Movie Review: Tron Legacy 3D

I have been avoiding 3D movies since they initially started in theaters and never really saw the whole point behind the 3D excitement. Why do I want to wear goofy glasses in the theater to have fake shit fly at my face while I'm trying to watch a movie. I just don't understand the whole deal.

Anyway, I decided it was time to finally pop the 3D movie cherry and go see Tron 3D. The movie looked to promise huge 3D landscapes and the whole "Grid" city for incredible effects amd combined with what looked to seriously legitimate Tron light cycle battles.

Lets start off with the good. The special effects tied to any sort of combat or battle scene were excellent. In order to initiate the light cycles, they had what looked to be a baton of sort which would be pulled apart and out of this, through a transformers-like growth, would come the light cycle. This animation was pretty incredible, and the effects with the battles were also insane. I was eager to see how these portions would turn out and I was really impressed.

Outside of this, the rest of the movie was quite a let down. Typical rebellious rich kid who is spurning his father's legacy, has all the cool tech toys and fast motorcycles. Not much real development here on the Sam Flynn front, or any real front for that matter. Jeff Bridges as Flynn also wasn't real impressive, I saw him in True Grit a few weeks ago and despite my general feeling that the movie was boring, I was impressed by his acting. He was funny a few times with his west coast surfer-ish lingo, but it got old and didn't really seem to fit him very well.

I was also significantly disappointed with the creativity in the design of "The Grid" world and the ships and planes. A few of the designs here were reminiscent of current popular video games. For example, the ship that Clu attempts to fly into the portal was a close reminder of Mass Effect. I felt like they could have gone so far in this, but the effort seemed lackluster. Also, the world itself just seemed to be a normal city with the typical Tron light scheme attached and some post-apocalyptic rocky exterior region. For all his talk in the movie of how the Grid was revolutionary, it was nothing special to me.

I also felt as if not much really happened. His son arrives, does some battles, finds his dad, does some more, they attempt to escape and done. It just overall wasn't an extremely compelling or engaging story line.

Despite all this, one thing bothered me the most. In the beginning scenes before Sam entered into the digital world, he was in his apartment and pulled out a beer and guess what it was.

Coors Original Banquet. Seriously?? Who the hell drinks this stuff anyway. I've had it a few times and its garbage. A Times article said the placement was because the gold color of the can fit with the scene, but that's total BS. Who gives the damn what color the can is, a 27 year old male is not going to be drinking that trash, especially one who owns the majority shares of major corporation. O, but he's rebelling and crap, well then put a goddamn PBR in his hand and it would have made waaaaaay more sense.

Anyway, overall the movie was boring, the 3D effects outside the combat scenes were unimpressive, characters weren't really developed and I was left with a completely underwhelming feeling from what could/should have been a movie which just assaulted and overwhelmed you with its incredible effects.

Final Score: 4.5/10