TRON: Legacy

Can you imagine what this technological and design gem would be like if it met the usual requirements we have for movies? It would be as great as a film with a well-developed, deep story equaling TRON in imagination, design inventiveness and a futuristic vision. Notice the details (the dashboards of the flying ships, motorcycle designs, the glowing lining of the costumes and the way the characters dissolve into pixels after being hit with a disc), seamless integration of these details into rides, flying and balletic fights, and the synchronization of this elegant visual dance with the majestic electronic music. Just ignore the dumb catchphrases along the lines of “You gotta be kidding me” and enjoy the answer “Fasten your seatbelt!” to the question “What is your name?” Whether you think TRON: Legacy is stupid or not, it is a filmmaking event, the only movie of its kind. (17/12/2010)

Kosinski will (probably) remain a one-film filmmaker. Whoever watches his commercials on YouTube and then Tron Legacy will understand that this director is a design genius with a unique sense of visuals, which is perfectly emphasized by Daft Punk's music, but he is also an absolutely bland storyteller. The attempts to create something epic are very funny, whereas the rest of it is kind of dysfunctional. And yet, unless you might want a serious cinematic adventure, it doesn't let up because the primitive plot actually doesn't hurt the film at all. Regardless, there are two ways in which the film can be seen. Either just "watch" it (perhaps in HD over time), or "experience" it in 3D (and I say that whilst having quite an aversion to this technology as a cheap decoy from clueless filmmakers). (05/01/2011)

At times the words about the triumph of film design come to mind, but the boredom reliably overwhelms everything. I, as a viewer, have long since sobered up from the 3D fascination and the new Tron has nothing new to offer. Neither story-wise nor narratively; adjectives like "riveting" or at least "interesting" have no place in Kosinski's world. I enjoyed the old Tron infinitely more, even with its simple 8-bit graphics. (10/01/2011)

An incredibly wonderful world full of three-dimensional images. A picture about art which is art in itself. This isn’t a typical family movie, even though it was made as one. This in fact goes hand in hand with the fact that Tron: Legacy as a thing created for the masses remained misunderstood by those very masses. And it bombed at the box office. It remains “just" an experimental work trying to link two worlds on both levels. Maybe it could achieved both, but despite the director’s skills, in some places he made mistakes and so he didn’t succeed in this. Too bad (digital Jeff will no longer look digital in a couple of years time. We’re getting close with the technology, but we still have some way to go). Even so, it left me with a feeling that no movie has left me with for a long time. Amazement, a cleansing experience (but different than with Cameron’s Avatar) in a world where 1982 turns into the present. In this case, 3D made sense. (20/01/2011)

A visually and atmospherically absolutely brilliant piece of work, and I firmly believe that similar to films like The Matrix a decade ago, this film will set the pace and trend for the next several years in terms of technical execution and creativity. It's all the more regrettable that, in terms of plot, it's essentially a banal fairy tale that fails to entertain on its own. If they had managed to attach at least an average story to the “stylized” framework, it could have been a milestone in world cinematography. As it is, it's just an advertisement for how far today's technology can go, while also being a challenge thrown at James Cameron or Zack Snyder. (29/05/2011)