Tron: Legacy [movie, review]
Dec. 17th, 2010 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOmaha and I went to see Tron: Legacy at the midnight showing last night. We went with a bunch of friends, including FallenPegasus and his clutch of friends from Aloha Haus and environs, and we all waited in line for an hour before heading in.
This is a film in desperate need of something more, something else. Because while there's very little substance to this film, the seeds of substance are everywhere. There are guns on mantlepieces, never to be fired. There are quests and journeys, never to be taken. There are questions, never to be answered.
For one (non-spoilery) example: Edward Dillinger, Jr. makes an appearance, and the film seems to be implying a Dillinger/Flynn rematch, only this time it's the sons of the originals doing battle-- only to have Junior have a brief moment before being whisked out of the story, never to be heard from again.
In the original, the battle inside the computer was a metaphor for the battle going on outside-- between the corrupt CEO and the noble young programmer out to save the company from itself. No such metaphor exists here.
But the real problem is that there are many stories going on inside Tron: Legacy, and none of them gel together well.
What we learn is that Flynn continued his experiments with "the Grid," the realization that inside Encom's specialized hardware (which apparently requires Solaris as its shepherding software) there exists a virtual world of semi-sentient beings whose sentience emerges as a result of the interaction between their initial programming model and the Encom hardware. Flynn set out to create a new, secret Grid with that hardware, one where he could explore and build out his perfect virtual world. A new MCP arises and takes over, trapping Flynn there. Many years later Flynn's son, Sam, gets tricked into going there, and hijinks ensue.
But the problems here are many. Flynn believes that a whole new form of sentience, without deliberate seeding, has emerged from the properties of the Grid; the MCP sees these new sentients as flaws, and purges them. Flynn states that saving the Last Emergent and getting it back to the "real" world will somehow convince the real world that creating new, emergent sentience is possible and will "change everything." But the how and the why of this "change everything" is never explained, so the audience develops zero investment in that plotline.
The Game Grid is still around, and still being used the same way the old film's was: to weed out errant programs. But the old grid was a testing and monitoring ground for the MCP; the new Games is bread-and-circuses for the inhabitants. The purpose for this evolution is never explained; this act (in the dramatic sense) was filmed strictly for spectacle, without regard for plot or theme, and the audience develops zero interest in that plotline.
Tron is still around, but he has been corrupted and works for the MCP. We are not told how or why. Also, our heroes make no effort at all to "save" Tron, so any actions Tron takes on behalf of the MCP seem arbitary. There is no hero's conflict here, and the audience develops zero investment in that plotline.
Flynn gave this new MCP an instruction: "Build a perfect world here in the Grid." But the world he builds is corrupt, and violent, and bloody (well, pixelated). He gives a ridiculous speech about wanting to take over the "real world," and shows jealousy and malice for being "bottled up" in Flynn's test servers, but he also insists to Flynn, "I did everything you wanted me to," and Flynn acknowledges that he did with some Dude-ready hippie talk. The MCP's conflicted, poorly articulated, never explored motives leave the audience too confused to develop any investment in that plotline.
It goes on and on in this same vein. The script reads a bit like trying to explain the Singularity to a Congressman: they hear the pretty lights and see the big booms, but they don't. quite. get. the. point.
And that's what's wrong with Tron: Legacy. The writers didn't understand the point of what they were writing; they knew enough about virtual reality to understand that "anything the programmer wants goes," so arbitrary rules are tossed in left and right to leave the semblance of a framework of a plot, but they didn't know how to write science fiction that actually means something about the human condition.
Like the Matrix films before it, Tron: Legacy is a movie too smart for the writers and producers who greenlit the final product. It's an incredibly beautiful homage to the original (and all of us geeks who built this world), but it will never be ranked as the classic that was its predecessor.
This is a film in desperate need of something more, something else. Because while there's very little substance to this film, the seeds of substance are everywhere. There are guns on mantlepieces, never to be fired. There are quests and journeys, never to be taken. There are questions, never to be answered.
For one (non-spoilery) example: Edward Dillinger, Jr. makes an appearance, and the film seems to be implying a Dillinger/Flynn rematch, only this time it's the sons of the originals doing battle-- only to have Junior have a brief moment before being whisked out of the story, never to be heard from again.
In the original, the battle inside the computer was a metaphor for the battle going on outside-- between the corrupt CEO and the noble young programmer out to save the company from itself. No such metaphor exists here.
But the real problem is that there are many stories going on inside Tron: Legacy, and none of them gel together well.
What we learn is that Flynn continued his experiments with "the Grid," the realization that inside Encom's specialized hardware (which apparently requires Solaris as its shepherding software) there exists a virtual world of semi-sentient beings whose sentience emerges as a result of the interaction between their initial programming model and the Encom hardware. Flynn set out to create a new, secret Grid with that hardware, one where he could explore and build out his perfect virtual world. A new MCP arises and takes over, trapping Flynn there. Many years later Flynn's son, Sam, gets tricked into going there, and hijinks ensue.
But the problems here are many. Flynn believes that a whole new form of sentience, without deliberate seeding, has emerged from the properties of the Grid; the MCP sees these new sentients as flaws, and purges them. Flynn states that saving the Last Emergent and getting it back to the "real" world will somehow convince the real world that creating new, emergent sentience is possible and will "change everything." But the how and the why of this "change everything" is never explained, so the audience develops zero investment in that plotline.
The Game Grid is still around, and still being used the same way the old film's was: to weed out errant programs. But the old grid was a testing and monitoring ground for the MCP; the new Games is bread-and-circuses for the inhabitants. The purpose for this evolution is never explained; this act (in the dramatic sense) was filmed strictly for spectacle, without regard for plot or theme, and the audience develops zero interest in that plotline.
Tron is still around, but he has been corrupted and works for the MCP. We are not told how or why. Also, our heroes make no effort at all to "save" Tron, so any actions Tron takes on behalf of the MCP seem arbitary. There is no hero's conflict here, and the audience develops zero investment in that plotline.
Flynn gave this new MCP an instruction: "Build a perfect world here in the Grid." But the world he builds is corrupt, and violent, and bloody (well, pixelated). He gives a ridiculous speech about wanting to take over the "real world," and shows jealousy and malice for being "bottled up" in Flynn's test servers, but he also insists to Flynn, "I did everything you wanted me to," and Flynn acknowledges that he did with some Dude-ready hippie talk. The MCP's conflicted, poorly articulated, never explored motives leave the audience too confused to develop any investment in that plotline.
It goes on and on in this same vein. The script reads a bit like trying to explain the Singularity to a Congressman: they hear the pretty lights and see the big booms, but they don't. quite. get. the. point.
And that's what's wrong with Tron: Legacy. The writers didn't understand the point of what they were writing; they knew enough about virtual reality to understand that "anything the programmer wants goes," so arbitrary rules are tossed in left and right to leave the semblance of a framework of a plot, but they didn't know how to write science fiction that actually means something about the human condition.
Like the Matrix films before it, Tron: Legacy is a movie too smart for the writers and producers who greenlit the final product. It's an incredibly beautiful homage to the original (and all of us geeks who built this world), but it will never be ranked as the classic that was its predecessor.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 01:53 am (UTC)Or they could've gone into how reversing the digitization laser turns it into a universal constructor, allowing easy realization of any idea: anything you can conceive of in the system, you can effortlessly make real -- they came maddeningly close to getting that one! Or they could've used the Isos as a springboard into genetic algorithms, describing the Grid as a system that is not only sentient but also self-improving.
There are any number of ways they could've made a good case for the "miracle" they wanted to have, but they didn't even really try. Instead they settled for "Well...abiogenesis sort of happened in here, too. I guess that's pretty cool, even though they're not really any different from any other programs, or people for that matter."
It was pretty to look at, though, and the cast was engaging enough.
Number 127
Where's the slash?
Date: 2010-12-20 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 11:25 pm (UTC)-Why would Sam bleed, and why do they eat food when they're in the grid (nevermind where the food comes from)? In the first movie it seems strongly implied that Flynn is electronic - he glows, he drinks their water/power, etc.
-Why over the course of 17(?) years (untold lifetimes on the grid) did Flynn do nothing other than meditate and build a fast light cycle? Couldn't he have written thousands of Trons and CLUs (and Recognizers, and Tanks, and...)?
-For that matter, what's Alan been up to this whole time? Wouldn't he have been looking for Flynn over the years, maybe investigating the arcade a little closer? Who's paying the electric bill at the arcade? Is Flynn's grid completely separate from Encom's grid? Does Encom still have a grid with Tron in it? Has Alan done any more programming in the intervening years?
-What are the moral implications of starting and stopping a grid, if you know it contains sentient life?
-Is there any connection between the CLU of the first movie and the CLU of the second movie besides the name and the face? And whither Bit?
-Why does killing CLU have to involve Flynn dying, other than "just because"?
-How did CLU send a page out in the read world? Does he have other connections to the outside world?
no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 07:03 am (UTC)