Tron: Legacy

Disney - 2010  

Lights, action, effects, computers!  Yes!  Writing?  No.  All flash, no substance?  Well, not exactly, but close.  Predictable, to some degree, yes. 

I’m sure that underneath the surface this story of Tron 2, Disney’s 28 year answer to its original holds most closely to the story that started it, and cleverly answers the backstory and forward story behind the main Character of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), filling in all manner of good detail to keep the fan satisfied that something was achieved.  However, the dynamic tension resident in most action and drama is not very dynamic here, and motivations are sublet to action and effects.  The set and the effects are the main characters of the film as much as Flynn or CLU 2.0.   The action is great, fast, and fascinating to watch.  That’s good, because it cloaks an otherwise fairly spacious gap in meaning and substance.

There is the traditional “man against the machine” archetype, and “boy wonder of his own corporation finds a new self and comes of age” thing, and as a side note, most likely this is “commerce vs. open access” in the computing world.  There are all of those stories subtly going on in there, but they are dwarfed by the magnitude of the 3D fizz.  The girl is cute (Olivia Wilde), the outfits sexy, the 3D pristine and accurate, and the bad guys are fairly bad.  But like one of my favorite scenes in the film, the action and shooting and movement is going on all around while the producer plays air guitar.

The scene I’m referring to is in the center of the city with Castor, the headmaster of digital ceremonies, that manages to capture Kevin Flynn’s disk from him and offer it to CLU in exchange for control of the city.  All around there is kung fu fighting, and lasers, and disks flying, and program-people de-rezzing, and what does Castor do?  He plays air guitar on his lighted walking stick in time to Daft Punk’s rabid background tunes.  This pretty much summed up the movie for me.

As for the implications: that’s a bit different, as it usually is.  So now there’s a fully rezzed human on earth that came from the computer, and her genetic code is perfect, so that when infused into the human genome, we conquer death and disease?  That’s my inference, and there is a possibility there of Tron 3 you know.  That’s possible, with some creativity.  But it also prompts me to draw the obvious parallel with the real world: allow the human genome to be explored in any way possible, for there lie the keys to our future, our furthering mankind, our win over ailments and possibly even death.  The faith shown DNA is akin to worship, and the numbers that we crunch to get there is only a matter of time.

3 stars - End of Line