[ Saw this last night and
– while it was technically and visually superb ? –
I was -shit- bored.
About halfway through – I started wondering just how many American children could have been better educated for USD 170 Mill ]
If you kind of, sort of liked the “Matrix” franchise but found it too fast-paced, too dense with plot
and way too short on neon-lit motorbike races and homoerotic Ultimate Frisbee tournaments,
then I’ve got a movie for you.
That movie is “TRON: Legacy,” a theoretically long-awaited sequel to an expensive flop that was released 28 years ago,
in the dawn of the computer age,
when the presumed target audience for this new movie had not yet reached zygote or embryo status,
and was swimming formless in the cybervoid of pre-existence.
That may or may not be the longest gap between original movie and sequel in Hollywood history
– it’s a stupid question, and I’m not going to research it –
but it’s a hell of a long time to wait for a visual experience that resembles sticking your head into a barrel of ink full of those daylight-fluorescent glow sticks from the dollar store.
Yes, I have seen “TRON: Legacy” in 3-D, on an Imax screen,
and I guess that was supposed to leave me with eyes bleeding, soul shattered and mind utterly blown.
I will admit, under protest, that some of the production design is impressive – in a hackneyed and boring idiom that channels almost every science-fiction film of the ’70s and ’80s about an outsider who penetrates an evil futuristic community.
Mix “Zardoz,”
“The Running Man”
and “Rollerball,”
stir in a few extraneous elements like the Imperial Starfighters and the Batmobile,
and serve with some newfangled CGI effects
and a pace appropriate to the gamer audience’s presumed attention span,
and you’ve got –
well, hell, you’ve got this,
but I’m making it sound a lot more interesting than it is.