end of line
Diane and I watched Tron: Legacy last Wednesday. Overall, we enjoyed it. I hadn’t seen the original in 20+ years, and even when I did see it, I wasn’t all that into it (this being the “cartoon era” of my viewing life, which meant I had little use for live-action films). The new movie’s visuals were very impressive, as was the soundtrack, which I’m currently listening to.
I was a little concerned that due to all the advances in special effects and digital filmmaking since the original came out, we would be too “jaded” to appreciate whatever the new film had to offer, but visually, I think they genuinely pushed the envelope and offered something, if not entirely new (there are homages to / ripoffs of other movies everywhere), at least dynamic and fresh. There have been huge cultural shifts in the years between the original and the sequel; computers have become ubiquitous and much less “exotic” than they were in the mid-’80s, so the new film had a lot of work to do to overcome that familiarity. There were a number of approaches they could have taken with the plot, characters, and visuals, and I was a little disappointed they decided to do pretty much a straight update instead of something more creative and ambitious. They tried to shoehorn in a few more current themes, like the ongoing open- versus closed-source software battle, and the more immediate nature of virtual reality vis-à-vis what it means to be human, but unfortunately, they were just window dressing on a fundamentally conventional and convoluted action flick. But at least the movie looked and sounded great. I’ll choose to focus on that. Very eager to see what they do with the upcoming animated series.