'TRON' sequel battles lame plot
You'd think the makers of the sequel to the 1982 science-fiction thriller “TRON” would have upgraded the script and characters as much they improved the CGI effects.
Not so in “TRON Legacy.”
The dialogue ranges from cartoon-quality blather to bumper sticker philosophizing, such as Kevin Flynn's observation, “The only way to win is not to play!”
The supposedly real characters possess all the emotive power and dimensional complexity of the “programs,” digitally created people who occupy a cyberspace world called “the Grid.”
This is where Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, reprising his dual role as Kevin and Clu from 28 years ago) has been held prisoner ever since he got sucked into a TRON video game, leaving behind his little boy Sam to wonder whatever happened to dear old dad.
Sam grows up to be played by hunky, moderately charismatic Garrett Hedlund. Now a rebel (you can tell because he wears a black leather jacket and rides a motorcycle), Sam plays high-tech tricks on his father's company, which has become a profit-driven greed machine instead of a supplier of free software for the world.
Prompted by Dad's old buddy Alan (Elgin/Mount Prospect product Bruce Boxleitner, who played the original Tron), Sam goes to Kevin Flynn's closed-up game arcade. He gets there just in time to be transported to the Grid where everything suddenly shifts from 2-D into 3-D mode. (Time to put on those 3-D glasses!)
There, Sam is forced to fight warrior programs with glowing fatal Frisbees and digitally manifested racing bikes, in between uttering cartoon show comments such as “You've got to be kidding me!” and “This I can do!”
Someday, computer animation will replicate an actor's performance so perfectly that nobody can tell them apart.
Until then, we have Bridges' motion-capture performance as his younger self from 1982.
As Sam's youthful dad, Kevin looks oddly homicidal as he reads a story to Sam.
But as the Darth Vadery Clu, Kevin's digital clone, the plasticized character fits into a perfectly villainous mode as a Fascistic leader planning to flood the real world with his programmed minions.
“TRON Legacy” squanders a grand opportunity to comment on how our “reality” could already be flooded with programmed minions.
First-time director Joseph Kosinski has just as much non-flair for political metaphor as he does for emotional resonance between his characters.
Sam's reunion with his long-lost father resembling a New Age guru swaddled in white should have been a 10-hanky moment. Nope.
Hedlund and Bridges react as if one of them has just returned from the grocery store.
On its plus side, “TRON Legacy” showcases a startling, throbbing and soul-reverberating score by Daft Punk, Michael Sheen's kinky, over-the-top performance as a cabaret-style show host, and the retina-widening Olivia Wilde as a Louise Brooksy program named Quorra.
Now equipped with CGI effects and that Daft Punk music, the “TRON Legacy” action sequences look almost as much fun as plunking in a quarter to play the original TRON video game back in 1982.
<b>“TRON: Legacy”</b>
★★½
Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Michael Sheen, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG. 127 minutes