Tron Legacy [DVD]

The original Tron was a fun fantasy film made around the same time as Disney was getting dark with pics like The Black Hole. It seemed like a good idea to visualize computer games as little people running around inside your PC. And it was fun. But Tron Legacy rachets this up to a whole new level. I admit I was cynical when I first saw the trailer. I almost didn't go to see the movie. Boy, was I glad I did. This film is stunning. Although I watched it in headache-inducing 3D, this couldn't detract from the awesome visuals, the ubercoolness of the production design, the incredible action set-pieces, and several very fine performance, most notably from Olivia Wilde as the fun-loving compuer program and Michael Sheen's David Bowie impersonation, which almost steals the show from the SFX crew. The brilliant score by Daft Punk is set to become a classic. And this in an age when the power of movie music has all but forgotten. Yes, Tron Legacy is a blockbuster in every sense. Even the script has a wonderful emotional core - that of father/son love and brotherly jealousy. Bridges is, of course, great as always as both Flynn and CLU. So my advice is ignore all the reviews and see it for yourself! If only all summer movies had as much heart, style and power as Tron Legacy, what a wondeful world it would be!

Being a child of the 80s I missed out on the original Tron film and never really had the inclination to watch it as time went on. However, after purchasing a 3d tv and 3d blu ray player I noticed this title as one of the few 3d sci fi films currently available, and with good reviews, so I thought I'd give it a go. I was glad I did. The effects and 3d are very good and the story is easily followed and has pretty much everything you'd want from this kind of film. It may not be one for the purists that loved the original Tron but this one may just encourage a new generation of Tron followers. The only issue seems to be its current lack of availability in this set- I haven't found a brand new version available in the UK and the cost of second hand copies is going up and up due to that lack of supply and continued demand. Definitely worth a go if you can find one that doesn't cost the earth, and one of the better 3d blu ray films I've seen

More a modestly profitable disappointment than the flop of popular memory, the original Tron wasted a great premise thanks to a terrible script and some uninteresting filmmaking that overestimated just how awe-inspiring the then-state of the art special effects would be. Surprisingly the much belated sequel Tron: Legacy turns out to be something of an improvement. The effects aren't as groundbreaking as the original, though they're also not as artificial, the film's computer world reflecting the giant leaps in computer graphics in the intervening decades to create a more solid and three dimensional world. The script still misses most of the philosophical and satirical potential of the idea of computer users trapped inside the computer worlds they create and which are like deadly mirror images of the real world, and the film's big threat doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, but it's a more professionally crafted affair all round, at least attempting to give some life to its stereotypical characters rather than just throwing one-dimensional cutouts right into the middle of a game nobody's bothered to tell the audience the rules of and expecting them to follow or care about what's going on.

The move from 2.35:1 to the IMAX 1.78 ratio, while occasionally arbitrary, is surprisingly fairly seamless on the small screen and, opening scene aside, the younger Jeff Bridges effect is much more convincing on the small screen than the giant one: if anything it's the voice that's more of a problem than the face, rather too gruff and weathered for his computer generated doppleganger's features. A great film it's not, but as blockbuster multiplex fare it's decent enough. Extras are more standard than exciting - a sequel featurette featurettes The Next Day - Flynn Lives Revealed, standard promotional featurettes Launching the Legacy, Visualizing TRON, Installing the Cast and Disc Roars, music video and promo for the TRON: Uprising TV series.