It has been a long time since I was excited and anticipating a movie, but that is certainly the feeling I have for Tron: Legacy. The obsession started from listening to the Daft Punk penned Tron: Legacy OST. It is not a typical Daft Punk work in that it is mainly orchestral (as with most soundtracks), but it is also noticeably electronic and shares shades of familiarity with Daft Punk’s work.

I’ve never watched Tron before, and did not know much about it aside from the name. I even saw a Tron bike (which I now know is a light racer) at the 2008 Fan Expo:

It was cool, but *shrug* there are so many sci-fi series that you can’t possibly follow all of them without being an uber-nerd.

I went to watch the Tron: Legacy trailer and it seemed to me like 1) a video game, and 2) had aspects from a real life version of Interstella 5555. All-in-all very stylish. I was interested in seeing it and then it occurred to me that I should probably watch Tron first to know what the heck would be going on!

Tron was originally released in 1982, also by Disney. To imagine Disney putting out a geeky computer and non-children movie is quite odd when they were releasing films like Bambi and Fantasia. Anyways to watch it now, Tron is quite dated; even the majority of the computer venacular they use is common knowledge, maybe it was just a children’s movie too early for its time. But it is also campy and b-movie type material, without context, I would probably give it a 2.5/5 (and that’s because I’m a geek!)

I did find it interesting for the ideas that it portrayed. It antropomorphisized computer programs and gave them a diety (the user). In fact, it’s almost like the reverse-Matrix where you plug into a computer world instead of unplugging from it. The “computer graphics” were simply, but they reminded me a lot of Rez and Spectre VR; which were probably influenced by Tron. The solar sailer and terrain that it travelled over also reminded me of some sci-fi themes.

I’m interested in seeing these images from Tron refined and stylized in Tron: Legacy (and maybe in 3D!) although I kind of expect that it will just be very cool and not have the depth or context of watching Tron 28 years late.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: disney, moviereview