by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright Dec 2010
I saw the first Tron way back in 1982. Quite literally, the only thing I remember about it was the girl in the movie moved her legs in a really interesting way. I wanted to see more of that. But that's it, it has turned out that the rest of the movie was not worth remembering.
So, in my humble opinion, Disney choosing to resurrect this franchise is just another example of the intellectual bankruptcy of both Disney and Disney movie viewers: Why use all these modern effects to tell these same old stories again and again?
Still... this time the Disney people have done their usual competent job of mixing good actors and good effects to tell that same old Disney story. <sigh> If you don't pay attention to the story, it's entertaining.
That said, here are the technofiction problems I noted:
o Why story tellers these days think that having their good guy hero who has a well-off background must start the movie with some dangerous prank is unsettling. I guess it's supposed to make him an endearing rule-breaker, and I guess I'm just getting too old to see it that way. Instead I see him as being on the fast-path to becoming a pointless burn-out.
o In retrospect, how Clu, the bad guy, can get a phone page sent out without a portal is a mystery. A smaller mystery is why Old Man Flynn would set up a secret lab under a video arcade, and why the power still works, and why the arcade where the power still works is not home to bunches of homeless now.
o The relation between the real world and Flynn's virtual world is never clear. Is the whole virtual world on a chip? Umm... this is late-eighties technology. It may be wunderkind late-eighties, but still late-eighties.
o How whole physical bodies can flip back and forth is never clear. Where Clu's army is going to go when it comes out is never clear. That threat is just ho-hum megalomaniac plot device.
o The programs in the virtual world can't tell the difference between a v-based program and a physical-based program?
o This "perfect world" that Clu feels he has created never looked very perfect to me. Why would he think it was perfect? It was totalitarian bread and circuses and filled with both imperfections and dissent. Why are gladiator games and nightclubs part of a perfect world?
o Ho-hum... gladiator games and nightclubs. Don't people in VR do anything else? Don't Disney writers have any other kinds of places to show us?
o It was not in character that Clu would betray Zuse after he hands over Flynn's disk. What was perfectionist about that? And betraying him by blowing the place up... ho-hum. How about some dissolving? How about having the drink dissolve him, or turn him into a toad, and then squishing him? Or something, anything, not so ho-hum.
o Clu could not find Flynn before now? How strange! It is also strange that Flynn can't figure a better way to move around than hitching a ride on a slow freight. This is his world for goodness sake! Why doesn't he just disapperate and apperate again somewhere else?
o The memory disk that is also a weapon is pure action plot device, and poorly thought through. It's like Mother Nature deciding, "Hmm... If I let humans tie their brains to the end of a war club, then their thinking part will be closer to the combat action! Yeah!"
... And there is a blooper near the end of the movie where Flynn is walking around wearing his memory device after it has been stolen in the nightclub.
... And if you can detach memory devices and swap them, as happens between Flynn and Quorra at the end of the movie, then identity theft should be rampant in this world.
In sum, as one of Clu's police would tell you, "Watch the circus acts and nightclubs, movie watcher, and have a good time. Pay no attention to that story behind the curtain."
-- The End --