked one before. I can see why they went for an electronic score as it fits in with the movies theme but I just couldn’t warm to it.

I wanted so badly to like this movie, it was The Nerdy Trio’s Christmas Eve movie for crying out aloud but no Christmas Miracle was forthcoming. Tron:Legacy gets a 5/10. It had potential but clearly chose to take a different route.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

5 comments:

  1. Great write up K, I should have loved this movie but you nailed it, it wasn't any fun! On top of that it's a looooog 2 hours of just hacky writing. A real letdown.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was long very very long.

    Thanks for reading on here - I have given up on myspace although it will take me ages to get used to this blog

    ReplyDelete
  3. Took me a while and I was just as unwilling to let go of the myspace blog but it just became pointless, it was like screaming in an empty room.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agreed agreed agreed! BORING BORING BORING!! This is one of the dullest movies I have ever endured!! It was so bad that I almost howled with relief when it ended! Visually stunning yes but that couldn't rescue it.
    I never walk out of a movie because they aren't cheap to see but I tell you I was very close with this one.

    ReplyDelete
  5. So boring but I am with you - I can't afford to walk out of bad movies lol

    ReplyDelete