You’ve all heard about TRON: Legacy by now, everyone who cares about movies has. I heard about it when they were still planning on calling it “TR2N”, and since TRON 2.0 (a PC game), people have been expecting the word “Legacy” to follow the TRON name in title. For those of you who never played TRON 2.0, you’re missing out, it SHOULD have been a huge factor in deciding the art style of the latest TRON film. It wasn’t. I can’t review the film yet because it won’t be out for another 9 months, but after this latest trailer, I must say… I’m thinking I’m not going to go as ecstatic over this as I originally believed.
TRON was highly advanced for its time in terms of special effects. It was by no means a good movie, but like Avatar, it was phenomenal to look at. It failed to win an award for special effects because using a computer to generate them was considered “cheating”. It opened the door for movies to begin experimenting with computer-generated effects (and unfortunately, opened the door to such bombs as the Star Wars Prequels) and since then, nothing has really come close to duplicating the kind of innovation that was shown to us, in that beautiful art style.
In the first TRON teaser, introducing that Jeff Bridges is indeed in this film, it looked like they took that art style and played around with it a bit, updated it and at the same time, managed to make it look sleak and more mainstream-friendly. However in the new trailer, we were introduced to the following designs:
Unique, isn’t it? It certainly looks pretty. It looks like it’ll be a very enjoyable movie to watch. However it bares little to no similarity to the film that came out in 1980. Now sure, technology changes. The middle picture even shows you some design skin to the original… but this is a digital world that we’re talking about. The thing that made TRON so remarkable is how alien everything felt. Nothing looked like it could exist, but at least on screen, it did. That set it apart. This looks like the lobby of an eternally clean bank headquarters. Here, let’s compare. This is what TRON looked like:
Now in all honesty, these designs don’t look like they’re capable of being infested with smudge marks. I realize that modernizing things is in order, it’s needed – but glossy plastic looks futuristic, not digital. I don’t know how many times I can repeat that. THIS NEW TRON DOESN’T LOOK LIKE TRON! I mean, if something has no story that anyone cares about and a beautiful visual appeal, at least keep to what people liked about the original!
Alright, I’m just spitting out the same thing over and over now. I just can’t get over that fabric sofa in a digital world. It’s ridiculous. They should’ve taken a cue from TRON 2.0. It was a phenomenally produced game with no advertising because it was a Disney game. The world that they created was beautiful, it was fun to play, and they did a wonderful job with the TRON license. If you want a true TRON sequel, and something for this movie to live up to… play it, watch a walkthrough, anything. If it turns out that game is better than this film – then there’ll seriously be hell to pay.
P.S. I love that last thumbnail <3
–Jeff “DanyLektro”