Tagline: Now with 80% less title character!
Curiosity: It’s a sequel to a sci-fi cult classic starring Jeff Bridges. And Daft Punk supplied the soundtrack! That’s neat.
Plot: Kevin Flynn (Bridges) disappeared some 20 years ago, but his legacy lives on through his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who occasionally shows up at Kevin’s company ENCOM just to fuck around. But when Kevin’s old buddy Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) receives a page from Flynn’s Arcade, Sam goes to check out. There, he listens to Journey for a while [NOTE: No joke. Sam spends like five minutes listening to Journey before advancing the plot. It’s both obnoxious and awesome], and then stumbles upon a dusty old computer hidden beneath the arcade. A couple of keystrokes later, Sam finds himself in a world his father told him about but never showed him – the inside world of a computer. But things aren’t well here, as a guy who looks like an ageless, CGI version of Kevin is running things with an iron fist. It’s up to Sam to find his dad and get home.
Thoughts: TRON: Legacy gets so much right that it hurts to criticize the film overall. The intro is hilariously over-the-top, somewhat knowingly, and is packed with winking references to the original film. First time director Joseph Kosinski both honors and builds on the computer world, updating TRON’s visual aesthetic. The cast is generally great. The top two performers are Olivia Wilde as Quorra, a lady program who is clearly designed to be a nerd boy’s fantasy but is still kind of awesome anyway, and Michael Sheen as an albino Ziggy Stardust.
Bridges is another matter. He’s a riot as Kevin, since he pretty much plays him like the Dude, but his performance as CLU2, a program resembling Kevin, is distracting. Partially because CLU2’s fascist tendencies force uncomfortable WWII symbolism, but also because CLU2 is meant to look like Bridges circa the ’80s. The filmmakers achieved this effect through CGI, and while Legacy may later be remembered as a defining moment in digitally changing actors’ looks, the film itself looks significantly worse because of it. Maybe it’s the uncanny valley acting up, but CLU2 is off-putting. He looks like Bridges, but not enough like him to seem natural. I mean, he’s the only character who doesn’t seem to have pores.
Still, though, the performances carry a lackluster script, one which squanders a lot of goodwill towards the original film by bastardizing Tron (Boxleitner). I’m not going to get too spoiler-y, but I will say that Cyclops (James Marsden) got a better shake in X2. The script also occasionally bullshits what computers can do – something that the original film did quite a bit but at least it did so endearingly.
That’s why Legacy can boast a strong cast, director, soundtrack, and special effects and still kind of suck. I didn’t hate this movie, but it’s hard to love with its forced ending and underwhelming plot. The Matrix ripped off Tron pretty hard, but Legacy ruins its integrity by ripping off Matrix Reloaded.
Reflection: BUT Cillian Murphy gets in a cameo.
No comments:
Post a Comment