Never has a movie looked so dazzling with impressive visual effects as TRON: Legacy. Almost 30 years after TRON, this sequel has technology on its side and director Joseph Kosinski knows how to use it. While visually, the movie is one of a kind, the characters and story are uncreative and have no depth.
Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) was just a boy when his father, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), left one night and never came back. Sam’s father was a virtual world creator and started with video games but went far and beyond that. Twenty years later, Sam, who is still in charge of his father’s company but has no desire to be apart of it, goes searching for his father and tries to uncover how and why he disappeared. While at his father’s old store, Sam is pulled into the same world that took his father.
This cyber universe is called The Grid – it was created by Kevin Flynn. He got caught up in this world searching for breakthroughs that could cure diseases and heal people back in our world. But Clu, a creation turned bad in the image of Kevin Flynn, wanted perfection and changed The Grid and how it operates. Now, only a white and orange light separate the good guys from the bad. Sam and his father only have so much time to get back to the portal to go home while traveling across The Grid and away from Clu.
Of course, this movie is a huge upgrade from the original and to have some of the original cast back is pretty cool. Bridges was in the original and it is fun to see him come back almost 30 years later to reprise his role as Kevin Flynn and Clu. And special EFX even makes Bridges a young man again. There is nothing wrong with Bridges’ performance, but I do not think he really needed to do another TRON movie. If you want to see him in a better movie with a greater performance then go see True Grit.
TRON: Legacy is the passing of the torch from father to son. Hedlund is an up and coming actor who does a nice job with the material he is working with, but his character is flat. Almost all of the characters are flat for that matter. Sam Flynn is an orphan who misses his dad and that is all we get to know about him. There is not a lot of information about Kevin, Clu, Sam and the others besides their names and how they got to the digital world.
The reason for all that is because the characters and story are just the passengers while the glitz and glamor provided by the visual effects is behind the wheel of this movie. The real excitement is in the glowing costumes, the appearing and disappearing bikes, and Frisbee-throwing weapons that also serve as a memory disc. It is the wildly, fascinating environment that the story takes place in that will captivate you and capture your attention.
It is a tough balancing act to try and keep your characters and their journey on the same level as the visuals, especially in a movie like TRON: Legacy. And it cannot be accomplished due to everything getting lost or ignored because the effects become overwhelming while the rest of the movie can never catch up. TRON: Legacy is stunning at first, but take away the visuals and you barely have anything at all.
Well…there is Jeff Bridges. You always have him to fall back on.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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