TRON: Legacy

Evan and I went to see TRON: Legacy last night with some friends. The experience started out with some good and some bad. First, the good. The theatre itself was amazing. The seats were fake-leather (instead of the usual felt cushions. No more static worries). The rows had more legroom, which also meant getting past people was easier (no more of this “sorry, excuse me, sorry, excuse me” nonsense). The seats reclined, although you had to be tall enough to make that work the best. I was only able to get about half the angle possible, so shorter people may have a small problem. Or need to bring a phone book. Lastly, we didn’t need to worry about getting there early to grab seats, because I could choose them AHEAD OF TIME! What great planning by the movie people. It may only be possible at that theatre (3D, AVX, lots of initials for it), but still. Awesome! We may never go anywhere again.

The bad: there was a family in front of us that included two six to ten year old boys, and a baby. Seriously. Could not have been older than two years. I would question the parenting skills, but it’s a touchy subject with most people. Secondly, there was a group of girls behind us who commented on everything. I didn’t mind too much because I could tune them out (and the movie was loud enough to drown out a lot), and also because I agreed with them half the time. Still, it wasn’t audience participation night. Shut up!

Trailers started off well. No ads or anything, just dimmed lights and future movies. Evan got Mars Needs Moms (I think). I got The Green Hornet again (Evan usually owns me on that one, but it was a different trailer) as well as On Stranger Tides and Thor. The latter three are going on our movie list to see next year, which is shaping up quite nicely.

The movie itself opened with a flashback to 1987, where a digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges left his son to go to work and never came home. The only nitpick I could find with this is that the news called him a video game icon. Video games didn’t become popular until the Famicon System (You’ll know it as the NES, or Nintendo) about a year later. Previous to that, video games had been limited to the Arcades and to Atari, and played mostly by geeks.

Anyhow, in the present day his son has his own adventures, breaking into the company he technically owns, but the board of directors controls. A bit later, he gets sucked into the computer world from the previous movie. And the movie suddenly takes a turn for the awesome.

The real world had been shot in 2D, and the computer world in 3D. So suddenly, the world jumps out at you. Plus, the sound is a theatre-shaking bass. So the first moments in the computer are EPIC! Good choices by the director.

After a brief interlude, the action starts. The arena games of TRON are featured (Disc and Lightcycles battles), with much better fight choreography these days than the last go around. And then there’s a really long break in the action while the plot unspools and Sam (Flynn’s son) has many things explained to him. Then there’s a club with a fight, and another (shorter) break, and the climax.

My secret fear is that despite the hype and trailers, and awesome fight scenes, this isn’t an actual action movie. And that would totally kill my review if it weren’t for a few things. Like I said, the choreography has comes miles since 1982, so the fighting is way cool. Secondly, this movie is amazing to look at. Possibly the best 3D I’ve ever seen (Avatar can suck it). The only bad thing to look at was the villains second-in-command. His facemask was silly. Everyone else had motorcycle helmets, or at least headgear that could come out of Mass Effect, but his facemask was a pretty stupid plastic thingy.

And then there’s the soundtrack. I’ve known for a while that Daft Punk was doing the soundtrack, so I had it on my list of things to pay attention to. A few weeks before the movie came out, they released a music video for Derezzed, and it was suitably Daft Punk-ish that I thought it likely I would get the album, expecting more techno. And Daft Punk knows its techno. I was totally blown away that they also knew their orchestral music. I was sitting there thinking “This soundtrack is pretty good. I should really get it.” And then they had a scene with Fall, and it was more “I must acquire this soundtrack as soon as humanly possible.” It takes place in an elevator with no brakes, so if you can get past the sound of it plummeting to its doom, you can appreciate the gravity of the song.

There are of course some minuses to this movie. The breaks in action are annoying. There are some clunky lines, particularly at the end, when the heroes fall victim to one-liner-syndrome. It’s where they’re forced by the writers to say one-liners right before or after they dispatch each of their enemies. Hey writers, not everyone is Schwarzenegger or Willis. You can have capable actors emoting without speaking. And lastly, try to avoid seeing this movie with people who must comment to the entire movie about obvious things. Most of the time it was alright, but right at the end they made a comment so dumb we made fun of them for the entire walk to the car and most of the drive home.

Most of the time these would detract significantly from the movie. But this time, the movie is just too awesome. The soundtrack, action, and visuals of the movie are too good not to see it anywhere but in the biggest, loudest theatre you can. Twice.