Game Over

I saw TRON Legacy--Joseph Kosinski’s sequel to the 1982 cult classic Tron last night...And as someone who loved the original as a kid during the arcade revolution-I was really looking forward to the follow up. Unfortunately though despite some ambitious intent the film never lives up to the whole Legacy thing

As the story opens it's 1989, Kevin Flynn (a CG de-aged Jeff Bridges), an innovative software engineer and the CEO of ENCOM International, tells his eight-year-old son Sam (Owen Best) about a new "digital frontier" he has created called The Grid, a virtual domain existing inside the ENCOM mainframe. Kevin tells Sam of the two programs helping him, Tron and Clu (Bridges). Tron keeps The Grid secure, while Clu is tasked with creating the perfect system.

Twenty years later, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), haunted by Flynn's mysterious disappearance, is visited by his Father's pal Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) who tells him that he received a page that originated from a supposedly disconnected number at Flynn's abandoned arcade. Exploring the arcade, Sam discovers a concealed door leading to a computer laboratory in the basement. Attempting to discover what his father was doing--he pulls up the logs and reissues the last command entered In doing so Sam activates a digitizing laser which transports him to The Grid.

Soon after Sam is captured and taken to the game arena where he receives combat armor and an identity storage battle disc from four Sirens, including Gem (Beau Garrett). When Sam attempts to escape he is pitted against Rinzler, (Anis Cheurfa) a master of the games, who discovers that Sam is not a program, but a User. Sam is taken to Clu, who Sam initially believes is his father. Clu brings Sam into a Light Cycle match with several other programs, and Sam is nearly killed just as Quorra (Olivia Wilde) rescues him, taking him to a distant hideout in the Off-Grid Outlands. There, he is reunited with his father Kevin. It is revealed that during The Grid's development the so-called "isomorphic algorithms" (ISOs) manifested out with the potential to unlock mysteries in almost every field of science, religion and medicine. Clu saw the ISOs as imperfect beings and following his programming, betrayed both Kevin and Tron and seized control over The Grid. He then systematically eliminated all ISOs. It is further revealed that the portal to the real world, which takes massive amounts of energy to sustain, cannot be open indefinitely and ultimately closes: it can only be opened from the outside.

Quorra tells Sam that Kevin can choose to "re-integrate" with Clu at any time, but that the process would destroy them both. Seeing how determined Sam is to go back, Quorra tells him about a program called Zuse (Michael Sheen) who she believes may be able to provide safe passage for both Flynn's to make it out of The Grid....

The script by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and director Kosinski try very hard to let the sequel have that same wow factor that the ahead of its time first film had but somewhere along the way this pic gets lost under the weight of too much tech speak and convoluted narrative-Sure its look is eye-popping at times but that was not enough to keep me entertained for 2 hours plus. Another thing the story lacks is humor. A few lame attempts but that's it

There were action sequences yes--but not as many as I thought there would be. There are so many scenes heavy with dialogue that seem to go on forever-- that when things finally get moving again its like a shot on the arm but it is fleeting.

If you are a regular reader here you already know that I have a strong dislike for the use of 3-D...I think it only serves to take the viewer out of the film as you wait for things to pop off the screen....To my surprise the theater I saw the flick in was only showing it in the format--After a little sticker shock over the ticket price--I figured well if any film was tailor made to take full advantage of 3-D it would be TRON right? Wrong! Save for a few moments there wasn't many wow bits. In fact the 3-D trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides made better use of the technique!

The only bright spot for me was the prank sequence in the beginning of the film where Hedlund showed me that he can be quite the action hero if given proper daring do stuff to er do.

I was really hoping for a better Tron sequel worth the 28 year wait.