Tron Legacy

Loved the visuals. Loved the music/audio. The story, not so much. (Much like the first Tron).

The best/worst part was the younger version of Jeff Bridges. I thought it was really well done. So well done that it probably opens the doors for dead actors to appear in new movies.

So well done that it probably opens the doors for dead actors to appear in new movies.

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I don't think that's going to work.They still need to motion capture the facila movements and facial movements are pretty big part of acting. Just capturing another actor and slapping the face of another one on it probably won't work.

maggi90w1 said:

I don't think that's going to work.They still need to motion capture the facila movements and facial movements are pretty big part of acting. Just capturing another actor and slapping the face of another one on it probably won't work.

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This is how Armie Hammer played both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network. Another actor played the body double but they digitized Hammer's face on him for all the scenes. It's done so well people didn't realize Hammer doesn't have a twin. (But what your staying still holds: Hammer was still doing all the acting, he wasn't CGI'd.)

But back to Tron: I think a lot of it comes down to the fact I never felt there was anything really at stake, so I didn't feel any urgency for resolution.

maggi90w1 said:

I don't think that's going to work.They still need to motion capture the facila movements and facial movements are pretty big part of acting. Just capturing another actor and slapping the face of another one on it probably won't work.

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You'd be surprised. Eventually there will be movie-goers that have never seen what a young Marlon Brando looked like, and may not care.

You do need motion control, but that doesn't mean you can't put another face on it. So I can see how an actor could imitate Marilyn Monroe and then we see her on screen...

Anyway, I saw it. Kind of underwhelmed. The visuals are stunning, of course, but I am disappointed by the story, and the lack of geek-worthy bits. The original is filled with that stuff. Here, it may as well be a dragon and wizard fantasy. The father-son thing doesn't work for me either.

But visually awesome. The action sequences are fun. And the soundtrack is rather good.

katiemac said:

But back to Tron: I think a lot of it comes down to the fact I never felt there was anything really at stake, so I didn't feel any urgency for resolution.

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I agree. In the original there's an evil corporation to defeat, in addition to trying to get out of the digital world. Here, the father-son is the core, and once Sam found Kevin, the tension is off, and the whole thing is just to get out of there and shut the thing down. It becomes Sam's coming of age, like, okay.

Like someone said, though, hopefully the tie to the original movie is done, now can they do some really wild and fantastic stuff with the sequels.

Just saw it. Well, they went in a different direction than I would have. The original movie was like a digital fairy-tale version of how a big mainframe works. I would've just expanded that idea into the Internet.

Also, the evolution of CGI actually works against the concept. In the 1982 movie, you could never forget you were watching images that existed inside a computer -- that was the whole point, that it was supposedly to be literally a world made of software. In the new movie, the top-of-the-line CGI is too realistic sometimes; easy to forget it's not supposed to represent a physical reality.

And, in 1982 I was willing to suspend disbelief, for the sake of an entertaining fable, when we were told that a human being could be magically converted into a digital simulacrum inside a computer grid. But:

The proposition that a computer program can be transformed into a living human being in the physical world

is a lot harder not to swallow, especially when it's presented as an overriding menace.

Still, it's always good to see Jeff Bridges. The off-putting emotional flatness of facial motion capturing (which Robert Zemeckis seems to love for some reason) works perfectly for CLU.

Manuel: I agree about your point in the white-out comment. That's one thing I just won't buy. Sorry. I know Flynn explained it all, but that is just too much for me to suspend my disbelief.

Actually, I agree with everything you said. The original makes it look like a real digital world. The stuff in here is too slick. The light cycle race, for example, as exciting as it is, loses its charm because it's too slick and fluid. I prefer it when they could only move perpendicularly!

I felt a lot bored. The plot was by-the-numbers. The CGI Jeff Bridges was distracting. The hero was a blank (if he's so mad at ENCOM, why doesn't he just take over the company from the beginning, with Alan Bradley's help?). The villain's motives come down to Daddy issues--I think, it's never really clear--that don't really justify his villainy. Michael Sheen was just playing Aro from Twilight. The film LOOKS amazing (except for James Frain's dominatrix outfit), and the score is beautiful, but there was nothing else there.

I guess I'm one of the few who liked it. I thought it was slow at times, but I enjoyed the acting (Michael Sheen utterly delightful as usual - really didn't see him acting ANYTHING like his Twilight character [thank goodness], but I guess that's just taste), and I have a soft spot for Jeff Bridges. The villain's motives seemed crystal clear to me, he was programmed to create the perfect world, and once he felt he'd done it on the grid it was time to come take over ours. I thought that was enough of a threat.

In all I wasn't exactly expecting Shakespeare, and having just seen the original TRON this past weekend I have no emotional attachment to it. Really, it's not much of a movie, there's little plot, but the young Jeff Bridges having fun was a delight.

Anyway, had fun. Liked the aesthetic, enjoyed the acting, and the plot worked fine for me. I always like father son bonding movies though . . .

Well, I almost had a good time - I was very impressed by the evil Jeff Bridges looking like he just wrapped on Winter Kills and Cutter And Bone . His good guy's Dude In Space act is getting old, honestly, though I did love him making like Obiwan and going up against Zeus the club owner weasel. Michael Sheen grabbed that movie like a rugby ball and ran with it, and this had almost as much hot leather action as the Matrix movies.
And seeing it in 3D IMAX was fun but almost too much of a good thing though (and boo to the packed noisy rush-hour crowd. I remember now why I only do late shows ). The scene where the son hacks his own corporation and then goes skydiving made my palms sweat!

mario_c said:

His good guy's Dude In Space act is getting old

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I know what you mean, but he was really just playing the same character from the original, just older, so it would have been odd had he not been playing the Dude in this incarnation. Despite it now being a very Jeff Bridges thing to do . . . he still has to keep continuity with what he did in the first film.

Things I loved: The music, the visuals.

Things I liked: The action.

Things I didn't like so much: Korra. No, I liked the idea of Korra, of recursively improving, sentient programs with the capacity to change the world. It's a great futurist concept, and shows the writers on Tron were reading some Ray Kurzweil.

BUT, she didn't DO anything! She should have been a total BAMF, but she really just kinda sat around and looked pretty.

Grumbles.

Zoombie said:

BUT, she didn't DO anything! She should have been a total BAMF, but she really just kinda sat around and looked pretty.

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She was a pretty good driver/pilot. But I do know what you mean, a moment where she demonstrated abilities courtesy of being higher on the evolutionary scale would have been cool.

Daft Punk.

That is all.

Also, the movie didn't take advantage of all the amazing new things that have taken place in the internet and in the world.

Like, they didn't show wi-fi, they didn't show how the internet has spread all over the world...

Grumbles.

Zoombie said:

Also, the movie didn't take advantage of all the amazing new things that have taken place in the internet and in the world.

Like, they didn't show wi-fi, they didn't show how the internet has spread all over the world...

Grumbles.

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That's my biggest gripes, since I'm an IT guy. The original was so cool because it actually was the "humanized" version of computers. The whole thing was about mainframe -- and trying to shut down a real-world system. As someone said, it's a digital fairytale.

This one basically ignores all that lovely stuff. I mean, Clu actually sends a PAGE -- I haven't seen anyone use a pager since 2001! OK, they explained it, but still.. all that missed opportunities. Instead, they went with the whole ISO stuff, which is like voodoo to me.

I'm betting it's eye appealing.
Story wise - not holding my breath.

Like Avatar, visually striking (ooh the colors)
but the story line, well it's been done before,
and before, and before, and before, and better.

So we'll start at 3 stars and go from there,
when I see from netflix.

*note to audience, I haven't been to a movie
theatre since HellBoy