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TRON Legacy
Having avoided articles and as many spoilers as I could, I went into TRON Legacy without any expectations or even any idea what I was in for. Having grown up with the original (I even remember seeing it at the cinema and being terrified of David Warner), a new TRON film in 3D was not to be missed.
Now, I'm normally extremely cynical about sequels and remakes, which in most instances are totally un-necessary. So it was with great delight that I found TRON Legacy to be relevant and worth – it's not just an excuse to re-create the Tron world with modern computer graphics, it's a chance to re-visit that world and see how it has progressed. It takes you into another dimension and, just as with the original, it's the visual aspect of this world which makes the film so spectacular – possibly the most impressive thing I've ever seen on the big screen.
The storyline isn't anything revolutionary, but it is a sensible, logical follow-up from the 1982 original – starting off in 1989 when Kevin Flynn goes missing, and yep, you guessed it, he's been secretly working on a new TRON and got stuck in there, when his self-imaged virtual counterpart, Clu, gets corrupted and takes over The Grid. Fast forward to present day, and Flynn's 27 year old son, Sam gets word from Bruce Boxeleitner that something is going on in the Tron world, and it's time to go back to Flynn's arcade (which has been faithfully recreated) and go in search of his estranged father.
The Grid is huge. Mind blowing and of epic proportion. All the designs of the original have been kept true, but created in the most blindingly fantastic style. The vision of the original TRON was wonderful, but you haven't seen anything until you've seen this. Light Cycles, Lights Jets, the huge Solar Sailor and the creepy Recognisers are among all the vehicles you'll see and the sheer scale of everything is utterly outstanding. TRON Legacy takes the action and ideas of the original to another level and beyond.
The cast is consistently strong with Garett Hedlund (whom I'd never heard of) being just right for the part of Flynn's son and Olivia Wild (whom I'd also never seen before) as Quorra. One of the film's most camp and entertaining moments sees Michael Sheen as Zeus, who has been evidently modeled on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona. However Jeff Bridges steals the show as both Flynn and Clu, and it's great to see Bruce Boxeleitner back and as a fleeting appearance as Tron in The Grid. It's just a shame that the brilliant Cillian Murphy (as Dillinger's son) only has one line in the only scene he appears in the film.
Another sign of just how good CGI is becoming, is the Clu character – ie the 'young' Jeff Bridges. On first impressions, it's astounding how Bridges has been made to look 20-odd years younger. On closer inspection, it's clearly a CGI-mapped face; the emotionless eyes are a dead giveaway, but in the darker scenes, it's incredibly good. Daft Punk's electro-symphonic soundtrack is also absolutely perfect for the film, adding extra drama to already epic scenes.
The use of 3D is very effective – subtle and underplayed if anything, but carefully avoiding the predictable things-flying-at-you-to-make-you-jump. The 3D provides extra depth and atmosphere, which helps completely immerse you in the TRON world, although it does look equally stunning in both 2D and 3D.
Overall I thought it was fantastic, and a worthy follow-up. Anybody with a soft spot for the original movie will absolutely love TRON Legacy, and anybody who might have been dreaming of a follow up since 1982, will not be disappointed. I would have happily sat through it a second time.
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Glad you enjoyed it Alex.
I saw it at the Imax a few weeks ago.
By rights I should have loved this film but I came away feeling underwhelmed.
I loved the soundtrack.
The analogue almost bio-luminescent (hand animated) Neon glow of the old Tron suits has gone replaced with too clean modern digital glow.
The 3D effects looked very weak.To put this in perspective the Christmas animated Imax Demo film before it blew me away.
I think I've probably been spoiled by too much hype.
As a film it's not bad but I dont know why they bothered with 3D.
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Originally posted by Alex S:
It takes you into another dimension and, just as with the original, it's the visual aspect of this world which makes the film so spectacular...
The storyline isn't anything revolutionary, but it is a sensible, logical follow-up from the 1982 original This has been the criticism I've read, that Tron Legacy's lack of a good dramatic script unfortunately lets it down. The vision of the original TRON was wonderful, but you haven't seen anything until you've seen this. Light Cycles, Lights Jets, the huge Solar Sailor and the creepy Recognisers are among all the vehicles you'll see and the sheer scale of everything is utterly outstanding Good review Alex, I wish I'd been able to go see it. There are some films that are purely about spectacle, and I think they can 'sometimes' be excused the failings of their plot. Its all about the cinema experience, either the intimacy of drama grabs you in the darkness of the theatre, or its the popcorn spilling amazement of what you're seeing up there. just a shame that the brilliant Cillian Murphy (as Dillinger's son) only has one line in the only scene he appears in the film Its a big yes for Cillian from me too, and his part in Inception was a lovely added bonus. As an actor he has a strange but alluring persona, easily at home being cast as a cold hearted psychopath as he is at also playing a sensitive person, and he's sure got the looks to front an Indies band! Another sign of just how good CGI is becoming, is the Clu character – ie the 'young' Jeff Bridges. On first impressions, it's astounding how Bridges has been made to look 20-odd years younger. On closer inspection, it's clearly a CGI-mapped face; the emotionless eyes are a dead giveaway, but in the darker scenes, it's incredibly good I think this is a really fascinating aspect of CGI, that potential ability to recreate history, I'd love to see an arthouse director do something with this ability to transcend time with an actors looks. Daft Punk's electro-symphonic soundtrack is also absolutely perfect for the film, adding extra drama to already epic scenes
Thanks to your earlier link I'm already a fan of the soundtrack. Originally posted by Brian:
I saw it at the Imax a few weeks ago.
The 3D effects looked very weak.To put this in perspective the Christmas animated Imax Demo film before it blew me away.
As a film it's not bad but I dont know why they bothered with 3D. Interesting comments Brian. As I'm now likely to only get to see the film on TV I've missed out on both the IMAX and the 3D, so I wonder if I'll enjoy seeing it thus. I missed the opportunity to see Avatar in IMAX, but in the past I specifically went to see Matrix: Reloaded at the Glasgow IMAX screen. Wow! - those effects were stupendous in this format, I loved the freeway chase. Wow! - the cheesy script, bad dialogue, inane acting, and most unexpected of all, the huge pores and blemishes in the actors skin during any face close-ups really burnt into my mind along with the intensity of the acrobatics, explosions, and time-lapse digital extravaganza  In the future only people without pores will be allowed to step in front of the IMAX camera. The replicant revolution begins 
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Been watching some clips online of my favorite Western movies, from Clint Eastwoods Unforgiven  , to Sam Raimi's The Quick And The Dead, and Ray Harryhausen's Dinosaur effects in The Valley Of The Gwangi But when it comes to operatic achievement, fantastic composition, sound effects, music as vision, and the Western as Art, they sure don’t make em like this anymore... Once Upon A Time In The West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyvzfyqYm_s&feature=related Heavens Gate, Roller Skate Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiNlthlz1d8
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Black Swan
Directed by Darren Aronofsky, and I’d only read briefly before seeing the film that this was a psychological thriller about a descent into madness with the world of ballet as the setting, much more than that I hadn’t taken onboard. In fact prior to watching, a trivial thing that stuck for me was the fact that Winona Rider had a part in the film, getting taken seriously again post her 2001 shoplifting debacle with her acting on the up since 2006 and her subsequent movie career ‘re-entry’ (well, she did go on to appear in Star Trek!). As it turned out our Winnie had quite a small part to play, albeit quite a relevant one, but it was to the strength of the script that the major characters (with the exception of a single male lead) were all played by women in extremely good roles.
So, sticking with the ballet, was this a film that you’d expect to appeal more to women, or lovers of Flashdance perhaps? Well there was some ballet, but less than you’d notice, for this is a film about dancing that’s far away from that 15 minute ballet sequence in Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes, its worth pointing out though that Black Swan does share with Powell’s story that desire for the importance of a life of art over all else that life has to offer.
With Black Swan the director Aronofsky visit’s an enclosed and highly constructed world, much as he did with his previous film The Wrestler, initially taking you behind the scenes where the focus is completely on the effort, pain, endurance, desperation, the back-biting and the sheer bloody minded lust for ones craft. But all of this is just the overture, there’s no lengthy or even potentially boring behind the scenes docudrama here, no, this is a psychological thriller remember, and what we get is a very dark tale indeed.
In establishing this alternative world to that of the jobs and careers that the rest of us go to on the nine to five, Aronofsky goes much further than he did with The Wrestler, where Mickey Rourke’s character of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson desperately and courageously clung onto the bitter end of his faded youth and his dieing fame, he had nothing else, so what else was there, and Aronofsky continues this theme in Black Swan, into the heart of darkness, and to the madness that’s often at the edge of those who are completely taken over by ambition.
I enjoy a good fantasy film, Christopher Nolan’s film Inception as I’ve mentioned previously on the forum is one with great style, effects, and a clever plot, but with Black Swan I was left thinking that its great to see ‘a proper movie’, one that is completely character driven, and unsettles you about the main character in as much as it engagingly lures you into their world.
There’s a stifling interior sense of existence conveyed through the camerawork, lots of hand held and close quarters shots, and there’s very little of the outside world allowed to creep into the movie. As Natalie Portman’s character of Nina Sayers goes about her day from leaving the front door of her home in a seemingly windowless apartment, to being underground on the subway, then inside the cramped changing room and corridors of the ballet school. In the large practice rooms there is the burning scrutiny of her fellow dancers, and the ballet director presiding over his kingdom like a sultan with a harem. Even in these large spaces you can sense that need to retreat to within, to a deep place where one has sole control of their own talents, whilst on the outside the ballet director constantly reasserts his grip over the life-force of the dancers.
In the confines of the apartment that Nina shares with her witch-like mother, a woman whose tightly drawn mouth reveals a frighteningly large pair of gnashers and lips straining against the aged skin of her lower jaw, she is an authoritarian figure who feigns concern for her daughter while in reality being obsessed by her progress as a dancer, she simultaneously blames the birth of Nina for the termination of her own ballet career while also vicariously living out her failed ambitions through her puppet-master control of Nina, keeping her in a childlike and obedient state.
Genuine friendship or altruism does not come Nina’s way, instead she is befriended by a new girl who’s motives cannot be entirely trusted, and the ballet director Thomas Leroy, played effectively by Vincent Cassell, is a horrendous creep, nicely described by one of the dancers as being ‘a prick’, Nina is to be his new ‘princess’ and he grooms and manipulates her in a calculatedly sexual and misogynistic manner.
There’s no way out of this world for Nina, she cannot leave, for dark forces are all around and within her, they have held her spellbound from birth and the only path is to go all the way to the bitter end, she does, and the climax to this tale is as succinct as the ballet of Swan Lake. Nina embraces not only the part she must play as the white swan, the wounded virgin, but she also transforms, and at one point also, in an amazingly sophisticated use of special effects, into the evil black swan, and in this movie the effects serve the plot less for spectacle and more for the espousing of the miraculous changes that carry Nina towards her ultimate escape.
I’m amazed that I saw this film in a Vue Cinema, that chain of popularist entertainment, for this is not your usual mainstream drama in a popcorn setting, and with its madness and its women its Hitchcock without that directors latent distaste of women, there are certainly no blond-haired hysterical women here. Nina exists in a victims world, but Aronofsky has the good sense to let his character triumph over the inevitable rather than succumb to it, and Black Swan is a dark fairy tale that’s actually devoid of any fairytale, instead it gives you the haunted spirit that lays at the core of such tales.
It’s completely deserving of those five Academy Award’s its been nominated for.
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Over the last couple of weeks me and 'er indoors have been watching all the series of "Gavin & Stacey" which I thought was brilliant! Very well written and definitely the best actors for the roles, superb, recommend it if you haven't seen it.
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Depeche Modes Barcelona concert
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