Review of Tron Legacy (Blu-ray + DVD)[Region Free]

Not a great scifi film but a definite improvement on the original

More a modestly profitable disappointment than the flop of popular memory, the original Tron wasted a great premise thanks to a terrible script and some uninteresting filmmaking that overestimated just how awe-inspiring the then-state of the art special effects would be. Surprisingly the much belated sequel Tron: Legacy turns out to be something of an improvement. The effects aren't as groundbreaking as the original, though they're also not as artificial, the film's computer world reflecting the giant leaps in computer graphics in the intervening decades to create a more solid and three dimensional world. The script still misses most of the philosophical and satirical potential of the idea of computer users trapped inside the computer worlds they create and which are like deadly mirror images of the real world, and the film's big threat doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, but it's a more professionally crafted affair all round, at least attempting to give some life to its stereotypical characters rather than just throwing one-dimensional cutouts right into the middle of a game nobody's bothered to tell the audience the rules of and expecting them to follow or care about what's going on.

The move from 2.35:1 to the IMAX 1.78 ratio, while occasionally arbitrary, is surprisingly fairly seamless on the small screen and, opening scene aside, the younger Jeff Bridges effect is much more convincing on the small screen than the giant one: if anything it's the voice that's more of a problem than the face, rather too gruff and weathered for his computer generated doppleganger's features. A great film it's not, but as blockbuster multiplex fare it's decent enough. Extras are more standard than exciting - a sequel featurette featurettes The Next Day - Flynn Lives Revealed, standard promotional featurettes Launching the Legacy, Visualizing TRON, Installing the Cast and Disc Roars, music video and promo for the TRON: Uprising TV series.