# [Spoilers] Tron Legacy Review



## tecnowraith (Dec 17, 2010)

This is my Tron Legacy Review. I went to see the movie this past Monday night at a free screening from Disney marketing in Atlanta GA, my hometown. 
Fist things first this was the movie i was expecting ever since I heard them doing the squeal and I am glad. The film has great action, good story and every you would expect from Tron.

Now for the spoilers. Trons upgraded technology. The new light cycles,guards staff,Qurra's sword and a new: Light jets all from a new item called a light baton. This tech can be carried with you create object if need be. The light cycles are faster and deadlier and the light steams are now able to be turn on and off with a switch. The upgraded discs can show your you history, stats and some code (if your a program) which a user or program with knowledge and modify your code to harm, change you look or heal you. It acts like a Ka in Egyptian myth as your soul. There new items as well like light grenades laser guns (from ships mostly)

For the characters, Tron, Flynn and Clu 2.0 are in the movie with new programs which you no from the trailers and the main site as. Here is where you will find out the Rinzler is a corrupted version Tron cause Clu 2.0 has the ability to corrupt programs to his command (pun intended) called Rectify. Qurra is revealed to be a new type of program called Isomorphic Algorithms (better known as ISOs) are a race of programs that are self-created; in other words, they were not created by users. and She is the last of this type programs cause of Clu wiping them out  to make the perfect system Clu is show to be the new Caesar of the Grid.

The Grid itself has been upgraded as well the ability to change it's environment like moving floors and walls and gravity control. There is weather effects as well like wind, lighting and rain (from the video game I think). 

Kevin Flynn has shown to have more user powers now with more control over the grid to where he hack into the environment and make changes. And able to more stuff as well which you have see, thin jedi powers for the digital world. Kevin make the ultimate sacrifice to save his son. And a return of a fallen heroes will happen in the film.

That is all I can think of and you want to more go ahead and ask and I will to remember  them


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## Krug (Dec 17, 2010)

Saw it and have to say I was pretty bored. The pacing was horrible, even though the story had promise; father and son going up against evil clone of daddy. The lightcycle and light fighter sequence were great, but too little of that. The lead is so colourless his clothes outshone him. They should have let Wilde be the lead.


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## Mouseferatu (Dec 18, 2010)

Overall, I enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of fun, as a purely visual spectacle. Unfortunately, a few catastrophic missteps toward the end--less in _what_ happens than in _how_ it happens--prevent it from being nearly as good as it could/should have been.

(The thread title contains a spoiler warning, so I'm not blocking any of what follows. But they are _major_ spoilers. You've been warned.)

The various "surprise" reveals--Rinzler is Tron, Zeus betrays Flynn--were both pretty easy to see coming miles away, but that in and of itself doesn't bother me. I wasn't expecting any major plot twists in a movie like this. No, the serious problems come in _how_ some of these reveals came about.

There's no weight behind Flynn's realization that Rinzler is Tron. It's almost like a passing comment, when it should be huge for the character. The last minute turn of Rinzler back into Tron came pretty much out of nowhere. Sure, it was obviously going to happen, but something _significant_ should have _made_ it happen. Again, there's no weight to it; it feels like it happens just because the writers said "Hey, this is where this sort of thing is supposed to happen in Formulaic Script #217."

And finally, to give the turn _any_ weight, we needed to see Tron's face in that scene. The featureless helmet needed to go away, if only for a minute. As it is, the "faceless villain" effect that can work to make a villain menacing instead works to strip away what tiny bit of personality should have been injected into that scene. It, more even than Flynn's sacrifice, should have been the emotional payoff to the movie, and there's _nothing to it_. I don't expect a movie of this sort to have much in the way of depths or pathos--it's eye-candy--but the failures in that scene sucked away any little bit of meaning the movie _could_ have had. Every other flaw is excusable; these really aren't.

(It also didn't help that, after such great CGI throughout the whole movie, Clu's face in his final shot is _awful_.)

Like I said, I enjoyed it overall. I'm not sorry I watched it, and I had fun. But it's all tinged with patina of disappointment over what the movie could, and even _should_, have been.


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## Mouseferatu (Dec 18, 2010)

Urgh. The more I think about/absorb this movie, the more the logic breaks down. I'd better go to bed, while I still like it at all.


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## Wolf72 (Dec 19, 2010)

I really liked it, although 25 minutes of commercials and previews was a bit much imo.

sure there was lots of things unsaid (aka plot holes or plot pot-holes that you can still drive over and get to your destination).

my biggest question is how did Clu think he was going to get his thousands (if not more) of soldiers out of Flynn's arcade? ... I mean unless there was some sort of massive buffer ... otherwise it'd be a massive explosion of bodies!

I didn't mind some of the predictability at all ... thought worked out fine in the end.


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## Mouseferatu (Dec 19, 2010)

Wolf72 said:


> my biggest question is how did Clu think he was going to get his thousands (if not more) of soldiers out of Flynn's arcade? ... I mean unless there was some sort of massive buffer ... otherwise it'd be a massive explosion of bodies!




I'll do you one better. What the heck was Clu even planning to _do_ with them?

Leaving aside the question of whether the laser could even create that much matter (and for the record, if it could, it's essentially God and breaks other aspects of the movies), and the fact that there's insufficient room in the basement, the soldiers' vehicles and weapons wouldn't _work_ in the real world; the laws of physics and other sciences don't allow for it.

So Clu was planning to reshape our entire world with an army of several thousand _weapon-less_ soldiers.

Sure, they'd do a lot of damage locally. And then the various police and military forces would squash them.

If the threat had been "Clu and his programs are going to escape into the Internet, taking over the entire electronic world as they had the grid/individual server," that might at least have been viable. But they simply did not and could not pose a real threat to the _physical_ world.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Dec 19, 2010)

Clearly, Clu didn't have one.  What does a digital creation know about the physical world?

I enjoyed the movie, plot holes and all.  It's very similar to the first in sequence and structure, though I thought better done in characters and obviously special effects.


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## Krug (Dec 19, 2010)

I would have just been happier with more action sequences and less brooding moments.


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## Wolf72 (Dec 20, 2010)

ai! ... good points.  My first thought while watching the movie was that his program army would spread digitally, and throughout other servers and what not.

Maybe more is explained in the novelization of the movie (if there is one)


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## John Crichton (Dec 20, 2010)

Mouseferatu said:


> I'll do you one better. What the heck was Clu even planning to _do_ with them?



Probably not try a head-on assault, for starters.  Maybe something with computers.  We tend to lean on them funny machines quite a bit these days.


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## Mouseferatu (Dec 20, 2010)

John Crichton said:


> Probably not try a head-on assault, for starters.  Maybe something with computers.  We tend to lean on them funny machines quite a bit these days.




Which would be a perfectly logical thing for him to do. In fact, I even said as much in the post you partially quoted. Of course, the movie never hints or even implies that; instead it has him line up his soldiers in ranks, in front of a whole mess of vehicles and an image of the globe. Just like, you know, the military leader/dictator of an _army_.

I'm not prepared to let the movie off the hook for flaws just because the audience can think of ways around them that the movie itself doesn't support. I enjoyed most of it, but that doesn't change my viewpoint on the issues I raised.


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## Hand of Evil (Dec 20, 2010)

I wanted Tank battle.   

It was okay, could have been better - think it followed Tron script too much.  6 out of 10.


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## Rykion (Dec 20, 2010)

I enjoyed the movie, but pretty much agree with Mouseferatu on all points.  It would have been better to see Tron really go down fighting in a flashback, rather than have the Rinzler character with no real pay-off scene.  

I guess they could still do a sequel featuring Tron, but that seems highly unlikely.


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## John Crichton (Dec 20, 2010)

Mouseferatu said:


> Which would be a perfectly logical thing for him to do. In fact, I even said as much in the post you partially quoted. Of course, *the movie never hints or even implies that*; instead it has him line up his soldiers in ranks, in front of a whole mess of vehicles and an image of the globe. Just like, you know, the military leader/dictator of an _army_.



And there's where I disagree.  Considering the entire film takes place inside the digital realm I didn't think they're would be any other way than through computers that CLU would influence the real world.

I never thought for one second that his "army" would pop up on the streets and start wrecking havoc.  CLU is a program and every thing that wasn't Flynn, Same or Quorra (an ISO) was the same thing.  Didn't need to be implied.  It was flat out stated.  Multiple times.  

That's not to be confused with CLU being able to take physical form.  That part actually didn't matter in the whole scheme.   The danger was that CLU would "solve" the world's problems the same way he dealt with the grid.



Mouseferatu said:


> I'm not prepared to let the movie off the hook for flaws just because the audience can think of ways around them that the movie itself doesn't support. I enjoyed most of it, but that doesn't change my viewpoint on the issues I raised.



Was never on the hook for me.

That said, I would have *absolutely *liked to see more of the Tron character but the movie was never about him, it was about father and son (plus other stuff), so the time and attention paid to him was fine in the end.


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## Rykion (Dec 20, 2010)

I can see it now.  Clu is free and he's ready to take down the real world.  If only he can figure out where his DOS prompt is, and find a working computer with a 5 1/4" disk drive.  Otherwise those 150 floppy disks holding his new master program won't do him much good.

Kidding aside, Quorra was a program.  ISOs were programs that spontaneously appeared within the grid.  If she could become real, so could the other programs.  There was no mention of Clu planning to infect other computers in the movie.  The portal let you into the real world, it wasn't a connection for malicious code to reach other computers.


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## cignus_pfaccari (Dec 21, 2010)

I was calling Rinzler Boba Fett every time I made a snarky aside to my friend.  And I am surprised they didn't show his face at the end.  It'd've been easy as pie to have his helmet cracked by a stray shot and fall off or something.  Maybe Bruce Boxleitner's face doesn't wear well under CG?

Wasn't *bad*, and quite purty, but yeah, not a great film by any stretch of the imagination.

Brad


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## John Crichton (Dec 21, 2010)

Rykion said:


> Kidding aside, Quorra was a program.  ISOs were programs that spontaneously appeared within the grid.  If she could become real, so could the other programs.  There was no mention of Clu planning to infect other computers in the movie.  The portal let you into the real world, it wasn't a connection for malicious code to reach other computers.



ISOs were no more programs than Sam or Kevin Flynn.  They were "something else".

As for what the portal actually did for programs, it doesn't actually matter.  The point was that CLU was a real threat if he was given access to the real world.  Lotsa metaphor going on in this flick.


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## Relique du Madde (Dec 21, 2010)

While watching Tron 2 I was wondering how did Symbian get so good?  Also, if CLU got into the Real world with his army, who would win in a fight, CLU, Apple, Google, or MicroSoft or Nokia*?

Then again, it really disappointed me that Sam was such a Script Kiddie.  You would think that being the son of Flynn would have made him into some ultra hacker who could have Hacked CLU and ended the plot after 10 minutes.  But no, he had to break into Encom using an app!  An app!?!   Seriously.. how much of a threat (or how secure) is the Encom OS if it can be taken out by $0.99 Symbian app?



* Because of Symbian's pwnage of Encom.


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## DumbPaladin (Dec 31, 2010)

Based on the terrible reviews on EN World and with my personal friends, I arranged to watch Tron for free.

Everything people said in their earlier reviews was absolutely spot-on: nonsensical villain motivations; joyless and wooden lead outshone by all other actors on screen; pacing was off; not enough lightcycles & the like.  

I still enjoyed it, it was a 6.5 out of 10, maybe less as I keep thinking about it, but all in all I'm glad I didn't pay cash.  Thanks, reviewers!


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## Joshua Randall (Dec 31, 2010)

Yeah, it was pretty bad. 

The shame of it is that you can see the seeds of a... well, not a _great _movie, maybe not even a _good _movie, but at least a _better _movie... you can see those seeds trying to sprout.

The bit about the Iso programs spontaneously generating -- heck, you could do a whole movie about that.

The father/son stuff -- a cliche, but a good one.

CLU as a sympathetic villain -- so much more could've been done to make him actually memorable and really hateful (even as we pity him).

But... no.

Also, worst part of the movie: Zeus. Yikes. Cringe-inducingly bad.


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## John Crichton (Jan 1, 2011)

DumbPaladin said:


> nonsensical villain motivations



Howzat?  CLU's motivations made perfect sense.  He was designed to build the perfect system, so he did it the best way he knew how.  The ISO's were far from perfect so they had to go.


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## Piratecat (Jan 1, 2011)

Joshua Randall said:


> Also, worst part of the movie: Zeus. Yikes. Cringe-inducingly bad.



I wonder if you're missing the cultural links? He's deliberately channeling Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust phase. I actually quite liked this part; very true to the culture that existed when the world was created.

I liked Tron, mostly because I refuse to think too hard about it and nitpick. And to think, I could be using that force of will for good.


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## DumbPaladin (Jan 3, 2011)

John Crichton said:


> Howzat?  CLU's motivations made perfect sense.  He was designed to build the perfect system, so he did it the best way he knew how.  The ISO's were far from perfect so they had to go.




 That part, I don't disagree with.  But as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, what exactly was he going to do with his army of reprogrammed ... er ... programs?  Was there anything said in the movie to suggest that programs have the ability to travel through the portal and suddenly spontaneously materialize in a human body there?    Who or what, precisely, was this army going to invade?


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## Relique du Madde (Jan 3, 2011)

Joshua Randall said:


> Also, worst part of the movie: Zeus. Yikes. Cringe-inducingly bad.



I felt that ZEUS was also a *caricature *of an stereotypical carnival barker and the average 80s style video game "Games Master" type of NPC.



DumbPaladin said:


> That part, I don't disagree with.  But as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, what exactly was he going to do with his army of reprogrammed ... er ... programs?  Was there anything said in the movie to suggest that programs have the ability to travel through the portal and suddenly spontaneously materialize in a human body there?    Who or what, precisely, was this army going to invade?




Well...  if an ISO (digital life form) can then a program surely would be able to..  If not, then the programs could cause all sorts of havok when they reach the internet...  It would be like Anon Script Kiddies... but with artificial intelligence.


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## John Crichton (Jan 3, 2011)

DumbPaladin said:


> That part, I don't disagree with.  But as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, what exactly was he going to do with his army of reprogrammed ... er ... programs?  Was there anything said in the movie to suggest that programs have the ability to travel through the portal and suddenly spontaneously materialize in a human body there?    Who or what, precisely, was this army going to invade?



Flynn said that CLU figured out that since Flynn could go to the grid that it made sense that CLU would be able to go the other way, and that it was possible with his disc.  As to what would CLU and his army do when they got out?  Try and create the perfect system, of course, which means removing all things that cause unstable variables.  As to what form would programs take when they left the grid?  I figured they would be programs on the outside as well.  The only reason Quorra was able to take human form was due to her being more than just a program.  She was a real lifeform with free will and everything that goes with it.


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## Rabulias (Jan 4, 2011)

John Crichton said:


> The only reason Quorra was able to take human form was due to her being more than just a program.  She was a real lifeform with free will and everything that goes with it.



She took human form because she had Flynn's disc when she went through the portal. This was why CLU was searching high and low for Flynn: to get his disc.

I assumed that the doohickey CLU had the disc plugged into somehow amplified the effect, so he, his army, ships, etc., would manifest in the real world.


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## DumbPaladin (Jan 4, 2011)

John Crichton said:


> Flynn said that CLU figured out that since Flynn could go to the grid that it made sense that CLU would be able to go the other way, and that it was possible with his disc.  As to what would CLU and his army do when they got out?  Try and create the perfect system, of course, which means removing all things that cause unstable variables.  As to what form would programs take when they left the grid?  I figured they would be programs on the outside as well.  The only reason Quorra was able to take human form was due to her being more than just a program.  She was a real lifeform with free will and everything that goes with it.





That's my point, though -- your suppositions are all well and good, and may even have been what the scriptwriter(s) had in mind ... but it isn't supported by anything stated in the movie via dialogue.  Why not?

It'd have been VERY simple for CLU to simply include his "how we're going to take over" plans during his rather long-winded speech to his army of re-programs.  We got the WHY, but not the how.


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## John Crichton (Jan 4, 2011)

Rabulias said:


> She took human form because she had Flynn's disc when she went through the portal. This was why CLU was searching high and low for Flynn: to get his disc.



I'm cool with that interpretation, too.  



Rabulias said:


> I assumed that the doohickey CLU had the disc plugged into somehow amplified the effect, so he, his army, ships, etc., would manifest in the real world.



The other possibility, according to the film, was that CLU needed the disc to get out and had no other way of doing so.  Otherwise he would have just gotten himself out already. 



DumbPaladin said:


> That's my point, though -- your suppositions are all well and good, and may even have been what the scriptwriter(s) had in mind ... but it isn't supported by anything stated in the movie via dialogue.  Why not?



What I said wasn't supposition, it was right there in the film.  CLU destroyed the beings that could adapt (the ISOs) and re-purposed/enslaved the programs for his own purpose.  



DumbPaladin said:


> It'd have been VERY simple for CLU to simply include his "how we're going to take over" plans during his rather long-winded speech to his army of re-programs.  We got the WHY, but not the how.



Because the how didn't matter.  It's very probable that CLU didn't know how.  What mattered was the danger he presented if he did get out.


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## Joshua Randall (Jan 4, 2011)

Re: Zeus or Zuse or whatever... I got the Bowie reference. I just thought the character was awful and like I said, cringe inducing.

It wasn't funny to watch him. It was painful.

Also, during the scene where CLU gets the disk from Zeus, and was mixing the drink, I kept expecting the drink to be some kind of weird digital poison. Which would've been much cooler than the lame explosion they used.


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## Mallus (Jan 4, 2011)

I saw Tron last weekend and basically loved it. Perhaps it's a case of having successfully lowered my expectations to the appropriate level...

Sure, it was bad in all the ways in expected it to be bad, but _good_ in ways I didn't see coming. Jeff Bridges deserves the Oscar in a category that doesn't yet exist: Best Actor in a Film That Didn't Really Require Any Acting At All. And after being totally down on the color palette and general art design from the promos/previews, I was surprised to find the final product fairly beautiful. Also, new light cycles and light jets = cool. 

I'd love a sequel that heads off squarely into the territory charted by Jeff Noon in his Vurt books. I mean, Tron: Legacy ends _pointed_ in that direction. Here's hoping they run with it...

edit: and the sound track did indeed rock!


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## Relique du Madde (Jan 4, 2011)

DumbPaladin said:


> That's my point, though -- your suppositions are all well and good, and may even have been what the scriptwriter(s) had in mind ... but it isn't supported by anything stated in the movie via dialogue.  Why not?
> 
> It'd have been VERY simple for CLU to simply include his "how we're going to take over" plans during his rather long-winded speech to his army of re-programs.  We got the WHY, but not the how.




There was a reason why the plan wasn't stated.  However, if he did explain the how we would have gotten another trope.  Unfortunately, in the end it all comes down to stereotypical gloating.


Of course, as mentioned in a prior post, and echoed by writing teacher I had in my life, it's better to "Show not tell,"  which is what they did in the film... except often with voice over narration by Flynn.


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## DumbPaladin (Jan 11, 2011)

I guess I missed the part where they showed me that there was any thought put into KLU's plan to conquer the real world by ... um ... somehow ... doing ... something ... bad?

So yeah, I was real scared by the "big" "bad" "evil" "guy".  Hey, he doesn't actually qualify for any of the 4 letters in BBEG ... do we have a proper term?


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