A Legacy Of Shame

And On The 8th Day, Bill Created IMAX...

On December 17th, 2010, something amazing happened. An IMAX theatre opened in Wichita, Kansas, courtesy of my personal hero, Mr. Bill Warren. In a previous post dedicated to the thoroughly mediocre "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", I spent a great deal of time heaping praise on our local movie mogul for his efforts to elevate the movie-going experience in our fair city.

In the past twenty years, Mr. Warren has opened three exemplary moviehouses in the city of Wichita, as well as one in Oklahoma, that present a superior theatrical experience. From the great care taken in the A/V presentation of the films, to the elegant atmosphere present in the architecture and aesthetic design of the theatres themselves, Bill Warren has given our little corner of the world a great gift.

In fact, the only thing Wichita was missing was an IMAX theatre, which is essentially the best possible sight and sound presentation of a theatrical motion picture. But leave it to Bill Warren to rectify that little problem. Earlier this year, he broke ground on a large-scale renovation of his first opulent movie house, which included a brand-new IMAX screen. It was scheduled to open its doors on December 17th, and the inaugural film was fated to be TRON: Legacy.

I can't tell you how excited I was. Not only because a fucking sequel to TRON was actually coming, but because it was going to be the first true IMAX experience of my life. I'm a huge film nut, and theatrical presentation is very important to me. So this news was like crack for my deranged mind. As soon as tickets became available online, I reserved my seat for what was sure to be a transcendent theatrical experience.

Last Sunday, I ventured out into the cold afternoon to have my brain melted by Bill Warren's latest creation, fully expecting IMAX 3D to rape my senses and leave me quivering in my comfortable leather chair. The quality of the film itself was secondary; this was all about the presentation.

And what about the presentation? Well, Dear Imaginary Reader, it was the bee's knees. The auditorium itself is a massive place with comfortable stadium seating. The chairs, spacious and soft, gently recline to allow the viewer to gaze at the screen, and I felt like a newborn babe being cradled by a loving mother. The screen itself is... well, if you have seen a film in IMAX, then you know what to expect. It's huge. A massive, enveloping wall of silver material that completely encompasses one's field of vision. Of course, this being a Warren theatre, the massive screen is hidden behind an equally massive classic theatrical curtain until the show begins.

Before the IMAX magic unfolded, the audience was treated to a well-choreographed lightshow as the curtain rose into the rafters in synch with the awe-inspiring musical masterpiece "Thus Spake Zarathustra" assaulting my eardrums in crystal clear surround sound. Then we were shown a "sizzle reel" of footage from the documentary "Hubble 3D" that deftly demonstrated the capabilities of IMAX as a presentation medium.

I must say that the 3D effects in this demonstration were astounding. I've seen plenty of digital 3D films since Beowulf made the scene several years ago, but I have never seen such an effective presentation as this. The footage included an unmanned rocket blasting off into the heavens, bound for the International Space Station, and it was a fully immersive experience. As debris from the launch assaulted the camera, I found myself instinctively shifting my head to avoid the detritus as it flew out of the screen.

Yes, my friends... I was in love.

Before the film began, trailers for Marvel's Thor and Disney's Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides unspooled. I'm looking forward to both of these movies, despite the naysayers that dominate the Internet. Thor looks like fun, and I'm one of the few deluded souls who actually enjoyed the second and third Pirates films, so these trailers were right up my alley.

In short: the IMAX experience exceeded my expectations. The beautiful, ultra-sharp images and the booming, enveloping sound coupled with the amazing 3D effects had my inner geek squealing like an overexcited little boy as he sees the mountain of colorfully wrapped parcels nestled under the tree on Christmas morning. The IMAX hype is well-earned. I am a believer. And GOTUS bless Bill Warren for bringing IMAX to Wichita.

But what about the main event? What about TRON: Legacy? Well... that's a different story...

Greetings, Programs! - The Story

TRON: Legacy begins in the year 1989, as Kevin Flynn tells his young son Sam a bedtime story. But this isn't Goodnight Moon or The Monster At The End Of This Book. No, Flynn is spinning an imaginative yarn about some magical place called "the Grid" and the myriad programs that inhabit it. He speaks of a perfect world that lies within a computer and the valiant hero TRON that defends it. Before he leaves his son to dream in binary, he mentions how he can't wait to show the boy this amazing world some day soon.

Then he takes off on his Ducatti and falls off the face of the earth for two decades.

The next 20 years are condensed into a short flurry of exposition in the form of a nightly news story broadcast on a series of antiquated televisions in what appears to be the Matrix. We learn that after Flynn came back from his first sojourn in the Grid all those years ago, he became the CEO of Encom and that the two major games he created, Space Paranoids & TRON became the biggest-selling games in history. Flynn also had huge plans for the future, vowing to shock the worlds of science, philosophy and even religion. Then he just disappeared without a trace, leaving his poor son Sam an orphan.

We rejoin the narrative in the here and now, as now-27-year-old Sam Flynn breaks into Encom headquarters to pirate their latest operating system on the eve of its official release. Mission accomplished, he base-jumps from the roof of corporate HQ and lands in the loving arms of Johnny Law. Apparently theft and corporate espionage are no big shakes in Central City, as Sam makes bail later that evening.

Chilling in his free-standing waterfront garage/apartment, Sam is visited by his dad's old pal Alan Bradley, who says that he's received a page (how quaint!) from the disconnected number at Flynn's Arcade. An intrigued Sam decides he hasn't played Bad Dudes in while anyway, so he checks out the old arcade.

Inside, he rocks out to some Journey and finds his old man's secret underground lair, which contains an old humming computer server and what looks like a big telescope. Sam dicks around on the swank 1980's virtual keypad, accidentally activating the telescope! Wait, it's not really a telescope. It's actually a laser. Remember how Flynn got sucked into the computer in the original film? That's what his hapless son does at the old arcade.

Arriving in the sleek, reinvented "Grid", Sam is immediately captured by a massive looming Recognizer (floating tank-thing) and prepared for The Games with the help of four gorgeous latex-clad "sirens" who strip him of his User garb with laser fingers and fit him with new and improved glowing programwear! Then he is thrust into the Arena and forced to disc-duel with some very angry programs.

Sam finds that he's oddly quite good at this whole disc-flinging thing, and dispatches his first foes handily. Then he steps up to do battle with big bad Rinzler, the meanest, most dangerous, dual-disc wielding mamajama on the Grid. Rinzler kicks Sam's pasty ass, and when he is wounded, the audience sees that he bleeds. Holy shit! This guy's not some simple program. He's a fucking User!

Sam is quickly summoned to the personal battle frigate (I guess) of the Grid's ruler. At first, Sam sees this despot and believes him to be his long-lost father, although in Sam's own words he "hasn't aged a day". But this is not the All Mighty Flynn. This is CLU, a program created by Sam's missing dad to help create the perfect system here in Computerland.

After Flynn returned from his digital walkabout many years ago, he decided to use what he had learned to create a new world within the realm of bits and bytes, a place where he could... do... something... to benefit mankind. The logic's a little fuzzy, there. But he created this new Grid at his arcade, importing his old pal TRON from the Encom servers to aid him in this task. He also stood in front of a mirror and birthed a new program, CLU 2.0, to serve as the third collaborator in this mad experiment.

Things went smoothly for a while. But one day, something amazing happened. A group of programs wandered into this virtual world seemingly from out of nowhere. Flynn hadn't created them. In fact, nobody had. These new programs self-manifested in the Grid: a genuine digital miracle! These programs, called ISOs (which is short for Iso... something) arrived completely unexpected, and had the potential to change the real world in ways that are never made clear.

Seriously, the vagueness on display in this film is just mind-boggling. These ISOs are supposed to be special programs because they just materialized out of thin air, but that seems to be the extent of their amazing-ness. They never exhibit unique talents, and the only real difference between them and regular programs seems to be the glowing tattoos that pulse on their arms. Nifty.

CLU, disturbed by the emergence of these new programs, asks Flynn if it is still his duty to create the perfect system. A nonplussed Flynn awkwardly answers "...yeah?", and CLU takes that as his cue to take shit over. He summons soldiers to capture Flynn, but his stalwart companion TRON battles the evil programs to buy his buddy time to escape. Tron is seemingly killed in his heroic efforts.

Since that fateful day, Flynn has existed in exile, away from the Grid, and the brutal dictatorship of his creation. He fled the known Grid with the last of the ISOs, named Quorra, since CLU went all "final solution" on her extended family.

Back in the present, CLU warmly greets this son of Flynn, then immediately decides to kill him in a big light cycle fight. I don't get it, either. The big action sequence comes to an end when Sam is rescued by Quorra, who is driving a big dune buggy outfitted with surface-to-air rockets. So Sam escapes the grasp of CLU, and speeds to a much-anticipated reunion with his daddy in the mountains (there are mountains in the Grid? What?).

Flynn and Sam have an awkward heart-to-heart, then sit down to dinner (why is there a suckling pig? where did that come from?!). Sam wants to get his old man the hell out of Microchip Town, and needs to get to "the portal" to do it. Quorra suggests Sam visit with an old program named Zues, who once operated a kind of "underground railroad" for ISOs back in the day.

Sam ventures into the Grid to see Zues, who now calls himself "Castor", looks like the Thin White Duke and operates a bar called the "End Of Line" club. Of course Castor immediately betrays Sam. A big fight ensues involving Sam and CLU's henchmen. Flynn shows up to bail out his son, and gets his Identity Disc stolen in the process. This is apparently bad because the info imprinted on Flynn's disc is imperative to CLU's plans, which involve amassing an army of programs to enter the portal and bring CLU's "perfect system" into the real world.

First off, since when could programs manifest in the real world? Secondly, none of their neat glowing discs and lightsabers would work in the real world, so their arrival as a massive, conquering army might fall a little flat. Thirdly, why is CLU so keen on bringing his "perfect system" into our world when his world seems to have a lot of problems? There are fucking hobo programs, for pity's sake! For shame, CLU.

CLU is displeased that Castor allowed the Flynn family to escape, despite their acquisition of the much-heralded Identity Disc. So CLU blows up Castor and his stupid club. Some more shit happens. Our heroes race to the portal, only to be captured by CLU as he gathers his army near their destination. Sam steals back the disc, there's a big aerial shootout, and it is revealed that Rinzler is actually TRON, somehow corrupted by CLU and made evil.

Rinzler/TRON is shooting at the Flynns one moment, then he inexplicably remembers that he's supposed to be a good guy and crashes his laser plane into CLU's laser plane, and they both explode over the Sea of Simulation. CLU manages to steal TRON's spare laser plane (yes, he had a spare), and continues his puruit. TRON splashes into the water, and the ominous red lights on his suit flicker and turn a pale, heroic blue. TRON's back! Yay! And he is never seen again.

CLU arrives in time to shit all over the party at the portal, attempting to escape into the real world with Sam and Quorra (Wait, what? She's going with Sam?). But Elder Flynn decides enough is enough, and uses his badass User power to merge with his wayward creation, becoming one with the Force, or some shit. He explodes in a burst of light which washes over the Grid, eliminating CLU's army in the blink of an eye. The world is safe... I guess.

Wait, is Flynn dead? What the fuck?

Anyway, Sam is back in the real world, downloading the Grid from the old server in daddy's arcade into a compact memory card which he wears around his neck like a trophy. He then emerges into the night to find Quorra waiting for him (what?!), and as they ride off on his Ducatti, Quorra sees her first real sunrise. Fade out.

Derezzed - What The Fuck Did I just Watch?

Back during my Alice In Wonderland review I mentioned how excited I was to see TRON: Legacy. I wrote that even if the eventual film well and truly sucked, I would not be able to admit it due to my irrational love of the original film. I couldn't possibly admit to myself that a (truly unexpected) sequel to TRON would suck. To do so would be tantamount to inner-child abuse.

Apparently my inner-child needs to call a social worker, because TRON: Legacy is awful. It breaks my heart to admit it, but there it is. I walked away from the experience unable to convince myself that the film was anything other than an utter waste of my time as a passionate moviegoer. I have a lot of problems with this movie. And now I am going to talk about them.

To begin with, I'll focus on the film's action. To be sure, there are a smattering of action sequences in the movie. We have Sam's trial by fire in the Grid arena, the light cycle chase with CLU and his henchmen, the big shootout at Castor's nightclub, and a big laser plane dog fight during the film's climax. But none of these action sequences really pack any punch, aside from Sam's hectic disc duel in the arena, which is all too brief.

The disc duels have an energy to them that the other action beats lack. The first time we see one warrior program felled by his opponent's disc, he derezzes in spectacular fashion, shattering like electric glass. It's a very cool visual effect, and it makes program death in this sequel seem much more visceral. And watching Sam and his opponents duel in their confined chambers gives the sequence immediacy. We know exactly where the combatants are at all times, even when the movie throws in a three-dimensional element, allowing the characters to fight on the walls and ceilings. It's cool.

None of the other action sequences are cool. The light cycle chase takes place on a vast, multi-leveled grid, and there's no sense of coherent geography to the whole affair. We have no real idea where any of the characters are on this grid at any time. They're all just driving around, trying to knock each other out of the game.

Another problem with this sequence is the light cycles themselves. In the original film, the light cycles traveled in straight lines on the game grid, confined to sharp ninety degree turns, creating an ever-shrinking labyrinth of deadly walls in their wake. This made the cycle duels more frantic, more exciting. As the grid continued to grow smaller within this forest of glowing walls, the combatants had to react quicker, each move marking the difference between life and death. Exciting stuff.

In the sequel, the light cycles react more like traditional motorcycles, traveling in fluid motions across the grid. There are no right angles, no tight corners. This deflates most of the tension. Of course, in the original film, the light cycles behaved more like real-world motorcycles outside of the game grid. I don't immediately understand the purpose of this change in the sequel. Did the director think that that the traditional light cycle behavior in the game grid wouldn't work for a modern audience?

As for the battle at the End Of Line club (I hate that fucking name), it's just stupid. Sam is betrayed by the former Zues and Rinzler & friends show up to snatch the young man. A few scarred would-be revolutionaries (a completely wasted subplot) rise up to fight the baddies and are promptly cut down. Then Flynn shows up, providing an HP boost to all allies, and the put-upon programs battle their tormentors with renewed vigor. While this ruckus is going on, Castor stands alone with his laser cane, swaying his hips, showing the world his best Tony Montana impression, and generally acting like a completely ineffectual fucking lunatic.

Now this big fight was not well choreographed. If you actually paid any attention to the background players in some of the long shots, you'd see some of the sloppiest play-fighting in cinematic history. Cringe-worthy. And Michael Sheen just embarassed himself here. What the fuck was he thinking? He's a pretty good actor when he wants to be. Hell, he was even convincing as an ancient werewolf in the fucking Underworld films. But his Castor/Zues role is nothing but endless mugging for the camera. Shameful, Michael Sheen. Shameful.

What about the laser plane shootout? Once again, it's just confusing. The only moments when the audience can be sure that the villains are anywhere near the heroes during this battle are when they're actually shooting at each other. Aside from that, the whole sequence is just a montage of images of glowing fighter jets dodging mountains. The shots that actually show the progress of our heroes to their goal (the portal) are few and far between. The sequence just arbitrarily ended when the editor finally decided to insert the shot of the Flynns reaching the damned portal. How can a 200 million dollar movie feel like amateur hour?

Now let's talk about new CLU. A big deal has been made of the digital effects trickery used in this film, giving the program CLU the face of 1980's-era Jeff Bridges. I remember the glimpses in the trailers. They were decent, but unpolished. I assumed the effects artists were still working on these shots, and in the final film they would be improved. I was wrong. The "young Jeff Bridges" face on CLU never looked real. It was always distracting.

I remember reading a comment from someone involved with the film's production (I can't remember who) saying that TRON: Legacy was inspired by the absolutely stunning effects work used to age (and de-age) Brad Pitt in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, and that they were taking it a step further with this film. They failed conclusively. For shit's sake, the de-aging effects used on Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in X-Men - The Last Stand were more convincing!

And don't give me the "but in that movie the effects artists were just erasing age-lines on their faces, but in TRON: Legacy they had to render Jeff Bridges' face onto another actor" excuse. The digital wizards on Benjamin Button slapped Brad Pitt's face onto a midget and you couldn't tell the difference. These guys (and gals, I assume) just dropped the ball.

By the way, what's up with this ISO bullshit? Flynn keeps talking about how special they all were, that they had the potential to cause lasting and beneficial change to the real world. These amazing programs were going to rise up and become digital messiahs (a pretty cool band name, by the way). But we're never shown any evidence to back up these claims. Not even the fabled last ISO Quorra does anything of note. And if this is an allusion to the Technological Singularity, it's nothing more than an unexplained dead end in the film. Just another wasted subplot.

And who told Jeff Bridges that he could play himself in this movie? He's certainly not playing Kevin Flynn, the central protagonist from the original film. He's just Jeff Bridges, the laid-back hippie dude that we all know and love (except for my mother. she finds him creepy). Admittedly, he's the source of the only real comedy in the film with his occassional exclamations of "far out" and "radical". But it just doesn't feel right.

I suppose you could argue that since Flynn has been trapped in isolation within the Grid for twenty years (our time. In the Grid itself, he's been alive for centuries), he's a little detached, perhaps even a little crazy. And we get the detached part for perhaps two minutes early on. But we never get the crazy. We just get Jeffrey Lebowski. And I don't want "the dude" in TRON: Legacy.

That brings me to my biggest problem with the film: TRON. In this film, the valiant hero of the Grid has been reduced to the Darth Maul stand-in for this struggling franchise, nothing more than a two disc-wielding henchman. We're never shown how TRON was corrupted and turned by CLU and became his loyal servant. We're just expected to accept it. A half-hearted semi-explanation is thrown out near the end of the film: because CLU lacks the ability to write new programs, he uses programs defeated in the game grid, transforming them into soldiers for his invasion force. But it's insultingly vague.

TRON defeated the Master Control Program, goddammit! He's not some pitiful messenger program, he's an independent security program extraordinaire! How the fuck did he become new CLU's lackey? Fuck you, movie!

Flynn assumes that TRON died saving him, until he just notices Rinzler at one point and remarks "TRON, what have they done to you?". That's it. Flynn never mentions this to anybody. He never says to his son "hey Sam, maybe we should try to rescue TRON, seeing as how I owe him my miserable life, and all." No, he just goes on with his day. Nobody else aside from CLU even knows that Rinzler is TRON.

When TRON decides out of the fucking blue that he's on the side of the angels again and turns kamikaze on CLU's laser plane, only Flynn knows what his old friend just did. And he doesn't react at all. And since CLU just steals TRON's spare laser plane and continues his chase, TRON's sacrifice is completely in vain. Fuck you, movie!!

After TRON plunges into the Sea of Simulation and his evil red lights become a valorious blue, I was expecting him to show up at the portal and duel CLU to save his friend Flynn, allowing him to finally escape into the real world, not to mention getting a little payback for the centuries of slavery he endured at the hands of this despotic program. But no, we never see poor TRON again. I guess the old warhorse just drowned in the Sea of Simulation, his life a frustrating litany of failure.

It's like the brain-dead writers forgot that there was a character named "TRON" in the movie TRON until someone brought it to their attention mid-way through the production, and they felt obligated to insert the titular character just to pay lip service to the fans. Inexcusable.

FUCK YOU, MOVIE!!!

In the final analysis, TRON: Legacy is a worthless excuse for a movie. Sure, it's highly unlikely any sequel would have lived up to the expectations of a nostalgia-addled TRON freak like myself, but this movie is just garbage. It's a confusing, disjointed, nonsensical mess, and I hate it. Christ, even the 3D effects were lackluster. The "creative minds" behind this disaster don't understand the source material, they don't understand computers, or even simple things like "story" or "character".

Fuck TRON: Legacy. You strangled the last innocent corner of my cynical, jaded soul.

P.S. - Black Swan & True Grit reviews are coming. Eventually.

End Of Line.