Review of Tron (1982) by Alvin Y — 21 Feb 2011

Watching Tron and Tron Legacy at the same time made me think that video games and computers are in fact like the real world. Yes, that's one of my first thoughts before and after seeing these 2 films. One that is released in 1982 and the other which is just released last year. I didn't look up or research about what these films are gonna be nor even heard of it, so there you go I started to watch them. I was very surprised of how good the visuals are, yes visuals, I mean visuals or special effects, BUT the thing is what's going on or does the storyline seems to be going well.

Tron, the 1982 original first film, I think the CGI that time is so cheesy that I think every scene on the computer world is so much like playing video games. Think about it, it was released 29 years ago, so obviously the crew of this film didn't spend to much time to evaluate something to appreciate the audiences rather than its stunning effects. There are many great sci-fi films released those years, like âBlade Runnerâ? that I think much better visuals and much better story. Basically I'm a computer guy, so to me this movie still works not because of the awesome visuals and those epic action sequences, but also it understands how and where does one system of something that might be a computer program go as we see them like they are real people. I would say it is good but not great because most of the time the storyline seems to be lost and yet at the end it accomplished something that I think good guy defeats the bad guy or whatever!!??

Anyhow, the new Tron or titled Tron Legacy, is basically like the same story of the first film. Yes, we still have Jeff Bridges here, oh I'm Sorry, I mean 2 Jeff Bridges here, one good and one bad, of course you know it, the good is the main character's father which is Sam, and the bad is the program of the user which is Kevin Flynn (Bridges). I mean, is it possible to make Bridges look like young again in this film, or even yet why this happens? Then we meet another character named Quorra, she is a program but here's what happen at the end, Sam went back to the real world along with Quorra, yes Quorra, she is a program but how come she get to the real world and also it ended quickly that I think it should have been more compromise. That's mostly what I think of the whole movie at all, yes, it is 2011, the movie's visuals and CGI are now one of a kind but STILL for god's sake, I'm still lost with the story. And most of the time, the movie becomes melodramatic but then it feels like nothing seems to be proved or yet explained something going on.

So, there you have it, I think this 2 films are not great but still good. Probably second viewing on any of these films will most likely an explanation if not, probably again a waste of time looking and glancing again to those state of the art visuals. Tron, 4 stars; Tron Legacy, 3.5 stars.