Huh! I did not walk into this one with high expectations. The 2010 sequel was a bit...meh. And the most recent of Disney movies (yes, it is a Disney property), leaves much to be desired. But there’s still the cheezy but cool 1982 originations. So, is this a Final Giant Turd on a classic property or...something else? Fortunately, surprisingly, I think we’s gots a little something else here.
This is the next kind-of-unexpected chapter in the story of TRON. Given the time that’s passed from the first, and the somewhat unimpressive offerings of the 2nd movie (besides Oliva Wilde, who is no Emily Blunt, but I will allow), we have basically a fresh slate building on the two technological juggernauts of ENCOM and Dillinger Enterprises, 40+ years since it started. And the technology that it has spawned? Some cool shit. If only they can get past that irksome devolution barrier. (note: if they do, regardless the method, yeah, we screwed. No empathetic hooker-bot is gonna save us. Cuz hooker-bot read Frankenstein so she knows what happens to the monster. We’ll be screwed. Doubly.)
It’s kinda cool to see a property that advances with the times. While the previous sequel was pretty unimpressive (much like the decade leading up to it), now we got blossoming A.I. and the futurity that it realistically presents in front of us. That’s partly the baseline here, even if you haven’t seen the previous TRON movies or animated TV series, or played the video games, or eaten the cereal. Sure, some of the characters are a bit 2D, so to speak. I don’t care about the diversification stuff here, because it actually pisses on all of that when you see the whole thing play out. Again, surprisingly so. Jared Leto does a decent job in the role, it usually looks pretty damn good when it’s not firehosing pixels at the screen, especially when realizing lightcycles and Recognizers in “real life” kinds of scenarios. But minus a little rough opening exposition to open the movie, this is a pretty entertaining and decently engaging scifi action popcorn flick. As it should be.
