Elec-Tron-ica

I waited around for a while, but eventually got the 5-disc Tron: Legacy set. I then waited even longer to start watching; getting the original Tron three weeks ago (I think; it was before our trip) and the new one a few days ago.

The first one was really interesting to watch; it was certainly quite artistic, with the creative use of BMX and hockey equipment (and jai alai and frisbee, I suppose, to a lesser degree). And the storyline was pretty cool, as well, with its creative mixture of online and IRL elements. It occasionally felt a little heavy-handed, particularly with the frequent "END OF LINE" statements, but those were only minor annoyances.

It had also never hit me how screwy the combination of a software company with Lawrence Livermore Labs (I still call it Lincoln Logs in my head) was. But it generally worked. (And realizing that that was Lawrence Livermore made that unbelievably thick door a lot more understandable.)

But the artistry is what should really define Tron. It was interesting to think, while re-watching (I hadn't seen it in ten years, I think) it, about how the CGI was state-of-the-art at the time, while realizing how much better the technology (especially the compositing) had gotten since then. In fact, it was so far behind by today's standards, that it actually looked pretty bad. But you do need to remember how bleeding edge that was, for the time. It made for an interesting contrast.

So, factoring all that in, I have to say that I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Not enough to watch the retrospective documentary (well, not more than five minutes of it), but still found it good.

And then I watched the newer one (although not in 3D; I should probably rectify that). I certainly didn't hate it, and it was a worthy successor from an artistic standpoint. It kept some of the iconic features from the first movie, with some impressively updated CGI. Having Jeff Bridges appear both old and young at the same time was neat, the trailers behind the vehicles were very cool-looking (even if they didn't really make any sense in a 3D environment), and they updated the neon-colored clothing.

But, plotwise? Oy. Remember me mentioning Thor and Green Lantern growing up (literally) overnight? Yeah, we got that part. The desire for him to do so was a bit more believable in this case, but having even a tiny bit of the competence to do so? Unlikely, to put it mildly. Plus, if he really disliked the CEO that much, why didn't he just get rid of him sooner, and replace him with someone he liked better?

I thought the appearance of Dillinger Jr was a bit... overdone, but putting it in there and then dropping it so quickly and completely? No. That needed to be either removed or expanded.

The appearance of unix (of some unknown (but not BSD) flavor)? That was amusing, if a bit silly.

The contact? Castor/Zeus was amazingly stupid for a seemingly clever guy.

Some irony? The first part of the movie talked a lot about the free flow of information, and how that's what Flynn was working towards. And his son was fully on board with that vision. What I found ironic about that is that Disney is one of the biggest pushers of increasing copyright (and copyright is all about restricting the free flow of information), and they seemed to be saying that information needs to be free. I wonder if any Disney executives noticed that.

A hex on them? You'd think, based on my many years of playing Champions (and some similar RPGs and simulation games (and Settlers)) that I loved the frequent use of the hex floor/ground. Umm, no. I guess it fit with calling it "The Grid", but no, I did not like it.

The story? It spent a long time on build-up (ie: background and character introduction). We never saw the title character's face (I don't know if we should call that a bad thing, but it was certainly weird). A couple of points did not make much sense (the most important of which was Quorra leaving with Sam but without her disk (which was so important that she couldn't even be physically healed without it), Tron being turned (and turned back) without explanation, the Isos being an unusual form of deus ex machina, etc).

Dialog? Well, it was better than Avatar (mostly in that it had no pretensions towards being interesting), but had nothing to recommend it.

In the end, I thought it was a visual success, but didn't really have much else to recommend it. Even the action only led to a few more nice visuals; it was pretty uninteresting outside of that.