Tripping the Light Fantastic: Tron Legacy Movie Review

This week we’re stepping back in time to the 80s - an era of weird haircuts, even weirder fashions and ambiguous boy bands. It is also the decade when science-fiction classic Tron was made. Regardless of your feelings about the movie or whether you were young or old when you watched it - most of us remember the film because of its unusual neon visuals and if nothing else - the light bikes. 

Skip forward twenty eight years and Disney finally decided to make a sequel. I know this movie came out four years ago so it’s not new. However, when it was released I had no intention of seeing it because I thought it would be just another pointless sequel that seems to be all the rage this millennium.

I finally saw it this week and I must admit it’s actually pretty good - especially considering it’s a Disney film. However, that’s not to say it’s not without its flaws. 

The movie begins twenty years after the original in modern day. Kevin Flynn - the hero in the original Tron - has been missing for all that time. His son Sam Flynn accidently finds a way into the cyber world of the original film when he visits his dad’s arcade. Discovering his presence, Kevin Flynn’s doppelganger - Clu - tries to kill him. After escaping, Sam is reunited with his father (played by Jeff Bridges) who explains that Clu - the program he created - has gone rogue and taken over. 

Are you all still following? Good. To make things even more confusing Clu looks just like Kevin…or how he did 20 years ago. Clu wants Kevin’s disc (remember those?) as it contains all his knowledge on how he built the cyber world and how to leave it. The rest of the film is spent by Sam, Kevin and a program called Quorra trying to escape back to the real world.

If you managed to read through all of the above without falling asleep you get a medal. It is a little confusing - especially with two characters looking the same. Considering this is meant to be a kid’s film and I was confused, god knows how children find understanding it. There is also a tonne of other confusing plot points which I haven’t gone into thrown on top of that. 

Visually though Tron Legacy is a beautiful. I think this is what the original would have looked like if the production team had access to the same quality of CGI. The light bikes also make a glorious return early on and there are other vehicles thrown in later on. Where the graphics do fail is on Clu’s face. The animator’s attempt to make Jeff Bridges look younger just doesn’t quite work. His face just doesn’t move correctly and it’s just downright creepy. 

Also another gripe I have with this movie is Tron. He’s almost not in it. You see him get killed in a flashback an hour into the movie only to learn later he is in fact still alive…just to see him die a couple of minutes later. Why was the movie named after a character who is barely in it? I know it’s to do with franchising but come on. It’s like titling a book: The Queen, then spending three hundred pages talking about the history of sea fish. 

Also there are a lot of dumb plot holes which could have easily been rectified if the time had been put in during editing…or reading the script for the second time. 

Tron Legacy gets 6/10.