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Tron: Legacy — Too Much Imagination Required?
MoldySpore writes "Stepping back from the positive and negative reviews of the new Tron sequel, Tron: Legacy (which has so far amassed over $111,000,000 world-wide), something occurred to me after seeing the movie and reading the numerous reviews. It seems many of the reviews, and perhaps the reviewers themselves, can be split into two categories: those who saw the original Tron when it came out and can put the new movie in context, and those who either watched Tron recently to prepare for the sequel or never saw it and jumped right into the new movie."
Read on for the rest of MoldySpore's thoughts.
"While nostalgia plays an important role in any franchise's resurrection, technology has come so far in the 28 years since the original release of Tron, it would seem the human imagination regarding technology has become somewhat disenchanted. Back in 1982, most anyone who saw Tron (or a few years after, as it garnered 'cult classic' status) was captivated, not just by the amazing computer-generated graphics of the time, but about the possibility of a world inside a computer system, where programs walk around and interact with each other like humans, where bits and bytes are interactive things you could touch and see, and where artificial intelligence was something to be feared (in the form of the MCP) rather than embraced.
Most of my friends were born in the '80s, and the ones that saw the original Tron were much more open to the storyline of Tron: Legacy than the ones who never saw the original or who watched it only recently to prepare for watching the new movie. While they all agreed the CG and 3D was amazing, they felt the story was 'unimaginative' or 'run-of-the-mill.' Also, many people born later, such as my younger sister, who is very tech savvy herself, seemed to dismiss the plot and characters completely, instead speaking only of the quality of the graphics and the music. I believe this speaks to how the human race has grown out of its own imagination when it comes to technology since it entered the digital age. Young people can't see past the fact that there isn't a world inside the computer, that programs are just tools to be used by humans, and artificial intelligence is something discussed on a daily basis.
I'd be interested to hear what the Slashdot community's experiences and feelings have been about the new movie and its effect on the people who went and saw it. Imagination is something uniquely human and has always played an important part in our ability to look past our current limitations. With negative reviews of the new movie often referencing the 'sub-moronic script that feels like it was written by people who had never used a computer,' has some of this been lost now that digital technology is part of our daily lives? Does this signal a movement toward humans becoming indifferent to technological advances, and by association, the hindering of outside-the-box thinking when it comes to technology?"
"While nostalgia plays an important role in any franchise's resurrection, technology has come so far in the 28 years since the original release of Tron, it would seem the human imagination regarding technology has become somewhat disenchanted. Back in 1982, most anyone who saw Tron (or a few years after, as it garnered 'cult classic' status) was captivated, not just by the amazing computer-generated graphics of the time, but about the possibility of a world inside a computer system, where programs walk around and interact with each other like humans, where bits and bytes are interactive things you could touch and see, and where artificial intelligence was something to be feared (in the form of the MCP) rather than embraced.
Most of my friends were born in the '80s, and the ones that saw the original Tron were much more open to the storyline of Tron: Legacy than the ones who never saw the original or who watched it only recently to prepare for watching the new movie. While they all agreed the CG and 3D was amazing, they felt the story was 'unimaginative' or 'run-of-the-mill.' Also, many people born later, such as my younger sister, who is very tech savvy herself, seemed to dismiss the plot and characters completely, instead speaking only of the quality of the graphics and the music. I believe this speaks to how the human race has grown out of its own imagination when it comes to technology since it entered the digital age. Young people can't see past the fact that there isn't a world inside the computer, that programs are just tools to be used by humans, and artificial intelligence is something discussed on a daily basis.
I'd be interested to hear what the Slashdot community's experiences and feelings have been about the new movie and its effect on the people who went and saw it. Imagination is something uniquely human and has always played an important part in our ability to look past our current limitations. With negative reviews of the new movie often referencing the 'sub-moronic script that feels like it was written by people who had never used a computer,' has some of this been lost now that digital technology is part of our daily lives? Does this signal a movement toward humans becoming indifferent to technological advances, and by association, the hindering of outside-the-box thinking when it comes to technology?"
It doesn't matter how old you are, or how you felt about the original movie. This one apparently has good graphics with a poor plot. Both reviews quoted in TFA were basically negative on the movie. Ebert thumbed his up to three by liking the visuals, but he said several times in his short piece that the movie is essentially plotless. The following quotes are all from his review:
I'm giving this more attention than the movie does, which is just as well. Isaac Asimov would have attempted some kind of scientific speculation on how this might all be possible, but "Tron" is more action-oriented.
"Tron: Legacy," a sequel made 28 years after the original but with the same actor, is true to the first film: It also can't be understood, but looks great.
It may not have legs, because its appeal is too one-dimensional for an audience much beyond immediate responders. When "2001" was in theaters, there were fans who got stoned and sneaked in during the intermission for the sound-and-light trip. I hesitate to suggest that for "Tron: Legacy," but the plot won't suffer.
None of those are positive statements with respect to the plot.
CG is fine for avoiding expensive trips to filming locations in the remotest corners of the globe, or for rendering places that aren't there. But it's in no way a supplement to a plot. Transformers, 2012, Doom, etc., all proved that flashy visuals can turn a profit, but they can't turn suck into a movie worth watching.
John
More specifically, my main issue with the OP's point is that the movie's anthropomorphization of the computer's inner workings is too obviously inaccurate -- anyone who knows anything about computers can easily see that it's just a thin sheen of technobabble hastily thrown on top of a standard action movie. Props to the guy they got to do the UNIX commands in the real life scenes, but other than that, the tech stuff was so out of this world that it left none of what good sci-fi needs to engage the viewer -- that thin line of plausibility and the possibility that our world could really become like the one in the movie one day.