As the founder of Future-ish, a website about the science, design, and culture shaping our future, I'm pleased to report I spent the first evening of 2011 viewing the much anticipated TRON: Legacy at the fantastic Cinerama in Seattle. As you can see from my previous post, the experience actually started in the lobby where costumes from three generations of scifi were on exhibit including Flash Gordon, TRON, and The Matrix...pretty darn cool. I'm not necessarily the geekiest if scifi geeks, I've never been to a convention for example (yet), but I do get pretty excited about any new entries on the scene. So I was pretty 'lit up' to see TRON: Legacy. Given how groundbreaking the first TRON was, I went in with some pretty high expectations, especially after reading so many great reviews. That said, my thoughts on the movie are binary.
I did love the movie, I think it is worth every penny of the ticket price, and I would highly recommend that folks see it in the theater. The movie is entertaining, the acting good, the costumes and sets amazing, and the Daft Punk soundtrack was, shall we say, frackin awesome!
At the same time I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting to be wowed by the graphics and CGI, and they were good and even groundbreaking in some ways, but they failed to wow me. Perhaps it is because the first TRON did such a great job at creating another world, an 'inner world' if you will. In the first TRON, you could sense the restrictions of the digital world and the two dimensions. TRON: Legacy simply felt like any easily imagined futuristic city. The first TRON's costumers were, well, weird. But they jolted you. The costumes in TRON: Legacy were very cool indeed, but they felt related to all the contemporary superhero costumes one sees in movies these days. Furthermore, the plot was very predictable. The first TRON was pretty out there in its conception and story, whereas TRON: Legacy seemed to follow a pretty canned formula with many scenes that reminded me of other scifi treasures, from Buck Rogers to Fifth Element.
My favorite scene in the whole movie, by far, is when the sirens prepare Sam for the game grid...hence the image above. This scene felt was both original and 'inner-worldly'. The fact that it featured four fabulous sirens with stunning footwear and a catwalk that would make even Tyra Banks proud certainly scores points as well. Mind you, the sirens strut their stuff forwards and backwards (a simple effect but still chilling in that 'Number 6' sort of way). I could watch the scene over and over.
To facilitate that, here you go...
All in all, I give TRON: Legacy five out of five stars. I really did like the film. The fifth star just kinda flickers on and off.