This Friday (Dec 17) Tron: Legacy will be released in theaters, finally ending the year and a half internet anticipation, and allowing sci-fi fans to let their nerd-gasms climax after all this time. But for all the eager speculation and build up, people are overlooking one really important thing: the movie is most likely going to be a massive pile of dookie.
Many of you will scoff at that notion. We've been waiting for over a year, you say. There's no way all this anticipation could end in anything other than the best movie EVER. Well, you're wrong. And here's why.
1. The First Tron Was A Massive Pile Of Dookie
What most people remember about the first Tron was that it featured the best, most state-of-the-art special effects at the time. What tends to be forgotten is that the rest of the movie is a mess. The plot is clunky at best, nonsense at worst. Something about a religion based on worshiping "Users," and the computer wanting to kill all of the programs, and hating the concept of "Users." Or something. That really isn't important because all anyone cares about are the light cycles.
And let's remember, Tron was a commercial failure when it was released. Over the years it developed a cult following among nerds and sci-fi fans because, well, it was a movie about video games. And to be fair to the movie, it did feature a very distictive visual style, a sort of futurist german-expressionism schem, that practically screams "cult!" But cult movies can still be terrible, and in fact, many are embraced for that very reason (Hello, Plan 9 From Outer Space). But then, no one is making a big budget sequel to Plan 9, are they? Not yet anyway.
2. Style Over Substance Rarely Works
Quick, what's the first thing you think of when I say Tron: Legacy? It probably had to do with the visual effects and CGI, didn't it? (There is probably a segment of you who thought of Olivia Wilde, but that was probably quickly followed by the CGI surrounding her) The Tron: Legacy trailers are a bombardment of CGI effects, whether it's the light cycles, ships, or hell, even freaking Jeff Bridges. It's pretty clear that this is a speacial effects driven movie, that's what they're selling, and if this is anything like the first movie, they were too caught up in the visuals to come up with a story.
There's isn't anything inherently wrong with putting the focus on the visual flair of a movie (Tim Burton has based his entire career off of this). But the problem now is that we are at a point where even the low budget films can afford CGI, so if you're idea of visuals is "SO MUCH CGI", not only are you Roland Emmerich, but you have a lot of competition with films doing the exact same thing.
Last year at this time we had 2012 (Hey there, Roland!) and Avatar, two movies that relied very heavily on the use of CGI, to the point where that was the reason most people went to see them. Both also had awful stories underneath all the bells and whistles. Both made money at the box office, but that's not the same as being good (2012 in particular is sitting at a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes). Making money just means people were excited to see it, it says nothing about delivering the goods. And more often than not, CGI heavy movies have this problem. For every Inception and Lord of the Rings that manages to weave special effects and story together well, there are plenty of Transformers, 2012, Clash of the Titans, and Skyline's to go around. Flashy effects are too common place nowadays to be able to hold a movie together on it's own. And Tron: Legacy hasn't given any indication that it has bothered with anything other than cool CGI.
3. It's In 3D Because Of Course It Is
There has been a lot of talk about how necessary it is for movies to be in 3D. It seems that many are put in that format to squeeze a few extra bucks out of viewers at the box office. But it seems even more silly with Tron: Legacy. The movie's visual aesthetic consists mainly of various patterns of neon blue and red lights. Not the most exciting thing to experience in the third dimension. And much of the background surrounding those lights are very dark colors, which don't work particularly well with the 3D format. Anyone thinking it may add to the experience, the way it did with Avatar, will likely be very disappointed.
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