Back Onto the Grid

When it comes to Disney movies deserving of sequels, I doubt anyone was thinking 1982’s Tron was anywhere on that list. The film was a technical marvel, blending early CGI, green screen effects, and compositing to make a “digital” world that looked like nothing else in cinemas. Its entire legacy is built around its visuals and all the technical trickery the designers at Disney used to pull off their feat. The film was a modest success at the Box Office, pulling in $50 Mil against its $17 Mil budget, and, outside of a selection of die-hard fans, most audience members didn’t give all that much thought to Tron once the credits rolled on the film.

But Disney is loath to let go of a license, and in fairness everyone did love to talk about how visually interesting the film was. Perhaps, with the right story, the right characters, the right crew, a follow-up to Tron could be made that would not only wow the sci-fi fans in the audience but would also be a breakaway cultural hit. By 1999, rumors were spinning that Disney was looking at making some kind of sequel. The success of Tron 2.0, a video game released in 2003, only intensified the rumors. Clearly there was some kind of fanbase for the film. Could Disney tap into it?

The resulting film was eventually released in 2010 under the title Tron: Legacy. Starring returning actor Jeff Bridges (who starred in the first film) alongside franchise newcomers Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, Disney lined up all they could to make this thing a hit. Eye-popping visuals were paired with a killer soundtrack by Daft Punk, and the company marketed the hell out of the film. For a little while there, Tron: Legacy was everywhere. And then it debuted, in November of 2010, made $409.9 Mil at the Box Office… and was still considered a disappointment. That’s Hollywood math for you. So what happened?

Well, when you dig into the meat of the film, it’s easy to see where many flaws pop up. It starts early, with a plot that takes a long time to get going.Sam Flynn (Hedlund) is the son of famous computer programmer, and ENCOM CEO, Kevin Flynn (Bridges). Years ago (after the events of the first film but still two decades before the second), Flynn senior disappeared and never came back. His company was passed through many other hands, although Sam inherited his father’s shares, becoming the largest shareholders of ENCOM stock. The company shifted priorities, became like every other big tech group out there, all while Sam noted how they betrayed his father’s legacy.

Not that Sam wanted anything to do with actually running ENCOM. He preferred playing pranks at the shareholder meeting once a year before going off to ride his motorcycle and not really do anything with his life. But when his father’s best friend, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), gets a strange page from Sam’s dad, despite the number being disconnected and pagers not really being a thing anymore, Sam goes to investigate… and as his father’s old arcade he gets sucked into the digital world his father built. But it’s not a digital paradise anymore, not with the evil CLU (also Bridges) running amok, his armies capturing stray programs and turning them into warriors. Sam, with the help of the program Quorra (Wilde), will have to find his father and then find a way for the three of them, together, to take down CLU and free the digital world once again.

From the outset the film has to try and do two things. First, it has to make us care about its new character, Sam, while, two, putting out a new story that isn’t simply a retread of the previous film. On both counts the film pretty well fails. For starters, the film sets up Sam as a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t want any responsibility while he enjoys his money. Sure, he says he cares about what the company does, but a bit of light corporate espionage that the company can easily absorb and bounce back from doesn’t really feel like he’s making much of a statement. And even then, he seemingly gets off with a slap on the wrist from the law, showing that if you have enough money you can get away with anything. And this is supposed to be our hero.

Meanwhile, once Sam gets sucked into the digital world, he goes on an adventure that really isn’t that different from the first film. Sam ends up stuck in the games before he breaks free during the lightcycle chase. He gets the help of a skilled program who then guides him through the digital realm. He’s chased by an evil program set on eliminating the users (the humans that control the simulation) all while trying to find a way to make it to the central core of the world to find a way home. Sure, the details are different, but this film feels like a pretty solid trace of the original film, just (in Dragnet form) with the names of people changed to protect the innocent.

That’s not to say that Tron: Legacy needed to be vastly different, but it does leave this film feeling like a copy of a copy in many ways. Same digital world (even if it does look newer and shinier), same kind of vapid heroes, same half-baked concepts slapped around as if it had meaning. There’s a hollow core at the center of the Tron world and this sequel could have found a way to build something stronger and more interesting around it. Instead, though, it added a vapid story to the hollow world and it left the film feeling like less than it should have been.

In fairness I don’t think this is a flaw of the actors. While I know Hedlund and Wilde got a lot of flak for being pretty but shallow actors in this film, the fact is that the actors are only as good as the director leading them, and these two didn’t get much backing from the guy in charge, Joseph Kosinski. Weirdly, this was Kosinski’s first film, and for some reason Disney trusted this untested director with a massive blockbuster budget. But then, he would also go on to have a career defined by legacy sequels and empty, CGI-filled blockbusters with the likes of Oblivion, Twisters, and Top Gun: Maverick (one of his few out-and-out massive successes) on his resume. To say that Tron: Legacy is a film true to this director’s developing form would be an understatement.

I think the reason the film managed to make even $400 Mil is because of everything else the movie gets right in and around its empty story and shallow characters. The production design is top notch, taking the ideas behind the original Tron and fleshing them out into something that works for modern audiences. The costumes use LEDs in interesting ways to mimic the “drawn on the cell” look of the original film, while the sets are designed with a lovely blend of CGI and practical effects, making it all feel much more real than it should. The team behind the movie really wanted to render this world as clearly as they could and it shows.

And, of course, the soundtrack by Daft Punk is top notch. They scored and crafted their music to blend in with the scenes of the film so well, creating a film that feels, at times, like a perfectly executed music video. Sure, that doesn’t say much for the movie even at the best of times, and it also means that the soundtrack isn’t really all that great to listen to on its own (its tracks are too short and its vibes never quite land without the video scenes behind it), but the two halves blend together so well that it’s hard to think of the music without having the film to go with.

Still, Tron: Legacy is something of a noble failure. It does a lot to flesh out and develop the world of Tron, creating something even cooler looking than the first film. But all of that really doesn’t do much when the story and characters at the center are barely sketches, at best. I want to like Tron: Legacy, and in fairness I did enjoy this film more the second time watching it than I did the first. The movie, though, still left me empty once it was done. Tron: Legacy is very pretty, sounds great, and looks cool but what’s missing is a core that makes me care about anything going on in the film. Like the first movie, that core simply isn’t there.