Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde
Rating: **
You can tell the source material is from the Eighties. There’s a young Jeff Bridges (as Kevin Flynn), for starters, looking like an uncanny EA Sports avatar of the real thing. There are identity disks stuck to everyone’s back (understandable, as an outdated program developed before SD cards). And then, there’s an obsession with bikes as the ultimate definition of cool (in the real and virtual world), and a neon-sign gaming arcade wherein lies the portal to the virtual world.
As purely a CGI show, Tron: Legacy is a landmark. The 3D is top notch (though you may want to remove your glasses for a brighter first half hour that’s shot in 2D), the deadly-trail-spewing light cycles and the world of the ‘Grid’ look pretty darn impressive. But that apart, itplays out with the plot predictability of a video game that’s picked up some Hollywood set pieces. Without a parent to watch over him, the young Sam Flynn (Garett Hedlund) grows up to be a rebel (think John Connor in Judgment Day) with a healthy disregard for money and work (Bruce Wayne). That’s until he finds purpose, albeit in a digital world. There he kicks some ass on a light cycle, meets his dad [the older Jeff Bridges as Sam Flynn], falls for a hot programme called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), and eventually escapes the evil programme Clu (also Jeff Bridges) and gets out alive. In that order.
But the problem is perhaps not that Tron: Legacy feels like a video game. The problem is that the two-hour film doesn’t have enough high-adrenaline gaming moments. The tournament-format fight sequence and the light cycle chase are promising, but you wish there was more. The ‘vintage’ space cycle begging for another action sequence is wasted, and the once Ducati-riding cool programmer Sam Flynn has lapsed into inaction. You almost feel sad for the man who doesn’t know Wi-Fi. Tron, the character after whom the movie is named, has no role to play, and the weird digital-world nightclub owner Zuse (Michael Sheen) belongs in Total Recall.
The 1982 Tron was supposedly ahead of its times in terms of CGI, but wasn’t much of a film. The belated legacy might go down the same path—a cult favourite perhaps that’ll sell merchandise, and eventually get made into a game.
For a convincing parallel universe of the imagination, Avatar is cooler. And that’s saying something.
- Sarit Ray
