Is This Just Me?

Is this just me, or does everybody secretly wish for an alien invasion? Or something of that ilk, the kind of situation where a person could credibly sacrifice himself against tremendous odds to save the world?

Where a man could carve a legend for himself simply by standing up to the powerful oppressors and saying no?

Where a population could rise up and unanimously tell the invaders "No more. I reject you. With a Molotov cocktail!"

No? Just me?

Yeah, I figured as much.

Monday 20 December 2010

Tron Legacy

Okay, first things first, this post is wielding some pretty hefty spoilers about Tron Legacy. If this will annoy you, please skip this post.

Oh, wait, hang on.

No it doesn't. Theres nothing to spoil.

I'm being deadly serious. EVERYTHING IN THIS FILM GOES EXACTLY HOW YOU THINK IT WILL! My expectation were subverted a grand total of once, and that was five minutes into the film!

I mean, come on Kevin, you're an intelligent man, we saw that in the original Tron, are we seriously expected to believe that you created a digital version of yourself, tasked with creating a perfect world when you clearly have no idea what perfection even means, neither did you apparently lay in any morality limits in this copy, and didn't at any point consider that this was going to go badly? You see Kevin talk to his son, Sam (I'll deal with you in a moment, right now I'm mocking your fathers poor decisions) I mean, I get that in the original film, he used a similar tactic to uncover Dillingers theft. But seriously, that was a program operating a data search! Not something given the ridiculously vague and unrealistic goal of computing perfection! Why the bloody hell didn't you give him cybernetics and program him to announce himself with "Resistance is Futile, You will be Assimilated!" And then theres what this character has turned into in the intervening time between the two films. A fucking linux-hippy. "Sam, you're seriously starting to mess with my zen here..."

And then theres Sam. We see him breaking into Encom, avoiding cameras, hacking it's mainframe and just being a general badass from motorcycles to parachutes. I had such hopes his fathers company had been taken out of his control, that he was resorting to these tactics to get back at the cruel businessmen that were perverting his fathers work...then, after a scene where the camera pans around sam standing atop a crane that towers above a city in a way so reminiscient of assassins creed I was expecting him to jump into a pile of hay, it turns out he's the majority shareholder and can assume control of the board whenever he likes. Everything wrong with Encom is wrong because he lets it be wrong, cause at 27, he's still a bloody child who "can't handle the responsibility."

Ladies and Gentleman, our hero.

Anyway, predictably enough, he winds up in the Grid (the virtual reality) That's fine. We see him captured, take a tour of the Crapsack world the grid has become (again, fine, we wanna see the pretty 3-d graphics that cost an extra £2) After fighting two opponents at Megahyper Death Edition Frisbee, he comes up against an opponent who drastically outclasses him and is clearly an unstoppable badass. He has TWO frisbees dammit! Gee, I wonder who that could be...

Anyway, long story short, Sam's beaten, captured and we're introduced to Clu, the villian of this piece. Theres a horribly written scene where Sam thinks this man, who looks just like his father when he disappeared is in fact his father (despite the fact everything he says screams Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil...) until Clu decides that Sam is a pointless distraction and that the best way to deal with him is engaging in...lightcycle combat?

Now don't get me wrong. The following lightcycle scene is gorgeous, gripping, entertaining edge of your seat action. But Clu spends the whole film as a card carrying villian? Why the need for a fair contest? (even if sam's team were on slower lightcycles...) It's not like he cares about inciting a revolution, he's an effing despot taking every program he can get his hands on and turning them into a soldier. So, despite being on worse lightcycles, Sam still manages to kick ass and play videogames (but he's all out of quarters), before his bike is destroyed by Clu.

Small gripe here. We see Sam try to save his teammate, who came off his cycle by throwing the rod that it contains to him, only to see said teammate killed before he can throw it. Sam now has a spare lightcycle in his pocket. Clearly this is significant, he can use it in a close situation, or hell, use it 3 minutes later when his own bike is destroyed! What do the writers do with this clearly planted chekov's gun? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! It's never mentioned again, EVER.

Of course, at this point we're introduced to Fanservice, #ahem# I mean Quorra, a clearly optimistic naive girl with prodigious talents. A load of pointless exposition happens that basically just serves to fill in some backstory for a bunch of superspecial awesome programs who were completely destroyed and eradicated by clu. Huh. Guess they won't be making an appearance in this film then... This is of course filled with glaringly obvious glances at Quorra. Wonder what that could possibly mean?

Christ, I'm bitching. Before I go any further, I should reiterate, Tron Legacy is a good film, a fun film, hell, I'll say a film worth your money. But theres some pretty dumb moves, storytelling wise. But hey, it's a disney film, we knew that going in.

Oh, and Kevin Exposition Flynn also lets us know Tron, the eponymous character from the first film is dead. Derezzed, deleted. He's gone people...won't be seeing him in this film. At all. #Head slams off nearest object that isn't expensive laptop#

Anyway, blah blah pointless argument, blah blah explain villian plot, blah blah blah defiance blah nightclub with added fanservice blah blah fight scene blah blah fucking blah. Seriously, I'm not explaining the plot here, just go and watch the film.

We get the #snort# big reveal that Quorra is the last of the super special awesome programs who can change the world. Then we skip to lots of awesome fight scenes and the revelation that double frisbee guy is actually Tron reprogrammed by Clu. Wow, that one almost surprised me Disney! Oh, and you know something, we're supposed to see Sam become a powerful fighter in this film, since off screen it shows him kicking the crap out of an entire detachment of guards that are protecting the magical mcguffin plot device.

Theres a whole load of cgi overload, which is awesome, culminating in Sam escaping the grid, backing it up on a fricken memory stick (The grid is what, less then 32 Gb?) before restoring the thing to it's former glory. Theres some touchy feely crap before he leaves the arcade to see Quorra. Did she materialise outside for no reason? What the hell?????

Again, Tron Legacy is a good film, that I really enjoyed. But every character comes across as incompetent or pointless, or both. Mr tech savvy Sam Flynn has never stopped to persue TV Tropes and got a hint of Genre Savvy? Theres suspension of disbelief, then theres taking the piss.

So, Tron Legacy, a good film, a pretty film, a terrible piece of writing.

Oh, and don't see it in 3d, trust me. 3-d makes films a lot darker by neccessity of how it works (the glasses cut out light) and Tron is already a VERY dark film. Theres points where you're straining to tell if the character is SUPPOSED to be silhouetted, or if it's just a side effect of the glasses you payed £1 for.

Anyway, NerdRage(tm) vented, see you next time. Oh, and sorry for the long delay, but this was a long post to make up for it.