Let's get one thing straight right away. When I say the visuals in the film are awesome, I am most definitely not talking about CLU, the computer-generated young Jeff Bridges character. It’s too tedious to get into exactly what CLU is supposed to be, but he’s represented on screen by a 'photorealistic' version of what Bridges looked like twenty-five years ago. That’s in quotes because this thing looks not at all human. (And in case you’re wondering, no, looking alien was not the point. There’s a flashback scene in the beginning of the film where this same CGI Bridges is tucking his son into bed and it looks just as awful there.) CLU is stiff and wooden, like one of those animatronic robots from Disney World’s Hall of Presidents, with dead eyes and an eerie, fake-looking mouth. This character is supposed to be the main bad guy of the film, but the terrible CGI makes it impossible to believe CLU's a real person, making it very hard to take him seriously as an antagonist. Plus, he just looks really creepy, and watching him speak is mildly disturbing.
Other than that one huge glaring misstep, the visuals in TRON: Legacy are pretty spectacular. It’s a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, of course, but it sure looks awesome. And since it all takes place inside a computer (a place not bound by real world physics or logic), the film can justify even its silliest ideas (freight trains that ride a beam of light, for example). But even before Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund, comatose throughout) enters 'the grid' (a.k.a. the world inside the computer), the film is visually arresting. Director Joseph Kosinski, making his feature debut, might not have even the vaguest understanding of storytelling or plot mechanics, but he sure does know how to make a pretty image. TRON: Legacy is just full of them. And together they combine to create a world that feels pretty fully realized. But then, of course, someone has to go and ruin everything by opening their mouth.
On a related note, after watching TRON: Legacy I think I might finally understand what people found so compelling about Avatar. That film was a complete and total mess on just about every level except for the visuals. But personally, while I thought the visual effects were technically impressive, massive Day-Glo-colored Pterodactyls and giant blue space cats with magical hair just weren’t my thing. But the world of ‘the grid’ in TRON: Legacy, all sleek neon lines and lacquered black surfaces, is very much my thing. And because of that, I can almost look past how dreadful the story, dialogue and performances are. I’m guessing that the millions of people who fawned over Avatar felt similarly. They probably knew on some level that the story was lame and cliché and the dialogue trite and obvious, but they just didn’t care because they were so taken with the visuals.
Another thing that TRON: Legacy has going for it is the tremendous score by Daft Punk. It’s good enough that I’ve been listening to it for a couple months now. That's not something I do with a score very often, certainly not with a score to a film as terrible as this one. It’s a shame, really, that such great pieces of music are used to give weight to such a ridiculous story. But it’s so good, I’m glad to have it regardless. This score combined with these images hit something of a sweet spot for me. There are moments in the film-- maybe five or so-- where there’s no story being told (poorly), no acting being done (poorly) and no plot being advanced (poorly) that just luxuriate in the awesomeness of the visuals and the score. Those moments, though, are tainted since their greatness reveals how much of a missed opportunity the rest of the film is. It makes you wish for some kind of fan edit that dispenses with the dialogue and story entirely.
But, alas, that version of the film doesn't exist. And in this one, there is dialogue, and lots of it. And whoo boy, it’s just one howler after another. For example, at one point late in the film, Jeff Bridges (the real one this time) says he’s going to go 'knock on the sky and listen to the sound.' It's a stupid line, delivered by Bridges as if he were stoned, that tells the audience nothing and sounds incredibly lame besides. A minute later, another character asks where Bridges went, whereupon the line is repeated. Apparently whichever of the eight (!) credited writers wrote this abomination of a scene thought that line was so profound and interesting it needed to be said twice. That's about all you need to know to get a general idea of the quality of the dialogue. Just imagine exchanges like that going back and forth for two and a half hours and you'll get some sense of how terrible the dialogue in this film is.
And the story's no better. It's just a bunch of nonsense that's too tiresome and confusing to bother recounting here. Suffice it to say that the story of TRON: Legacy is at least as dumb (and maybe dumber) than your average Adam Sandler comedy. Which, come to think of it, sorta makes it the perfect sequel to the original TRON. That film was just as poorly written. The performances were just as bad. And the dialogue was similarly laughable. TRON has managed to hang around in the public consciousness all this time solely because of its groundbreaking visuals. And if TRON: Legacy is still remembered in twenty-five years, it too will be only because of its visuals (and maybe that banging Daft Punk score).
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