TRON: Legacy in 3D at IMAX

 

TRON:  LEGACY - 3D at IMAX               C+                                                                            USA  (127 mi)  2010  d: Joseph Kosinski

You're messing with my Zen thing, man!        —Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges)

It’s always something of a disappointment when a disclaimer plays at the opening of a 3D movie indicating much of the film was shot in 2D, so viewers please do not be alarmed.  Well of course that’s a disappointment, and remains one throughout, as it only draws attention to what becomes one of the film’s biggest drawbacks and limitations.  The whole purpose of seeing a film like this is to immerse oneself in a visual 3D feast of eye-popping artistry where an escapist futuristic video game world comes to life, where if it’s not 3D enhanced, then what’s the point?  Actually, only the opening and closing sequences are shot entirely in 2D, bookkending a thrill ride down a rabbit hole into a virtual world.  As this is a follow up to a 1982 film just called TRON, it is expected to hold the key to a new parallel universe onscreen.  It’s an interesting mix of old and new, as computers and electronic possibilities were just getting started in 1982, the same year BLADE RUNNER was released, where the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” is playing on the jukebox in the background, and for that time period, this would probably look dazzling.  But judged by today’s standards and seen thirty years later, the visual scheme looks pretty similar to what we’ve already seen, where too much is left unexplained and the near incomprehensible storyline never comes together in any intelligible whole, but the idea of creating a virtual computer world that takes on a life of its own is intriguing, where all imperfections, such as the presence of humans, like a computer virus, need to be cleansed from the system in order for operations to run as smoothly as possible.  Instead this has the feel of fragmented set pieces, which even if visually and architecturally impressive, remain disconnected from one another, with characters that never build up enough interest to carry the film.  It’s a mishmash of ideas where a young first-time director, an architect by training, simply hasn’t the sense of purpose to make this matter as anything more than at times provocative eye candy. 

Jeff Bridges was Kevin Flynn in the original, the CEO and chief video game designer for a computer software company, Encom, and was on the verge of designing something brilliant, a dazzling landscape of a computer designed, architecturally complex city called “The Grid,” the representation of a Utopian virtual ideal, something he intended to show to his son, but instead he disappeared, leaving his headstrong son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) to flail on his own, though he grows up rebellious and equally computer savvy.  By the time Sam is 27, with the ownership of his father’s company in legal chaos, a friend of his father’s receives a message from a number that’s been disconnected for over 20 years from Flynn’s long shut down Video Arcade.  When Sam goes to investigate, he soon finds himself face to face with “the Grid” as he immediately enters a strange new world inside the computer where he’s ushered into the public spectacle as a Thunderdome gladiator of some kind, where he quickly has to discover how to fight using a dangerous flying Frisbee that can take his head off.  But when he bleeds real blood, a rarity in these parts, he is immediately taken to the highest commander known as Clu (a computer generated version of Bridges twenty years earlier), who looks like his father, but isn’t.  Instead he’s thrown into another impossible competition, this time with a wand that turns into a race car, where competing contestants attempt to run the other competitors off the road, usually resulting in death.   

In the middle of this contest, Sam is whisked away in a car driven by a gorgeous young woman, Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a computer designed cybernetic lifeform called an “iso” (an isometric algorithm) who leads him away from the city into a protected and hidden landscape where his real father is living, having been overthrown by Clu and now having aged twenty years, where the formal dinner sequence is reminiscent of Kubrick’s White Room at the end of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968).  According to his father, once entered, the portal to this universe remains open only for a short duration, at which point it closes until someone from outside opens it up again, which is why he’s been stuck there for twenty years.  But since his father didn’t send the mysterious message for him, it’s apparent Clu most likely did in an attempt to spread his power and influence into the world outside, where he could conceivably enslave and take over the world.  This likelihood is why his father has remained inside, now offering his son the same advice, but Sam is more of a hothead who would risk the world for his own personal freedom.  What follows is a series of daring escapes and travails as they attempt to reach the portal, which of course is guarded by Clu and his minions, all matched by a stunning musical soundtrack written by Daft Punk that matches the tone of severity fraught with danger.  It’s easy to get lost in some of the intricately designed futuristic landscapes, but what’s missing is an original thought or the idea of seeing something we’ve never seen before.