TRON Legacy
Dec. 18th, 2010 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishJoseph Kosinski (dir.), TRON Legacy
Okay, I can be slightly more objective about Legacy than about the original, but ony slightly.
The plot: twenty-five years ago, bright young software engineer Kevin Flynn vanished, leaving behind his young son Sam. Last night Alan, one of Flynn's partners, got a page from Flynn's old arcade. Sam goes to the arcade and ends up in computerland to save Flynn.
The script's a muddle. The pacing's a little slow. The story suffers from trying to be too many things all at once, and gives nearly all of them short shrift: the Flynn/Clu/Tron triumvirate, the isos, the game grid, what was going on during Flynn's exile, all that. It follows the TRON tradition of introducing story elements (gridbugs, anyone?) and then dropping them with no explanation. The framing story of Sam growing up and growing into the company... meh.
Kevin Flynn in Tron had, I thought, a lot of personality. There's a great bit in his apartment ("Does she still leave her clothes all over the floor?" et seq) that, in like six lines, gives you a solid feel for the characters of Flynn, Alan, and Lora. I don't know if it's that Sam is an Action Hero For The Next Decade (gritty rather than cocky) or if he really just doesn't have as much going for him, but I never really connected with Sam.
The minor characters desperately wanted more development, which could have involved trimming them down to a more reasonable number as well. It's, unsurprisingly, a Bechdel fail: the two female characters never talk to each other. Michael Sheen tries hard but makes a very poor David Bowie.
I liked it pretty well.
I loved the new look for the Recognizers, I loved the lightcycle sequence. The whole aesthetic felt like Tron with a visual refresh, running at a higher resolution. I loved the little tips to the old movie, "Now that is a big door" and the Identity Disc speech and so on. I liked that Quorra turned up to save Sam's bacon, I liked Zen Jeff Bridges and Evil Computer Jeff Bridges. I very much liked the Flynn/Sam dynamic. (It reminded me of Merlin finally meeting Corwin at the end of Prince of Chaos.) The music was its own thing and not the Wendy Carlos score but it got along well with me all the same. It carried me along and wowed me and occasionally surprised me.
I'm not sure what to think about the 3D. I don't know that it really added anything and it made things in the background fuzzy at times. On the other hand, it was kinda neat. Eh.
I don't know that it's all that good, but I'd see it again.
Okay, I can be slightly more objective about Legacy than about the original, but ony slightly.
The plot: twenty-five years ago, bright young software engineer Kevin Flynn vanished, leaving behind his young son Sam. Last night Alan, one of Flynn's partners, got a page from Flynn's old arcade. Sam goes to the arcade and ends up in computerland to save Flynn.
The script's a muddle. The pacing's a little slow. The story suffers from trying to be too many things all at once, and gives nearly all of them short shrift: the Flynn/Clu/Tron triumvirate, the isos, the game grid, what was going on during Flynn's exile, all that. It follows the TRON tradition of introducing story elements (gridbugs, anyone?) and then dropping them with no explanation. The framing story of Sam growing up and growing into the company... meh.
Kevin Flynn in Tron had, I thought, a lot of personality. There's a great bit in his apartment ("Does she still leave her clothes all over the floor?" et seq) that, in like six lines, gives you a solid feel for the characters of Flynn, Alan, and Lora. I don't know if it's that Sam is an Action Hero For The Next Decade (gritty rather than cocky) or if he really just doesn't have as much going for him, but I never really connected with Sam.
The minor characters desperately wanted more development, which could have involved trimming them down to a more reasonable number as well. It's, unsurprisingly, a Bechdel fail: the two female characters never talk to each other. Michael Sheen tries hard but makes a very poor David Bowie.
I liked it pretty well.
I loved the new look for the Recognizers, I loved the lightcycle sequence. The whole aesthetic felt like Tron with a visual refresh, running at a higher resolution. I loved the little tips to the old movie, "Now that is a big door" and the Identity Disc speech and so on. I liked that Quorra turned up to save Sam's bacon, I liked Zen Jeff Bridges and Evil Computer Jeff Bridges. I very much liked the Flynn/Sam dynamic. (It reminded me of Merlin finally meeting Corwin at the end of Prince of Chaos.) The music was its own thing and not the Wendy Carlos score but it got along well with me all the same. It carried me along and wowed me and occasionally surprised me.
I'm not sure what to think about the 3D. I don't know that it really added anything and it made things in the background fuzzy at times. On the other hand, it was kinda neat. Eh.
I don't know that it's all that good, but I'd see it again.