Tron Legacy: OMFG *Spoilers*

[Chris OFarrell]

It was pretty much exactly what I wanted from a Tron sequel. Daft Punk did a superb job on the soundtrack. They got what Tron music was about and they built on it. I was a little disappointed that they didn't make the flashback scenes a hybrid of old Tron graphics with the new effects just for cheesiness sake but that certainly didn't break the movie for me.

As for Clu's huge army, the "digitizing laser" is basically magic so I didn't have a problem with him expecting to bring his army into the real world.

Personally, I thought that it would have been much better if the objective wasn't to go 'into the real world' as it were through the laser, but 'hack out' into the worlds computer networks. That the portal wasn't just the connection to the laser, but all external devices and network ports on Flynns comptuer in the arcade, and only Flynn's disk had the 'key' to use said portal. That the laser has to obey COM, and there was enough material in the laser to bring two people to the 'real world' thanks to Sam and Flynn both using it, but that in turn meant Flynn had to stay behind to save Hot Girl.

I thought they were forshadowing it when on the Sailer simulation and Sam talks about WiFi, I thought Sam was going to bring Flynn up to speed on just how interconnected the world has become and then it would click for Flynn what Clu's plan is, to bring 'order' to the world through taking complete control of the computers to impose his 'perfect' view.

But it was clear I was thinking too hard

[StarshipTitanic]

Personally, I thought that it would have been much better if the objective wasn't to go 'into the real world' as it were through the laser, but 'hack out' into the worlds computer networks. That the portal wasn't just the connection to the laser, but all external devices and network ports on Flynns comptuer in the arcade, and only Flynn's disk had the 'key' to use said portal. That the laser has to obey COM, and there was enough material in the laser to bring two people to the 'real world' thanks to Sam and Flynn both using it, but that in turn meant Flynn had to stay behind to save Hot Girl.

I thought they were forshadowing it when on the Sailer simulation and Sam talks about WiFi, I thought Sam was going to bring Flynn up to speed on just how interconnected the world has become and then it would click for Flynn what Clu's plan is, to bring 'order' to the world through taking complete control of the computers to impose his 'perfect' view.

But it was clear I was thinking too hard

That is pretty close to the Master Control Program's scheme from the first film, though (it wanted to hack into the Pentagon and blackmailed Dillinger into leaving it alone with the evidence of his software piracy). And remember how Sam noted that once he was in the real world, he could delete Clu manually. It would have been nice continuity-wise for Clu to blame MCP's failure on it being trapped in computer-land, but we're getting pretty nerdy her.

[Guardsman Bass]

I saw it about an hour ago.

It was okay. The graphics were cool, but that's expected for a Tron sequel. The battle with the bikes was probably the high point of the movie for me, as well as the coolest visuals (I loved the sequence of the bikes appearing from the bars they were holding). Quorra and the blond chick were pretty hot.

The plot was pretty "meh", though, and totally predictable from the point where Jeff Bridges' character said that CLUE was trying to break into the real world.

I enjoyed it, but I probably won't watch it again.

Box Office Mojo has it bringing in $66 million overall, including both domestic and foreign box office revenue. We'll have to see how it does the second weekend before we can tell whether it's a success or not.

[Coalition]

I was not that impressed with it. I have to admit I was hoping they would exploit the different architecture of a computer world. Doors would be slightly different, similar for windows, but they would have their own logic. As the movie goes on, Sam would figure it out (or be told by Flynn) so the audience would as well.

Computer vehicles should not need engines that are similar to outside world jet engines. The Recognizers and the shuttle would just 'go' there. This would be a clue to the carrier later on, which has constructs with actual engines and the audience would wonder why.

I did like how they redid the Recognizer, so the driver can get to the ground.

Flynn as a User should have been one step short of an AI god, reformatting reality to suit his whims. Of course, if he does too much, Clu will detect him, and close in. So Flynn might use a lot when he rescues his son, but tell them that Clu will be heading in quickly, so they need to leave even faster. Maybe during the time at Flynn's home, Flynn passes along the data, so the place reorganizes into doors, walls, etc, where Flynn is upgrading Sam so he can see the Grid in the same way. Sam might later try a few stunts, learning his own methods as well. Nothing as fancy as Flynn, but changing a wall into a door (and back) would be among his stunts.

The carrier would have been a nice place to show the wonders/dangers of rogue computer tech. I.e. when Flynn has to steal a plane, he grabs a card, selects the options (checkboxes), and hands it to the guard. The guard places the card in a slot, and the plane is compiled (lines appear to outline it, and filled in). The tanks are copy-pasted from storage, allowing a massive increase in combat capacity.

For the club, Cronus would have had a card up his sleeve, copy-paste the card to create a dozen or so, then unzip them to create the steps. An icon change to Zeus would have added a nice touch.

One nice idea for the movie would be where the v12 of the operating system has the hidden program where Clu will control the computers around the world. So Sam has to stop Clu, before he takes over in a millisecond. Clu would mention that the closed-source code is what allowed his programs to get inside the OS, as peer review would have spotted them easily (a nice dig against closed-source code). The portal being the gateway between Flynn's computer and the rest of the internet would be better though.

[Lord Relvenous]

So in other words you would have liked the movie better if you had written. Surprise.

I saw it tonight. The presentation was slick as hell, that's for sure. I didn't see it in 3D, so I can't comment on that.

[LMSx]

I was pleasantly surprised. I had never seen Tron, but once the Legacy trailer hit (in, what was it, March?) I thought the teaser looked fascinating and couldn't wait to see the whole thing. Some of the recent sour critical reviews had me a little down and worried I was going to be supporting a Transformers 2 sort of monstrosity, but I took the dive anyway.

Well, the plot was a little loose structurally, there are a few poor stretches of dialogue to kick things off, and in the second half by the time the plane was flying to the portal I was starting to feel the movie was wearing out its welcome a little, but by and large Legacy's missteps weren't enough to mar what the tremendous visual and conceptual package did right. Just watching Legacy's world carried me through in a similar manner to how I enjoy the Star Wars prequels despite their flaws. I think I'd like to see the movie a second time, and I hope it does well enough for a third movie. Craft-wise, it was a fairly unexceptional Hollywood director working on a workable-enough Hollywood script, but I wouldn't be surprised if Disney had the director and screenwriters by the balls given the riskiness of even considering a hundred-million dollar sequel to a 28 year old movie. So if this does well and they prove themselves, I'm curious to see how a third movie goes.

Stray thoughts:
This is admittedly setting a low bar for screenwriting but I still liked the parallel between 80s Flynn's evangelical speech in the television montage and CLU's speech to his cronies before crossing over.

Objectively I know they sort of skimmed past a real justification for Tron's turn at the end, but I loved the idea of Tron becoming CLU's chief pointman.

How exactly what we saw on The Grid corresponded to the real world operations didn't bother me much. Looking at the Tron movies together, they've built themselves a neat conceptual trick of having the increased quality of the literal movie graphics and the sophistication of the diagetic world correspond with advances in computer technology. A land of blocky vectors, given enough time, can generate a more sophisticated environment that eventually supports its own emergent life. Programs engaged in disc combat or screwing around in a club could have the same relationship to the original rules underlying computer activity as life might have to the basic physical laws that control atomic structure or the works of an artist to the basic impulse to impress a mate and have sex. Or that could all be bullshit, I don't know.

3D is, um....an effect. It was nice to see. But if you're vaguely budget-conscious I don't think you're missing much by hitting the 2D version.

[StarshipTitanic]

Computer vehicles should not need engines that are similar to outside world jet engines. The Recognizers and the shuttle would just 'go' there. This would be a clue to the carrier later on, which has constructs with actual engines and the audience would wonder why.

And computer programs should not need legs, beds or night clubs. Kind of a silly criticism, isn't it?

One nice idea for the movie would be where the v12 of the operating system has the hidden program where Clu will control the computers around the world. So Sam has to stop Clu, before he takes over in a millisecond. Clu would mention that the closed-source code is what allowed his programs to get inside the OS, as peer review would have spotted them easily (a nice dig against closed-source code). The portal being the gateway between Flynn's computer and the rest of the internet would be better though.

That just makes Clu the Master Control Program again. The plot isn't really important to these movies but at least they didn't make it a carbon copy.

Why should we assume that Clu knew about the Internet, anyway? The only communication abilities he demonstrated was calling a 20 year old beeper for which he presumably knew the number.

[Vympel]

As Chris knows, I really liked this movie. I do like what the makers said, in that they weren't setting out to make an "internet Tron movie" and so when they were in the grid there were no such references. It was pretty silly that Quorra was a ... real person in the real world which is just mindfuck (and creates incredibly silly implications for what would happen when Clu's gigantic carrier appeared in the real world, together with his techni-colour goon squad) - but who cares. I still thought it was awesome. And what a kickass soundtrack.

[Justice]

It was okay, but it didn't feel like a true successor to Tron. The visual style was okay, but way, way too human. I was hoping for something jarring, but instead I got suckling pig and old books (Which took me out of the movie a bit. How the hell did that stuff work?). There were references to the old stuff, but they never really use it (recognizers and the tanks?). Kevin having to be dressed instead of just having the new clothes on him (maybe this was an upgrade to the system?)

They have a great concept (you're in a personified version of a computer operating system), and they never use it. Tron 2.0 had a better and more interesting plot. I understand that some conventions can't be used by movies, but the ideas that they have (Escaping a system reformat) are so much better and interesting. The movie just does nothing with the setting that can't be done with any other setting that involves traveling to a different world. You could probably translate the better part of this to Narnia without losing too much of the plot, and that's sad; the strength in Tron is the setting, and it is barely used at all.

If they didn't want to do an "internet" Tron movie, that's fine. I can at least get that. But this really didn't feel like a Tron movie at all.

[StarshipTitanic]

It was okay, but it didn't feel like a true successor to Tron. The visual style was okay, but way, way too human. I was hoping for something jarring, but instead I got suckling pig and old books (Which took me out of the movie a bit. How the hell did that stuff work?).

You're complaining about a lonely, trapped human surrounding himself with Earthly things? Come on.

There were references to the old stuff, but they never really use it (recognizers and the tanks?).

Disk combat all over the place? Light cycle fight?

They have a great concept (you're in a personified version of a computer operating system), and they never use it. Tron 2.0 had a better and more interesting plot. I understand that some conventions can't be used by movies, but the ideas that they have (Escaping a system reformat) are so much better and interesting. The movie just does nothing with the setting that can't be done with any other setting that involves traveling to a different world.

I never played Tron 2.0 but if "escaping a system reformat" essentially means "escaping danger" then I don't understand what's so revolutionary about it.

[FSTargetDrone]

I never played Tron 2.0 but if "escaping a system reformat" essentially means "escaping danger" then I don't understand what's so revolutionary about it.

Part of one of the levels of the game involves you spending a few minutes keeping ahead of a steadily-advancing wall of energy (the "reformat") which destroys any NPC it hits, as well as the player character. Think of the baryon sweep in the TNG episode "Starship Mine"--same sort of threat.

[Justice]

It was okay, but it didn't feel like a true successor to Tron. The visual style was okay, but way, way too human. I was hoping for something jarring, but instead I got suckling pig and old books (Which took me out of the movie a bit. How the hell did that stuff work?).

You're complaining about a lonely, trapped human surrounding himself with Earthly things? Come on.

It's not that he's doing it, it's the fact that he can. I can understand why, but the how is what breaks me out of the movie. It doesn't jive with the setting. Did he load the books there and then modify them or something? Maybe if they were in represented in a different way other than exactly as they would be in the real world, I wouldn't mind. But just having an actual pig in the world of Tron does take me out of the movie. I want weird or odd things; hell, the kid could have done was asked how they were eating pig in a fucking computer (or maybe he did that and I simply missed it). But how about eating processing power, or something which fits the setting?

There were references to the old stuff, but they never really use it (recognizers and the tanks?).

Disk combat all over the place? Light cycle fight?

I'll give you disc combat, and I'm okay with the evolution of it. At the very least, that felt a bit like Tron.

The light cycle fighting, though, wasn't that impressive. It was okay, but (to take something from Noah Antweiller's review, which is far harsher than I would be on this movie) there was so much space that everything came down to sudden slipstream moves. None of that claustrophobic feel of getting trapped or running out of space, really. Hell, if I want to nitpick, I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't go with the "all right angles" style turning. It's not that it needs to be completely accurate to the previous film, but it's another thing that tells us there are different rules here.

I mean, superficially Tron is about light cycles and disc battles. I always felt it was more about what goes on in your computer that you don't know about. Just because they do include a few things from the movie doesn't mean it lives up to what the movie was trying to do.

They have a great concept (you're in a personified version of a computer operating system), and they never use it. Tron 2.0 had a better and more interesting plot. I understand that some conventions can't be used by movies, but the ideas that they have (Escaping a system reformat) are so much better and interesting. The movie just does nothing with the setting that can't be done with any other setting that involves traveling to a different world.

I never played Tron 2.0 but if "escaping a system reformat" essentially means "escaping danger" then I don't understand what's so revolutionary about it.

Navigating the Asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back and advancing up Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan are both "escaping danger" in some sense, but they are obviously not the same. The concept of "escaping danger" is there, but I'd argue that "the world around you is being systematically erased" one that is generally not used in movies (though, admittedly, gets more use in comics and the occasional cartoon).

Another example from Tron 2.0 is the big evil plan: Using digitized humans to execute jobs as users that couldn't be executed by regular programs. We can't crack 256-bit encryption normally, which makes it represented by a fortress in the computer world. But digitized some hackers who (after seeing what they can do in a digital environment) can stealthily break through that fortress to what it's hiding? Well, then you have something interest.

Is it a similar plot to the first movie? Kind of, but it's subverted in a neat way which makes it unique while using the setting to its advantage. Not only are you fighting against ICP units which sometimes consider you an enemy, you are fighting some seriously powerful digitized humans (who may or may not have the properly digitizing code and may or may not have become "viruses" due to this).

But do they really do anything with the concepts there? No. The movie barely if at all uses the concept of being in a computer system, it's not really a Tron movie. I really agree with Coalition; things should have different rules. This should be a different world, and we finally have the effects stuff to really show that off. Instead, they kept it really, really tame.

On a side note: Does anyone think were totally setting up a sequel with the douchebags from the opening scene? I didn't exactly see what commands the primadonna programmer put in, but I'd wager they'll have an effect in the sequel.

[Starglider]

The film was an entertaining audio-visual spectacle. The acting was ok. I appreciate what they tried to do with the plot, but somehow it didn't click with me. Not so much the plot holes, more that the pacing felt off. Normally I like some slower scenes to offset the action, but in this film the overall story flow felt wrong. The final Clu confrontation was a bit sucky, but the jet chase scene was awesome.

[Guardsman Bass]

I forgot to add-

I think Tron's "I fight for the Users" was probably the most bad-assed character moment in the whole movie. Something about the way he said it, at the point, just clicked.

[Battlehymn Republic]

It was pretty silly that Quorra was a ... real person in the real world which is just mindfuck (and creates incredibly silly implications for what would happen when Clu's gigantic carrier appeared in the real world, together with his techni-colour goon squad) - but who cares.

I'm just chalking her appearance as one part technobabble handwavium, one part plot contrivance, and one part unexplained ISO powers. As far as the plot goes, I think most unexplained issue is the significance of the ISOs, their capabilities, and so on. All Quorra had was Wolverine healing factor, which is cool, but what else is there? What did the fake Hangul they had on their arms represent?

As far as CLU and his gang taking over the world, I'm going to ignore it as a plot hole. I think that in general it would have been a bad idea to let a malignant program escape off the isolated Grid, no matter how he would have ended up attempting global domination. Whether overtly IRL, or hopping out of the Grid to hop into world network systems, or whatever.

I think my other complaint besides that the ISOs were unexplained/unshown, is that they didn't show more resistance fighters. They appeared deus ex machina style at the EOL Club, and old Jeff Bridges is absolutely amazing as Obi-Wan-Gandalf there, as in his other action scenes, but that was it. It would have been cool at some point, maybe at the end, to see the programs rising up for themselves. On the other hand, maybe that would have been spoiled by the fact that it looks like everyone except for Tron himself got absorbed into reintegrated Flynn-CLU.

[Justice]

I thought that she didn't have a healing factor, and it was Flynn simply repairing what amounted to "broken code", using her identity disc?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

No comments yet on the choppy facial animation? There were a few moments when Clu looked pretty creepy. Also, I think he looked more like a young Kurt Russell than what Jeff Bridges looked like in the 80's.

[Chaotic Neutral]

For the whole "How can Flynn conquer the world with his tiny army" thing I will say that he probably had no idea how massive our world really was and probably would not have got very far.

This is the best way of thinking about. Could you image that giant aircraft carrier thing being formed in the tiny basement, demolishing a few city blocks?

That said, it was an excellent movie in my opinion. Lovely visuals and music. The ending did come across a bit lacking in tension, but this is not a dealbreaker.

Also, even though it is childish, Quorra is smoking hot.

Zor

I thought he was going to take over the internet and make a giant version of the Grid.

[CaptainChewbacca]

His plan isn't entirely clear. It may have been that once he went through the portal he was going to migrate systems, or maybe he thought he could manifest his command carrier in the real world. At the end it isn't super-important.

[Manus Celer Dei]

I forgot to add-

I think Tron's "I fight for the Users" was probably the most bad-assed character moment in the whole movie. Something about the way he said it, at the point, just clicked.

The stuff with Tron was kinda weird really. They make a big point of highlighting Flynn's "Holy balls, it's Tron!" reaction, but never really do anything with it all until the very end, and then there's whole thing with him lighting back up in the water. I guess they're gonna come back to him in a sequel or something.

Flynn just felt like a Digital Lebowski at some parts, which was great. "You're messing with my Zen thing, dude!"

[Darwin]

Just saw it last night.

Did Sam shut the grid down at the end?

He downloaded a copy of something on to his necklace/SDcard though.

yagh

[neoolong]

I think he copied/moved the Grid from Flynn's Arcade onto the drive. Presumably he'll load it up onto an Encom computer to give it more room/speed or whatever. I imagine that's the setup for a potential sequel with Dillinger Jr. getting wind of it and programming something to investigate what Flynn Jr. is doing, who he presumably doesn't like for that prank and the general history of the company. That program would become something similar to the MCP, though look like Cillian Murphy.

I get the feeling that Clu might not have realized that our world isn't also a big computer system. His plan might have just assumed that the rules in the Grid would apply to the outside world.

Oh, and I wonder if that part with the guard about how stealing is wrong is in there to avoid having the film, through Sam, basically justify digital piracy. I don't imagine that's a great message in a big Hollywood film.

[Lord Relvenous]

On the other hand, maybe that would have been spoiled by the fact that it looks like everyone except for Tron himself got absorbed into reintegrated Flynn-CLU.

It looked to me like the massive explosion ended before it reached the shore of the ocean they had been travelling over. I'd guess the Grid still exists, and that it is on Sam's drive (which very likely has more storage space than the original system).

I was indifferent with how they handled Tron. I agree that some more character conflict being displayed would have been good, but he was pretty cool in both versions throughout the movie (Tron and Clu's Vader figure). I think maybe they didn't think he would still come across as bad ass when he's just a helmet if we had more access to his emotions. *shrug* It wasn't a big deal for me.

[neoolong]

It occurs to me that a lot of people, including much of the target audience for this movie, will likely not have seen the first movie and likely have no idea why Tron really matters as a character. Other than the fact that he was the other guy in the Flynn/Clu/Tron trifecta.

[Lord Relvenous]

I have a general idea, but I have to admit, never saw the movie. Quick rundown?