Tron: Legacy

Not everyone is a Jedi-Nerd, so we need to explain this is a sequel to a computer animation 1.0 science-fiction movie that was made in the year 1982, so no big deal if you don’t know what happened last time because you weren’t even born or if you just don’t remember what happened in a movie you might’ve seen a million years ago on cable. It was kinda like The Matrix where you ended up inside the computer somehow and if you got “de-rezzed” there, you got killed here, in the real movie-world, and there were these crazy motorcycles made out of light and glowy tanks and creepy flying things that made weird computo-sounds and everybody was painted up to reflect black lights to maximum effect and there was an evil company and stuff, just like with real computers. Jeff Bridges, who is really fucking popular right now, was the star of the movie as computer hacker Kevin Flynn, but the hero-hero was this guy Tron who was a computer program or something, played by Bruce Boxleitner, who is not exactly enjoying a Bridgesian career, but he’s OK. And now it’s now, and we have Garret Hedlund as Sam Flynn, who inherited all of Jeff Bridges’ computer money because he disappeared, and as we grind our way to the inevitable leap through the looking glass, it’s kinda like watching one of the recent Batman flicks as young Sam does all kinds of outlaw stuff to prove he doesn’t give a fuck, but then.

So now it’s game on and we’re knee-deep in 3D, and again, why exactly do we have to keep going to movies and putting on glasses on top of our goddamn glasses? It’s no big deal, this 3D, but the IMAX picture and sound are totally kickass, so hurray for the IMAX and stuff, but we again call bullshit on the 3D, especially if it means extra loot out of our pockets even for the matinee. Anyway, all the now-retro Tron steez from the ’80s is in effect, version 2.0, and we get to watch people get fucked up by those glowing frisbees and exploded when their light-cycle gets cut off, and it must have been a pisser to keep glowing swords out of the hands of the combatants, but the violence is real computery and special-effecty fun and there isn’t enough of it, however, there is lots of the hotness that is Olivia Wilde, rocking some skin-tights and a badass haircut, and she’s totally hot and she helps Sam out while being hot.

Meanwhile, this flick takes a while to get going, but it’s a perfectly satisfying science-fiction movie experience. It was a very good call to liven things up with Michael Sheen from Frost/Nixon and television’s 30 Rock as a sleazy underworld character, along with Guess model Beau Garrett as his pneumatic assistant. Seriously, how did the ladies not get rashes from all the wardrobe trying to creep up into where no man has gone before? Anyway, there’s a prominent score by techno duo Daft Punk that helps move things along, and yeah, Jeff Bridges is here, there, and everywhere, and at this point in our brains he is now a swirly zen amalgam of the Dude, the guy from Crazy Heart, and now Rooster fucking Cogburn from True Grit, plus there’s some crazy CGI to give us the computo-version of his alter ego in Tron. And titular Tron is there, but not so much because then what are you gonna do for a version 3.0, right?