Movies that spawn from videogames and cartoons have stormed the industry in the past decade. These movies include Stay Alive, a horror flick based on the actions a user performs in a game environment that start to occur in real life; Transformers, a movie about robots who flee to earth to escape robotic extinction; and now Tron: Legacy. Tron, like most high-CGI works, raised the bar and broke the 3D barrier.
The idea of a computer program created to better the human experience sounds like the perfect nerd flick. Tron, though, held its own weight by appealing to a mass audience through the everyday happenings of main character Sam Flynn’s life in a city atmosphere.
His father, being the mastermind of ENCOM International, left the fate of the company to his son. But Sam chose a rogue life, living on his own in a makeshift shack that doubled as a garage and home for him and his dog. Garrett Hedlung, who previously featured in action films like Four Brothers and Troy, plays Sam Flynn. With his background in family-focused violence, Hedlung was the perfect candidate for this role.
Jeff Bridges plays Kevin Flynn, and was actually cast in the same position in 1982, when Disney’s rendition of Tron hit the theaters. The new movie changes the story line of its predecessor, making Kevin Flynn the sole creator of the Tron world and everything in it. Both Flynns must battle the alter ego they call Clu, originally created to help Kevin create the perfect world, to restore order in the masterpiece that is slowly being torn to pieces.
This 2010 recreation was filmed partially in 3D, adding some interesting concepts to the movie. Prior to the film’s actual beginning, a message appeared on the screen that read something close to “only some parts of this film are in 3D because the director intended most of the scenes to be 2D.” This struck me as kind of odd. Why not just make the whole movie in 2D? Why waste extra time and money on making only a few scenes three-dimensional?
Despite the fact that a good portion of the film could have been watched without the $5 plastic glasses, the intricacy portrayed by the Tron world was definitely visually entertaining. The team that produced the Tron graphics took the futuristic mechanical world to the next level, boasting hovercrafts, compactable motorcycles and the backpack disk that was said to hold the history and life of its wearer.
My intentions for the movie were to watch a glorified light show that incorporated a few alien-like battle scenes, and I was utterly impressed when I exited the theater that night. Stephen Lisberger did a wonderful job with the new and improved story line and his cast choice. This was a movie I had no option to look away from.