I have been waiting to see ‘Tron: Legacy’ since the first day I saw the first trailer. I had seen the original years after it had come out, in a time when the graphics were already quite old, yet I found it a very fascinating overall story, and a unique visual theme.
The Tron Legacy previews and teasers have done an excellent job of hyping up the movie, and have made it my most anticipated movie of the year.
I was worried about seeing the movie- the movie “Inception” had also been hyped as “the next matrix”, and “a great movie”, and I had been disappointed when seeing it, not because it was a bad movie, but because I had been expecting a movie on caliber of the first Matrix, or better, so the movie left me with a slightly bad impression.
Is Tron Legacy be doomed to the same fate? Not at all!
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| Gotta love Olivia in this one! |
The movie actually surpassed my expectations, and Disney did a great job of giving you a taste of the new world of Tron, without spoiling the actual movie.
The movie was fast paced, giving a slight history of the ‘Sam Flynn’, the main character, but leading quickly into the world of Tron.
The story stays fairly fast paced throughout the movie, and they do a pretty decent job of evolving the main characters from the first movie. There aren’t really any “hidden surprises” int he movie, and the two “spoilers” at the end of the movie are heavily hinter throughout the movie, so you aren’t surprises at all when they finally reveal them to you.
The story also falls apart in a few places, even to the point of being slightly ridiculous (Flynn tries to apologize at the end to Clu…. after 20yrs and countless – maybe millions of years “on the grid”, the power for the computer was obviously turned off for 20yrs (yet programs were still running), and several other spots in the story), but overall the story was able to do a decent job of staying together and bringing it to the final climax, although slightly anti0climatic compared to the pacing of the rest of the movie.
It’s again another movie where you can tell they were running out of ideas towards the end, but at least managed to provide a decent ending.
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| Beau Garrett as ‘Gem’ – Great Duo is Michael Sheen |
I liked most of the main characters throughout the movie. Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) was believable as an angry, well off rich orphan, though less dark than Batman. Quorra (Olivia Wilde) is a believable as well, and provides a good counterpart to the two Flynns’ as a main character. Jeff Bridges was good as an old buddhist Hippie, as well as the main protagonist, and believable in both roles. Even supporting cast ‘Beau Garrett’ and ‘Michael Sheen’ were unforgettable, and fun characters, yet the movie left me wanting to see more or them, and they were both very devoted to their roles- from the way they walked, moved and pronounced their lines. A good duo in the movie, and I would have liked to see the story involve around them more, especially since, from some of the previews, it looked like Michael Sheen would have played a bigger part.
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| Michael Sheen in ‘Tron Legacy’ – Always up for delivering a great performance! |
Overall a great movie- the shortcomings definitely don’t ruin the movie, although are a slight let down, the story as a whole is well executed.
Soundtrack: I am not normally a fan of techno music by itself, but I found the soundtrack for Tron: Legacy to be very well done, and added a lot to the movie. Even by itself, the music is able to stand up as being fast paced and invigorating. I’ll definitely be buying this one for workout and inspirational music!
Computer Graphics:
The computer graphics in the movie are nothing short of amazing. I could tell when they were using CG characters, but they didn’t interfere with the scenes, and the interaction between real and CG actors was flawless. My girlfriend couldn’t tell the CG actors, so it is an achievement in terms of CG that someone outside the CG industry could believe that they were real characters.
I could not tell green screen scenes from actual scenes throughout the movie. Everything was integrated very well, and they blended traditional scenes with CG scenes seamlessly.
I wouldn’t say the movie is as big of a visual accomplishment as ‘Avatar’ was, but the blending of real actors on CG scenes was more realistic, and the movie made the world just as believable, albeit much simpler.
To compare it to avatar- the world is just as believable, the CG and live actors are better integrated together, but the computer graphics are much less complex and immersive. Avatar had a more emotionally involved storyline, and a sense of more “real conflict”, although Trons story is more “fun”. Both are great movies, with Avatar being more impressive visually due to the complexity, but less believable in the real +virtual actor scenes.
I would recommend seeing this movie, even if you have not seen the first one, it is an enjoyable, action packed science fiction movie, that really brings it’s world to life, and has some fantastic characters in it.
Conclusion: Great overall movie, with a few shortcomings in the believable of the story (which should be tolerable for a movie about a world inside a computer)
My Rating:
Quality of CG effects: 10/10
Complexity of CG effects: 7/10
Overall story: 9/10
Cast likability: 9/10
Making their world believable: 9/10
Story pacing: 9/10
Not having story gaps: 7/10
Beautiful overall Movie: 10/10
88% ~ But would say the movie deserves a solid ‘A’– one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, but not completely perfect.
Should you see this movie? Yes!