TRON: Legacy

TRON: Legacy

Directed by: Joeseph Kosinsky

Cast: Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn/C.L.U.

Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn

Olivia Wilde as Quorra

Bruce Boxleintner as Alan Bradley/TRON

Rated: PG

“Perfection can never be attained, especially when it is already in front of us.”

In 1982, the world was given TRON, a movie that brought the inner workings of a computer to life. It introduced "the Grid", a land inside of a computer where programs battle each other as their users control them from the outside. While the concept was good, the plot was a little spotty and the overall feel was rather lacking. Now, 28 years later, audiences are experiencing TRON the way it should be.

Beginning 7 years after the original, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is telling the story of "The Grid", the land from the original TRON film to his son Sam. After sending Sam to bed, Kevin heads out to work, promising to see Sam the next day. A promise that was never fulfilled; Kevin Flynn disappeared that night.

The film jumps to present day and we see an older Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) still dealing with abandonment issues. He lives alone with a dog and enjoys stealing and high speed motorcycle chases. His life of leisure is disrupted when Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), an old friend of his father's, tells Sam that he was paged by his fathers arcade the night before.

With the same curiosity that killed someone's cat, Sam flies over to his fathers arcade. After trekking through mountains of dust, Sam discovers a secret office hidden behind an old TRON video game (convenient). After messing around with an old computer that is still turned on after 20 some-odd years (while everything else in the arcade is turned off), Sam is digitized and sucked into "The Grid".

There, he is immediately thrown into the classic games of "the Grid", this time in stunning high-resolution and amazing visual effects. After winning at the disc game, a corrupted program of his father's named Clu challenges him to the famous light-cycle race.

Classic light-cycle = lame

Legacy light cycle = awesome

After losing his teammates and facing imminent doom at the hands of Clu, Sam is saved by a mysterious figure in an awesome dune-buggy. The figure reveals herself to be a woman named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) and takes Sam to his father. After a touching reunion, Kevin Flynn tells Sam that Clu brought him here to further his plan for world domination (typical). Now, it's up to Sam, Kevin and Quorra to save the grid....and the world.

This is Quorra. And the best part of the mushy reunion scene.

The original TRON movie was an awesome plot idea, but wasn't executed well in my opinion. Tron: Legacy was a brilliant way to reintroduce and revamp a classic movie. Most of the main plot points from the original were brought up again (light-cycles, disk-fighting, that transport thing on the light wire), as well as a bunch of new elements that helped to expand the universe. Besides a weird Jeff-Bridges-is-god element, I felt that it was a pretty well-executed movie.

Legacy was the first sequel this year to introduce the idea of using the original cast in a remake, an idea that caught on pretty fast (Ghostbusters 3, for example). Not a bad idea considering that Legacy was a pretty successful revamp. Yes, Sam sounded like he was over acting at times, the plot twists were pretty predictable and, according to my dad and brother (who haven't seen the original), it wasn't very enjoyable. It had it's hiccups, but what movie doesn't? It was definitely worth the money to see, if for nothing else than to see the Grid finally done right.

Spencer Stephens
www.spencermeetsworld.blogspot.com