Tron is above all other things a visually stunning movie. The artists behind this movie have created an entire new universe stacked with digital skyscrapers, innovative sports arenas, and fantastical vehicles. Clearly, a lot of love, thought, and money went into the design of this movie. The huge problem is that nobody in the movie notices it. The characters walk around nonplussed and unimpressed with their surroundings and that unenthusiasm trickles right through to the audience. If the people in the story don’t care, why should we?
TRON: Legacy has been put in the hands of a first time director named Joseph Kosinski. It brings back Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, from the original movie (which I haven’t seen) and also introduces his son Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund. The story setup is thus: Kevin Flynn is a game designer working on something big that will change everything about technology, philosophy, and theology. It will ‘change the world,’ he tells his nine year old son as leaves the house to make the latest breakthrough at the office. He never comes back. Twenty-one years later, Sam Flynn is all grown up and living the life of the down-to-earth very rich. His apartment is made out of storage containers but is located on the riverfront and has an awesome view. He also has really cool gadgets and a great bike but this is balanced out by having a cute dog. And even though he apparently doesn’t have a job nor has worked a day in his life, that doesn’t mean he’s not smart or ambitious. He’s just not a fan of the big bad corporate men who have taken over his father’s company. So he’s biding his time till I don’t know, he steps into his father’s shoes and “changes the world,” or something.
That is until his godfather gets a page from his father Kevin, asking him to go down to the shop. So after the usual protest that he doesn’t want to, he goes to the office, quickly finds the secret passageway behind the TRON video game, accidentally activates a computer thingamajig, and is warped/digitally rendered into the confines of an infinite universe contained in a computer chip. The universe is bathed in a cool digital blue, everything seems to run on tracks, and you kind of have to see it to sort of get it (see above trailer). Almost immediately he is picked up by this weird “m” shaped ship full of dangerous red robots. They take him straight to a sports arena where he is forced to duel to the death other robots with Killer Frisbees.
Sam takes all of this remarkably in stride. I wouldn’t say Garrett is a bad actor because he is not much different than your ordinary absurdly stoic male action star. Extraordinary things only slightly perturb him from time to time. (If the above had happened to me, my reaction would be probably be along the lines of: “OMG What the Hell Is Going ON? What is this Place! Don’t kill me! AAHHH!!!” or something like that.) And yes he has never seen a Killer Frisbee before but that doesn’t mean he isn’t confident that he is better at the sport than robots supposedly programmed to know what they are doing.
After several games, which look like they should be much more dangerous than they actually are, Sam is rescued by a beautiful mystery girl, played by Olivia Wilde, who takes him “off the grid” to his long-lost father’s secret lair. There he meets his Dad for the first time in twenty years and is mercifully allowed by the writers of the movie to have a single tear run down his cheek. They don’t have much to say to each other though. Over a dinner of weird digital food filled with awkward pauses, the father finally asks, “I would guess that you have many questions?” To which Sam responds, “I only have one.” And then I finally had to laugh because the situation had gotten too absurd. Here’s a list of questions that I would have asked: Ahem, What the fuck is this place? How did you build it? How long did it take you to build it? What did you use to build it with? Who designed all of it? Who was the weird evil guy that looked like you? Why have you aged and he hasn’t? How does a stick turn into a motorcycle? Why can’t the motorcycles go ‘off the grid?’ What would happen to if I met with a Killer Frisbee? Do these robots have feelings or personalities? How did they get those personalities? And of course the most glaringly obvious question of all: Who the hell is the girl sitting at this table eating dinner with us? Earlier she had taken Sam on a tour of the lair and showed him the library. She especially likes Jules Verne. Okay, so she just saved your life, is smoking hot, AND she reads books. Now would be the perfect time to ask if she’s a robot. The question Sam asks instead is, “Why didn’t you come home that night?” That’s an okay question I guess, but seriously, is that really the only one? This kid is severely lacking in the area of imagination.
Some of those questions are eventually answered but only until the movie’s second half, and that is where things slow down considerably. Or that they ramp up. Or both in the sense that the movie’s stakes ramp up, but are so off-the-wall that it bored me considerably. In this movie, we are presented with an evil twin villain named CLUE who at one point goes so far as to hold a Nazi-style mass rally. What exactly is he planning to do? Invade the real world and take it over maybe, although how is never explained. Should anyone be worried? Given CLUE’s utter incompetence in using his army of baddies to stop three good guys, not really. Let me make a little contrast here. Last week I saw “Jackass 3D.” In that movie there was a segment called “TeeBall” where Ryan Dunn hits a TeeBall stand that then twirls around and strikes Steve-O in the balls. That segment was more effective than most of the drama in “TRON.” I can definitively say that I know what getting hit in the balls is all about. I haven’t a clue what’s going on here. My point is that it is better to have a villain that does little things that make sense than one who does big things in some vague pseudo-alarming way. If you’re going to make an epic about genocide and world domination, you better know enough about the subject to allow the audience to take it seriously. Otherwise it’s exactly what it is: Hollow and Absurd. And if the movie is like that, all those quiet melodramatic scenes where the actors talk seriously about their feelings just don’t work and take forever. What this movie should have done is gotten rid of the whole “Hitler” thing and just had the stakes tied to the games in the arena. Have a tournament or something with the ultimate prize being a father-son-hot girl ticket home to reality. The heavy drama would be gone, the action would still be packed, and the story would much more effective because it made sense.
This movie looks like it cost a hell of a lot of money to make. There’s nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong however in putting little to no effort into the dialogue or the characters. Jeff Bridges seems to be improvising lines from the Big Lebowski. Garret Hedlund is blank slate. Olivia Wilde looks great but doesn’t do much else. CLUE is creeping around the uncanny valley. The only actor that seems to be enjoying himself is Michael Sheen. I was tempted to wonder why a robot would be British and gay but overall I’m just glad he was there. Too bad he’s the last character introduced and the first one killed off. And for some reason Cillian Murphy, one of the most accomplished actors of the cast, was hired for only one scene. Perhaps thirty years from now somebody will finally get this story right.
No comments:
Post a Comment