For a very long time since the 80s, director and Tron-creator Steven Lisberger had been trying to launch a sequel to his beloved cult movie. But since the series had never really been a big mainstream hit, a sequel never was on Disney's top priorities. That is, until now!
Lisberger pitched many, many screenplays these last decades.
On top of these were mostly stories featuring either the son of Alan Bradley or the son of Kevin Flynn, in case the original actors were starting to get older for the roles and/or wouldn't manage to be part of the new movie.
The former ended up serving as basis for the Tron video game.
This movie is about the plot following the son of Flynn.
Most of these scripts were either called Tron 2.0 or Tron Legacy - which are in my opinion, quite catchy names and fitting for this universe.
Let's check out the sequel called Tron Legacy~
Movie: Tron: Legacy
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Release date 2010
Genre Science fiction
Country USA
Note: I already briefly reviewed this movie after watching it.
But let's have a more in-detail look, shall we?
Tron: Legacy is the sequel of the original 1982 Tron movie.
So, yes it's another one of these sequel made a decade (and more) after the original but thankfully it doesn't suffer what most Die Hard, Indiana Jones or Rocky go through.. It isn't about an hero feeling to old or going back to what made him popular in the first place. Instead, the plot feels much like a continuation of the original.
Though Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Kevin Flynn and CLU, and so does Bruce Boxleitner reprising his roles as Alan Bradley and Tron.
Time for the New Generation!
The story picks up in 1989, that is 7 years after the original movie. Kevin Flynn, software engineer and our main character in the earlier movie, is now the CEO of ENCOM.
One day, Flynn disappears without a trace with no indication to what happened to him...jump 20 years later, we're now following Sam Flynn, his son. Sam is ENCOM's biggest shareholder but shows no interest in this company. He even makes a joke outta the company whenever he can.
Flynn's old friend Alan Bradley, now executive at ENCOM, continues to keeps an eye on Sam.
One day, Sam goes to Flynn's old arcades to check out a signal that has been coming from under the building. A message left by Flynn? There, he discovers an hidden computer based on the old tech developed by ENCOM....and finds himself warped inside the machine....into The Grid!
The Grid is the name given to the virtual world inside the computer visited by Flynn in the first film. It seems immediately after the original story, Flynn started working on his very own copy of The Grid using the technology he aquired once he became CEO.
Old things never get old.
Sam has to fight for his very life in The Game Arena, against a mysterious program called Rinzler. They find out he's a real person, a User, and take him to see CLU-2, the digital copy Flynn left behind to oversee The Grid.
Sam escapes during LightCycle matches thanks to a program called Quorra who saves him. She takes him to the Outlands where he finds an older Kevin Flynn who's been trapped inside his own computer all these years. Flynn tells him his story, how he created this world, his new and improved perfect system with the help from CLU and Alan's security program Tron all those years ago.
Everything was perfect and ordered until the day they discovered the "ISOs". Isomorphic algorithms, a new lifeform born into The Grid by itself. (as seen in the comic Tron: Betrayal)
But soon, CLU began to see tham as a threat to everything they built rather than a gift and started to hunt them and kill them all. (as seen in the game Tron: Evolution)
After this war and genocide, Flynn had to hid himself.
Now, they need to go back to the real world to be able to delete CLU from there, but CLU himself is trying himself to take this occasion to escape The Grid and conquer that world as well.
Along their journey, Sam, Quorra and Flynn have to find the software named Zuse, meet up with a "resistant" called Castor, fight against Rinzler and the true story behind Tron's disappearace will be revealed as well!
In the end they all try reaching the Portal to the way out and battle for The Grid in an epic conclusion... in the aftermath, Sam escapes...but not alone!
Lots of upgrades!
The movie was directed by Joseph Koskinski.
With a modern director like him, the Tron-verse gets an all-new touch and dimension, and I'm not even mentioning the 3-D obligatory aspect of Hollywood flicks these days.
More nervous, less imaginary but anchored in realistic physics and stylish graphics, the new Grid looks nothing like the original.
Yet, after the video game Tron 2.0 in the early 2000, I was already prepared for this kind of take.
Geeks and fanboys might argue its canonicity, but there's no discussion the game left its mark on the franchise one way or another.
The new direction continues the progression into blue tones and monochromatic sophisticated architecture. (amusing though, there was a whole sequence in Tron 2.0 that took place in the old original Grid which contrasted a lot with the new one)
Even the new powered LightCycles seem inspired by Tron 2.0's upgraded SuperCycles.
This new Grid is a whole new beast, separated from the original, built by Kevin Flynn from scratch.
The movie might lack the original's more fantastical aspect and 8-bits inspired focus that made the original's charm, but Steven Lisberger was still fully implicated on board and served as producer this time around.
Tron's Legacy!
A pretty straightforward yet interesting plotline, a very dynamic movie, with lots of good action sequence that do take pleasure of playing with the movie's concept. (but not enough.. I would have liked more fun in the fact that all this is programs in a computer, more original way to "derezz" their foes would have been nice)
The pacing takes its time in the first half but it picks up a bit more in the second part.
The universe of The Grid doesn't make much sense, sure. It was built upon the original's structure, which was a way to characterize what 8-bits game would have looked like in real life. Now it's all "next-gen"-ysh and all...but faces are still in black & white, people can still be deleted into pixels, etc.. Sure, actual hi-tech modern games look nothing like that, but this strange mixture of modernity, reimagined old Tron universe and anthropomorphized computer data has its unique charm. It gives Tron Legacy a pretty stylish look and a unique design.
It doesn't look like the original at all, yet I can definitively recognize this as "Tron-like" if you get what I mean.
The entire sountrack of the movie was composed by the unique electronic musicians Daft Punk!
Which kinda refers to the original whenever it wants too, and is also as unique as the film's visuals.
Superb, epic. One of the best scores I've heard in recent ages. They need to make more scores!.
Overall, it's a fantastic movie!
I personally loved it!
A daring sequel to the Classic Tron.
The special effects are pretty kickass. Usually with tons of CGi (the use of 3-D on theaters which I tend to avoid), blockbusters, modern cinema and all it tends to give me an impression of "video game", but not much this time even it that doesn't make sense taking into account the story here. I accepted this universe as "Tron's". Unique, "techno", cyber-futuristic.
The young CGi Jeff Bridges didn't annoy me much, though much more apparent on theaters. People made such a fuss about him while he's just supposed to be a digital copy of Flynn. The CGi Bruce Boxleitner/Tron looked much better. (but did have less screentime, so..)
It might have lost some of the original film's charm, which I still consider amongst my favorite movies of all time. But it was faithful in spirit if not in tone. A natural evolution of the original.
The music can be easily regarded as the best aspect of it, if not the primordial, after all computers and music can go along just as easily. (just check out the tons of experimenting, musically, that has been done with computers on the last decade!)
From the theme songs to the sound effects, perfect audio production from start to end.
Great movie I'd recommend to Tron fans, scifi fans, anyone who's searching for a good entertaining moment or just a decent blockbuster.
Watch it!
I give it:
2.5 / 3 UFOs!
