"Tron Legacy" - 0010111 or something like that

“Tron Legacy” materialized in theatres last Friday. Twenty years after its predecessor, “Legacy” attempts to recreate the digital magic we experienced with the first, but with a new story and theme relevant to a society much more at ease with and dependent on computer technology.

Jeff Bridges reprises his role as quirky intellectual anarchist Kevin Flynn, bent on using technology to cure man’s woes. Rising star Garrett Hedlund gives a strong performance as Flynn’s son, Sam. Bruce Boxleitner also makes several cameos throughout the film as Flynn’s longtime friend, Alan Bradley. Other notable cast members are Olivia Wilde, James Frain, Beau Garret, and Michael Sheen.

“Legacy” is set almost three decades after the first, with Flynn having been mysteriously missing for two of them. His son Sam has grown up to be a hot-headed tech savvy anarchist that occasionally dallies as a corporate saboteur on his father’s – and now his own – company, ENCOM.

Sam is unwittingly zapped into the computer world of “Tron” while seeking clues to his father’s whereabouts. He is pitted against a form of digitalized clone of Flynn that shares his appearance and knowledge, but little else.

In a desperate attempt to escape this dangerous world to the real one, Sam discovers the answer as to why his father has been missing, and much more.

“Legacy” sports a 3D world that seamlessly overlaps and envelops the actors and sets within the film. This is by far the best integration of computer generated (CG) and live actors I’ve seen yet.

And while the movie is a dramatic update in rendering technology over the first, the art designers still accurately captured that chiaroscuro “Tron” look. Majestic towers of neon colors break an impossible geometric horizon. Massive structures move as if with no mass. A web-work of light crisscrosses across the ground and sky.

All this is set to a beautiful and energetic soundtrack, synthesizing orchestral and electronic elements, composed by Daft Punk, a highly prominent French electronic music group.

A computer-generated background is not only characteristic of the “Tron” look: the costumes are fundamental as well. There is an almost superficial fixation on them in “Tron Legacy.”

Sleek and skin tight, almost constricting, these costumes are a far cry from those designed for the original “Tron” film. While the latter attempted to make the characters appear made of circuitry, the former is more reminiscent of the suits motorcycle racers wear.

Unlike the original “Tron” film, where the glow associated with the costumes was an effect added after filming, the decals on the suits in “Tron Legacy” are self-illuminating, which places subtle underlighting on the actors in dark settings.

Numerous shots are intermittently placed within the film to showcase these differences, one being a rather drawn out scene of Sam being dressed in his new armor by four super models in white semi-dominatrix outfits. It is one of the most suggestive scenes in the film.

As with its predecessor, “Legacy” sports technology in film never seen before. While the practice of live actors interacting with computer-generated ones is not new in film, the attempt to create a CG actor that can pass for a real human is. “Legacy” goes a even step further and attempts to recreate a younger version of a real actor starring in the film – in this case, Jeff Bridges.

While a technical marvel in itself, the attempt falls flat repeatedly throughout the film. Maybe the technology is too new, or the implementation was poorly done, but while the CG model of Bridges can pass for a younger version of himself in still shots, its unreal nature is very apparent when animated. It suffers from what is called the Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley is a theory that claims the closer in appearance a simulacrum of a human becomes, the larger the sense of empathy we will develop for it, until it is almost life-like in appearance. At that point, our empathy will switch to revulsion, as our viewpoint changes from noticing similarities to focusing on its differences. We no longer see it as an object that has the appearance of life, but a human-like thing that lacks it.

I won’t say that it was a mistake to attempt such a life-like CG character, but it was not a good decision to use it as the main antagonist of the movie. A film revolves around its villain and is carried by the villain and, honestly, it’s more about the villain than anyone else. If the suspension of disbelief is broken every time the villain makes an onscreen appearance, the whole film suffers.

“Tron Legacy” did not only suffer from a weak antagonist, but also a poorly developed story. Nothing is worse than seeing a film and knowing so much more could have come from it. The first “Tron” film, while some could call silly, touched at something core to humanity, our search for something greater. No creature, great or small, or in Tron’s case, an abstract logical pattern, is content with what is just in front of it. Life needs to have more meaning than that.

I didn’t get that feeling from “Tron Legacy.” The conflicts were cliché and felt unimportant. The main antagonist’s motives were childish and simple. An attempt was made to place a human spin within the story with Flynn coming to the realization that technology could never replace the relationship he had with his son, but it felt tacked on at the end.

There was a sort of undercurrent to the story of “Tron Legacy” that had much more potential as the film’s primary theme: new sentient technology making older sentient technology obsolete, and the parallel we face today as humans in a world dominated by science and our own fear of being made obsolete. But this idea was never explored, and instead we are left with a foreboding feeling about technology and self-aware computers; how a sentient machine bound by a literal translation of a command could become a destructive monster.

While “Tron Legacy” lives up to its name in delivering state-of-the-art effects, it simply isn’t a worthy successor to the original “Tron” story and message.

The reviewer, Forest Rhodes, is a writer, graphic designer, and pagination artist who specializes in creating original 3D art.

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