Tron Legacy came out 28 years after Tron. Unlike the original, people saw Tron Legacy when it came to theaters. Unlike Tron the movie, Tron Legacy had a big budget and enough special effects to look real. Unlike the original Tron, Tron Legacy isn’t an object of derision.
How, then, did Tron Legacy come into being when its predecessor is so lowly regarded? Not that Tron was without fans; it has sustained a healthy cult following by fans who insist the movie was ahead of its time on cyberspace and predicting the Internet.
But for most, the only highlight of Tron was Jeff Bridges’ appealing performance and the unique graphics. Everything else is charitably described as cheesy.
Is Tron the movie really so cheesy? Is it really just a special effects movie from 1982? Is there not the seed of an idea, which has kept it alive in the consciousness of its loyal fans? There is a unique and original idea behind Tron, and this is what allows it to be expanded into a sequel. There was more to the idea than what made it onscreen, and with a few changes, Tron could have been much better.
Program Contains Script Errors
It’s amazing that the makers of Tron could have spent all that time, effort and money on the special effects and the core concept and nearly ignored what truly brings movies to life: characters. The cynic could say that in being a special effects movie, it’s ahead of its time.
But Tron already has a charismatic leading man in Jeff Bridges who turns a wonderful performance from start to finish, and makes the audience cheer for him. Without spending more money, Tron could have done the same with the rest of the cast.
The title character from Tron the movie is a particular example. The audience is only told he is a hero and a brave warrior who fights for them, we rarely see this for ourselves. We don’t know how he got to be so courageous and we only see him overcoming a challenge equal to himself at the end.
For a hero to win over the audience, they must face a challenge with the odds stacked against him, and still overcome it. Also, the hero must grow stronger over the movie so his triumph is more satisfying and believable. Unfortunately, Tron stays the same throughout the movie and we never see him grow.
Similarly his counterpart, Sark, is more told than shown. The audience is told he is sadistic, and flashes are shown of the cruel society he has set up for the other programs. The reasons for his savagery are not explained, and we get little insight into his character.
None of this is helped by a pedestrian script with often laughable dialogue, which only Jeff Bridges is able to deliver convincingly. Lines like “Flynn had access to you, too” and “Busy dying, you old worn out excuse for a program?” are atrocious considering that the floating cube Bit conveyed way more emotion with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
Perhaps the worst sin is the lackluster direction given to the actors to deliver their lines and their performances. Except for Jeff Bridges’ devil-may-care attitude, none of the actors allow their characters to rise above the celluloid. The hero programs are so flat it’s hard to cheer for them. The villains are so one-dimensional it’s hard to fear them.
For a movie that puts forward a computer program as a bad guy, it fails to show how bad he really is, even when they started. The Master Control Program starts to flex its circuits when it threatens to take over the Pentagon and Kremlin, and boldly states it could control the world 900 times better than any human. Suddenly, HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey is evoked, but this plot line is dropped just as quickly as it starts.
Inside the digital world, innocent programs are persecuted and forced to fight to the death for the MCP’s twisted amusement. Any of them who talk of their users are harshly…reprimanded. If the MCP is truly creating a dystopia, the audience doesn’t see it as cruel and Orwellian, wasting an opportunity to create an evil empire to rebel against. If either of those plot lines were developed to their full potential, the MCP could have been one of cinema’s great villains.
None of this atmosphere is created, least of all by the musical score that errs on the side of cheesy 80’s synthesizer. Music is the easiest, cheapest and most effective ways to make audiences feel a certain way towards the scene. If the Tron soundtrack had been more orchestral, like Star Wars had done, audiences could have been brought along a much better emotional roller coaster.
Tron The Movie Is a Truncated Program
One question remains: why subject a goofy special effects movie to serious literary criticism? The movie obviously doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Given all these flaws, Tron is still a fun movie with a visual style that’s both unique and dazzling, and its look is every bit as cool today as it was back then, even though the movie is one that shouldn’t age well. Its gray skin tones and bright color lines are still interesting, and the Tron light bike game sequence will remain a knockout for years.
Most of all, it had an original idea: a person stuck inside a computer and programs that were little people, both borrowed by The Matrix. With a bit more TLC given to the writing and acting, Tron might have been a real classic instead of a cult movie.
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Joshua Price - Josh is an aspiring writer who's written poetry, ads, brochures, short stories, newspaper articles, and will write just about anything ...
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