![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tron: The Legacy (Quick Review)
Apr. 3rd, 2011 11:55 pmI went to see the Tron remake, and I have to say I don't understand why this film has gotten such mediocre reviews. I found it quite good, and about 100 times better than the original.
The Good
The effects, of course, are lovely. The film is a nice, escapist treat to watch, with good action scenes: fast, exciting and easy to track.
This wouldn't mean much, though, without good characters, and the film has them. It has no major "bad guys," but rather confusion among objectives and how to achieve them. It shows characters who are genuinely emotionally attached to each other, mostly in positive but sometimes in problematic ways. It's an interesting study in moral responsibility and what technological achievement means/is for. Our hero, Sam Flynn, son of the original, is not especially interesting but is not annoying, a feat in itself for the young, white, male, American action hero paradigm. As in the original, women have relatively little to do, but at least there's next to no romance.
The Bad
Minor spoiler: next to no Tron. Seldom has a titular character appeared so little. He needed at least one scene that actually involved dialogue. Alas, it was not to be, and this gap created a slight anticlimax at the end. Missed opportunity. (Tron was my favorite character in the original, by the by.)
Weak plotting in a couple of places, mainly where people fail to ask questions or have ideas that are so obvious that even a plot-oblivious person like me was onto them half an hour before they finally got brought up.
All in all, I recommend it to science fiction/cyberpunk fans and to folks who like action movies with a little moral complexity and sympathetic characters.
The Good
The effects, of course, are lovely. The film is a nice, escapist treat to watch, with good action scenes: fast, exciting and easy to track.
This wouldn't mean much, though, without good characters, and the film has them. It has no major "bad guys," but rather confusion among objectives and how to achieve them. It shows characters who are genuinely emotionally attached to each other, mostly in positive but sometimes in problematic ways. It's an interesting study in moral responsibility and what technological achievement means/is for. Our hero, Sam Flynn, son of the original, is not especially interesting but is not annoying, a feat in itself for the young, white, male, American action hero paradigm. As in the original, women have relatively little to do, but at least there's next to no romance.
The Bad
Minor spoiler: next to no Tron. Seldom has a titular character appeared so little. He needed at least one scene that actually involved dialogue. Alas, it was not to be, and this gap created a slight anticlimax at the end. Missed opportunity. (Tron was my favorite character in the original, by the by.)
Weak plotting in a couple of places, mainly where people fail to ask questions or have ideas that are so obvious that even a plot-oblivious person like me was onto them half an hour before they finally got brought up.
All in all, I recommend it to science fiction/cyberpunk fans and to folks who like action movies with a little moral complexity and sympathetic characters.
