Admittedly, I never was a huge fan of the the original TRON. I’d seen it once or twice on the teev on a Sunday afternoon, and found it diverting, but still a Disney film (which, throughout my youth, was a synonym for ‘bland and unchallenging’). Nostalgia for a film that had come out when I was all of five years old didn’t enter into the equation. If anything, TRON had become pop-cultural shorthand for 'quaint & outmoded’ in the intervening years (as evidenced by the, uh, phenomenon of Tron Guy).
Between 1982 and 2010, though, the realm in which Tron and his fellow programs inhabited had, by and large, become a fact of life. (The fact you’re reading this right now is testament to that.) Cyberspace is a reality, and one we tend to take for granted; indeed, when one loses their connection to the internet due to technical failure or force majure, it can be akin to losing a much-valued sense. Given that, what would a film like TRON: LEGACY have to offer in the 21st Century, where the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are lauded and vilified in equal measure?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The film’s themes are obvious, admittedly: the nature of father-son relationships; the eternal struggle of chaos vs order; the evils of big business. However, there’s one low-key thematic strand that’s played quite subtly here, stemming from the fraught realtionship between Flynn and Sam, the nominal hero of the film.
In LEGACY, Bridges plays Flynn as a zen Obi-Wan Lebowski - at first, cowed into hiding on the fringes of the Grid by the efficency of the program he made into his own image, CLU, he slowly reasserts his power over his life and, by extension, his life’s work. In effect, changing the game to suit him, his errant son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who makes of the best of his “Hero’s Journey” template writ large), and sentient program Quorra (Olivia Wilde). The weathered, more experienced Flynn that Bridges portrays contrasts sharply with his younger iteration from the earlier film, and even more so with his doppelganger CLU; indeed, much of the dramatic tension in the film (such as it is) derives from the dichotomy between Flynn the 'flawed creator’ and CLU, continously striving for perfection at all costs.
For all the flash-and-sizzle - the lightcycle races and disc battles (as terrific as they are) - the heart of the film (for me) is the gradual self-actualization that the Flynns (father and son alike) undertake to realize their potential, and that of the Grid/Encom. They have to exceed the parameters of their programming; as highlighted in the previous film, Users are - in their own way - programs too.
As a piece of entertainment, the film is enormous fun, if over-familiar at points, with nods both obvious and subtle to films that have cast a long shadow before and since the original TRON. That said, it’s a 'ride’ film par excellence, and it must be pointed out that the Daft Punk soundtrack is fantastic. I found it to be a genuinely thrilling experience that had me whooping and hollering (in my own way). Thoroughly recommended.