The Grammatically Negligent – and hilariously grumpy – Review

In the past few years I’ve seen plenty of remakes and re-imaginings of old 80’s shows and movies that meant so much to me growing up.  Some of them have been bad (The A-Team earlier this year, I’d put Star Trek into that too, but whatever), some of them have been really bad (Knight Rider) and some of them have been eye-bleedingly bad (The Bionic Woman – okay to be honest, KR and BW are pretty much equally aweful, but the Bionic Woman was just so completely without joy that I had to rate it worse).  Objectively it should be hard to rate these properties for someone like me because I remember the originals with pride.  Yet the properties have been so objectively bad that that has frankly, never come up.  Which brings me to Tron Legacy, which, going in, I was rather nervous about.  I’d heard the script was mediocre at best.  And, of course, my first reaction was, upon hearing that it was being made a couple of years ago, “Brought to you because no one demanded it, Tron Legacy!”

(More After the Break!)

All that being said, when I saw this film on IMAX in 3D on Monday, I think you can color me suitably impressed.

The story is rather simple.  Flynn (Jeff Bridges reprising the same role from the firs Tron) has been stuck on the Grid, the digital world he created for the past  twenty years, trapped there by a digital tyrant that as delusions of grandeur.  Flynn’s son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund) now twenty seven and still missing his father after twenty long years gets a page (okay his father’s ex-buddy gets a page from him and forwards it on) from Flynn telling him to come to his old office.  Baby Flynn does so and gets himself stuck on the Grid, which has become a quite dangerous place for Users over the past twenty years.  So starts a journey to get out with some weird digital life/savior stuff thrown in for good measure.  Also the character of Tron is there; I mean it’s a movie called Tron, so therefore Tron has to be in it right?  Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath, you don’t see much of him, and like the villain, the character is non-existant and impenetrable.

The movie is legitimately fun, with some well filmed action and very cool visuals.  Actually, I want to talk for a moment about the visuals.  In a movie like this, you kind of expect it hang on tooth and nail to the digital revolution that has transpired over the past twenty years, especially after the visual extravaganza that was “Avatar”.  I kind of expected the whole thing to be green screened.  But it wasn’t.  Much of the sets were actually built, which, upon careful review, worked really really freaking well.  It lent an air of credibility to the world, and it seamlessly integrated the completely computer animated to the actual built sets to the point where, unless I was looking at Jeff Bridges de-aged face (which you do quite a bit of – his normal face too, but whatever), I couldn’t tell what was completely animated what wasn’t.  Hell, even Jeff Bridges de-aged face looks a hell of a lot better than Patrick Stewart’s face did in Wolverine Origins (oh God, why, why God, why?) and that movie had the benefit of not showing you Patrick Stewart’s current face in shot-reverse-shots (okay, I just gave away something – the villain is a de-aged Jeff Bridges.  Trust me , I haven’t given away anything you wouldn’t be able to figure out five minutes in).  In addition I can’t say enough about how good the 3D looked.  I was wearing these obnoxiously oversized glasses for the whole movie and once my brain adjusted, the 3D was completely seemless with the bits shot in 2D (and were presented that way).  It says a lot about the quality of the cinematography when the 3D feels that natural, and I haven’t seen anything like that for a while with the current run of every other movie being in 3D.

So that was the good, and I need to talk for a moment about the bad.  First of all, really most of all, the biggest problem with this movie was the absolutely atrocious script.  With some scripts there are things I can point to that it did well and things it did badly.  Succeed in dialogue, fail in plot arc.  Succeed in characterization, fail in realizing the universe as a whole.  This script was just a whole lot of fail.  It was bad.  The dialogue was filled with moments like this:

FLYNN

Stay here.  I’m going to knock on the sky.  Listen to the sound.

That wasn’t the exact quote, but it was close.  Flynn spoke in platitudes and it’s a testament to just how charismatic Jeff Bridges is that he made the line borderline work.  The dialogue felt like it was written by Orci and Kurtzman (it wasn’t, it was written by Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis and others) at their absolute worst (Transformers 2 – which against my credit I actually enjoyed) as opposed to their best (Fringe).  The characterization of anyone not played by Jeff Bridges felt kind of forced or flat (okay, there was the minor character of Zuse that was a whole lot of fun too) and I couldn’t tell if that was a script issue, a directorial one or an acting one, but considering the material they had to work with I’ll let it pass.  And even worse than that the story was remarkably impenetrable for a movie about two guys essentially trying to get out of prison.  There was a moment where the younger Flynn is saved by Quorra, Flynn’s disciple, (played well by Olivia Wilde, only she wasn’t asked to do anything) and she tells him “All your questions will be answered”.  And then he meets the older Flynn who explains all of it and I was still like, “Wait, what?  Why?”  That, my friends is not a good sign.

Then there was the moment at the end where there’s a plane chase where something happens that made me say, in a completely silent theater, “Wait, What?  The hell?”  everyone laughed.  I couldn’t tell if it was with me or at me, but whatever.  And then there was the villains motives.  I’m sorry, did I say motives?  I mean Deus Ex-Machina.  It felt like a villain because someone was telling him to be one instead of having any real reason.  He was seeking perfection, but I’m not really sure how he thought the world he created was perfection.  There’s some strange religious stuff in there too that never quite ends up where the writers seemed to want it to.

Whatever.

Would I suggest you see the movie?  Sure.  It was solid fun and it was actually a solid sequel to a film who’s original wasn’t amazing either (even though it was really fun).  Would I pay 20 bucks to see it in IMAX and 3D?  Well, I didn’t.  I was invited.  And I’m glad I was.  In fact, the first thing out of my mouth when my friend asked me, “What did you think?” was “I’m glad I didn’t pay for it.”  But I’m also glad I saw it, and like that same friend said, “I liked it more than I didn’t.” which in the age of crappy 80’s remakes and reimaginings is all I can ask for.

So take your kids, take your grandparents and chew on popcorn and turn off your brain (to some extent) because this is a fun, completely harmless and bloodless, ride.