Thursday 12 January 2012

Tron: Legacy

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Year:2010
Country of origin:USA
Director:Joseph Kosinski
Genre:Sci-fi sequel
Starring:Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner
Rating:3/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/
Tagline:The Game Has Changed.
Favourite line:"I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see."

28 years is one hell of a gap between an original movie and its sequel - I can't think of any that have had longer breaks - so, with Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and an assortment of other original cast members still on board, would Disney make a complete binary of it?
Well, not entirely.

The plot:
Garrett Hedlund plays Sam, a young man whose father, Kevin Flynn, was the head of a game design company that created the legendary Tron before his untimely disappearance.
Drawn to the site of his father's abandoned warehouse by a pager message from a number that should no longer exist, Sam is inadvertently sucked into the digital world of The Grid himself, where he must track down his true father, as well as do battle with the world and programmes in which he finds himself.

And it's a mixed bag.
The visuals are jaw-dropping, but it is just a fraction too dark, a common complaint when 3D is involved.
Jeff Bridges' is under-used, really, Hedlund as his son taking centre stage and his is a lumpen, wooden performance.
The initial set-up is intriguing but, once we enter the digital realm, it quickly descends into expositional dialogue interspersed with drawn out digital fight / chase scenes.
Crucially, though the effects have been updated, it seems little else has as all of the good ideas and impressive visual scenes were merely variations on what has gone before.
Special mention must be made of the 'de-ageing' of Bridges, which looks by turns impressive and genuinely terrifying.
Though no great fan of the original, I was interested enough in this sequel to feel a vague sense of disappointment at the end as, frankly, it was just a little dull. And by the Christ's it was too long.

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