TRON Legacy less 2.0, more Beta

Along with Wargames, TRON is one of the quintessential early computer geek flicks. Its use of the then-novel computer animation effects, and its personified version of programs as warriors and bits traveling as Light Cycles earned it a place in nearly every nerd's heart -- even if most would concede the writing wasn't near as advanced as its special effects.

Likewise, TRON Legacy is pretty and Daft Punk's soundtrack almost upstages everything, but the story of the Flynns's vacation to the Grid has all the nuance, originality, and epic gravitas from the writing credit as someone's late night drunken Unix command line history dump. It's worst crime, however, is that the story hints at more intellectually stimulating content as the now doubly exiled guru-arcitech Jeff Bridges speaks of a game changing event that occurred on the Grid that would have effects on all aspects of human society including the bounds of science and the definition of Religion. A pretty expensive tab the Dude wrings up with just that one speech, and TRON Legacy would have had trouble paying off an exploration of these intriguing notions. It doesn't even try. In typical Lebowskian style, the movie just slips out of the bar without paying the bill. While this big game changer is revealed in the second act, it is quickly dropped and the ramifications simply used as a faint plot point to push towards the next action sequence.

TRON 1.0 was inspiring to a lot of geeks because of its release at the emergence of the early 80s home computer revolution, and its heavy introduction of computer-generated special effects long before anybody ever heard of Pixar. TRON Legacy doesn’t enjoy these connections to help prop up its relevancy. Its strained root structure can only cling desperately to the previous 30-year-old film. So go for the effects and soundtrack, and don’t bother expecting too much from the story.