TRON, 1982 and TRON: Legacy, 2010.
Directed by Steve Lisberger and Joseph Kosinski.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, Barnard Hughes, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, and Michael Sheen.
SYNOPSIS:
Disney has reiussed TRON and TRON: Legacy in 4K Ultra HD, as well as digital versions, in anticipation of next month’s release of Tron: Ares. If you’re like me and you’re not a huge fan of either film, having them in digital form may be good enough. If you are a fan, though, my understanding is that the new Steelbooks are worth picking up.
As Disney attempts to turn TRON into a franchise with the upcoming release of TRON: Ares, the studio has issued the first two movies in the series on 4K Ultra HD. They supplied me with digital codes for the films; as far as I know, the extras found there are the same as what you’ll find on the discs, but you may want to double-check that, if you’re weighing digital versus physical. (I’m still a physical media guy, but I’m also downsizing my stuff for personal reasons, so I don’t mind having some movies only in digital form.)
TRON was an ambitious movie when it was released in 1982. It was a cutting-edge project for its time, with its heavy use of computer-generated special effects and its viewpoint on the digital world that was quite novel back then. Jeff Bridges stars as Kevin Flynn, a programmer who gets sucked into the computer used by his former employer, ENCOM, and assumes the identity of his alter ego, CLU, a program he was using to try to hack the system.
Bruce Boxleitner co-stars as fellow programmer Alan Bradley, who is the security program known as TRON in the digital world, and Cindy Morgan plays Dr. Lora Baines, Alan’s girlfriend and one of the people leading the digital project at ENCOM. Morgan also plays Yori, an input/output program created by Lora.
They’re opposed by the Master Control Program, which runs the digital world and has a second-in-command called Sark, whose real-life counterpart is Ed Dillinger, an ENCOM executive who stole Kevin’s work. David Warner plays both of those roles.
While the film was on the cutting edge on the graphics front at the time, its story left something to be desired. Sure, that happens a lot with high-concept films, but I’ve never found TRON’s characters to be anywhere near as interesting as the film’s look and feel. Like an amusement park ride, it’s a fun experience, but not something I feel the need to come back to again and again.
The extras found here lead off with the excellent 98-minute The Making of TRON, which is an old school documentary from the halcyon days of DVD. You also get a smattering of featurettes and one of the trailers.
It took 28 years for a sequel to appear, but TRON: Legacy didn’t fare much better than its predecessor, story-wise. Bridges comes back, along with Bruce Boxleitner, and the cast is rounded out with Garrett Hedlund as Kevin’s son, Sam, and Olivia Wilde as a program known as Quorra.
Kevin has been missing since Sam was a kid, and in his adult years, he’s been pushed out of any position of control at ENCOM. When Alan tells Sam that he received a pager message from Kevin’s arcade, which has been closed for many years, Sam takes it on himself to investigate and finds himself pulled into the digital world
This time around, CLU has assumed the role of heavy, having rebelled against Kevin when he went into the digital world to remake it after the events of the first film. Since CLU can’t age, Bridges was de-aged via CGI for the role, resulting in an uncanny valley effect that pushed the limits of the technology available in 2010. There were rumors that Disney might revisit that work for this new release, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Like TRON, this sequel is heavy on whiz-bang special effects and light on story and characterization. Tron is still a resident of the digital world, but the character is pushed aside in favor of Quorra and others, which is a shame since he and Alan could have been developed a bit more. In the end, TRON: Legacy mostly relies on heavily-used tropes.
The bonus features accompanying this one are pretty light too, with five featurettes running about 45 minutes total. Given the film’s 15th anniversary, and the heavy marketing push for TRON: Ares, it would have been nice to see a new featurette tossed in, but what’s here does the job.
Tron – Flickering Myth Rating – Film:★ ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★
Tron Legacy – Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
