I was meeting a friend this evening to see a film, so I thought I would take in the afternoon performance of Tron: Legacy first.
To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment to me, and yet another reminder that while 3D is great, it is no substitute for an engaging plot. There was a story there, but nothing more taxing than the plot of the original Tron, and after seeing the 3D effects, I got a little bored.
Looking at reviews, I seem to be in a minority with this opinion, so I will leave it at that.
Worst bit of writing since I saw the New Trek reboot. Now sometimes a bad script can still be made into a good popcorn flick film, for example Independence Day, but not this time.
What irritated me most is that a sequel normally either deals with unresolved issues from the previous film, or follows a brand new adventure with the same characters.
As the original Tron finished with everything happily resolved (the computer system working as it should be, and Flynn back in the real world), the new film had to first spend the 10 minutes quickly reversing the happy ending, and stranding Flynn in a new system. This was clumsily done, and I suspect the whole point of the early scenes was to show off their “Jeff Bridges as a young man” tech.
The other reason I was disappointed is that the original teaser trailer made the film look like it was going to be more of a mystery/thriller, rather than just a chase movie. Instead, any question as to why the situation had occurred was simply dealt with using big wodges of exposition.