Starring: Garett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde Director: Joseph Kosinski Category: IIA
It speaks volumes that Tron: Legacy's first scene is set in a bedroom filled with posters, figurines and all sorts of curios which point to the, well, legacy of the now 28-year-old sci-fi action thriller from which this sequel draws its name and inspiration. Supervised by producer Steven Lisberger - the director of the first film in 1982 - first-time filmmaker Joseph Kosinski seems to be as much in awe of the source material as the seven-year-old Sam Flynn (Owen Best) is of his father, Kevin (Jeff Bridges), as the boy sits in bed listening to the programmer-turns-impresario's tales about creating a better, more just world in some distant, virtual universe.
But Tron: Legacy's reverence for its predecessor proves to be limiting: it makes Kosinski and his team try too hard to make a more visually dazzling reboot of the original. The film presents riveting images that open up the possibilities of 3-D filmmaking, but its emphasis on the state-of-the-art digital imagery comes at the expense of its flimsy narrative and characterisation.
Kosinski tries to layer his film with social significance by embedding the story with hints of corporate misdeeds - since his disappearance in 1989, Kevin Flynn's company has fallen into the hands of cynical buccaneers concerned with profit margins. But the theme is ditched after 15 minutes, when the adult Sam (Garett Hedlund, above) is accidently beamed into a virtual world and forced to go through the gladiatorial games masterminded by a dictator, Clu (Bridges) - a creation of Kevin Flynn, whom Sam eventually finds hiding out in the digital world of his own making, resigned to a life overseeing his invention going haywire.
It's a conflict that may allude to the theme in the original, when a human invention (in the form of a computer programme) threatens to overwhelm its inventor. Then again, it's not as if such philosophical debates are relevant to Tron: Legacy, whose filmmakers seem happy to bombard viewers with gigantic computer-generated set-pieces. Tron: Legacy is pleasing to the eye but shallow to the soul.
Tron: Legacy opens today