Is the risk worth it? In the movie industry lacking in new story lines, reboots have been rampant. It's a sure fire way of earning money at the box office if you just re shoot a classic, in this case its Tron first shown in 1982. Lo and behold, they didn't do a reboot, but instead the producers simply made a sequel, 38 years after it was first shown. A big gamble if you ask us.
When the sequel, Tron Legacy was shown, a lot of critics gave it a low score, as if showing disappointment to its story line and the whole movie altogether. We disagree with their opinion as we liked it the first time we watched it. If we did have misgivings about it, its our disappointment that we had to wait for 38 years to watch a sequel to a cult classic.
The original Tron even with some cheesy animation and special effects, it was something ahead of its time. The story was very thin yet it was entertaining enough to be made a cult classic. Fast forward to 2010, special effects have jumped up with leaps and bounds. After hearing critics, we thought this movie was lame compared to the first yet here I am extolling how great it was.
We also thought that Computer Graphics or CGI would wow us that it had a bad story line, but here we are loving it as well. Story starts with Kevin Flynn lost in the grid. His son, Sam Flynn finally grew up with a father, is full of anger in the world. He rebels against even to his own company. He was raised diligently by Kevin's friend, Alan Bradley (Tron in the Grid) yet he feels he was just making a rosy picture of his long lost Dad. He didn't believe in the grid, so his Dad for him, simply left him all alone.
Somehow into the film, Sam got transported to the Grid. He finally saw another world that his dad was telling his about. A world that has been transformed by CLU, a program created by his dad Flynn, to create and maintain a perfect world. Perfect isn't perfect as Kevin realized and he tried to stop CLU. The latter took over and Kevin went hiding in the Grid, unable to escape to the real world. Sam in the grid was captured by CLU hoping to draw out Kevin in the process, immerses Sam in the games. This movie then takes into an overdrive of our senses. With electrifying graphics and cool sounds by def punk, the whole environment brings us to the digital world of the grid.
Being the son of Kevin Flynn, Sam also has the knack for the games and survives a number of matches until he was rescued by Quorra, an Isomorphic Algorithm or iso. She brought him to his father finally and emotions surge between the two. Sam wants to bring his Dad to the real world while Kevin wants to stay and hide from CLU.
Children don't listen to their parents so instead of hiding, Sam decided to take steps to get back to the real world. He tried to enlist help from a David Bowie look a like and things got a bit edgy, eventually Dad comes to the rescue of Sam. Since he was already within the clutches of CLU, both dad and son now decides to return to the real world through the portal with Quorra in tow.
In the end, Dad's love shines above anything else with Sam and Quorra finally makes it to the real world. With a story line or lines more or less original, we think this film can stand on its own, independent of the first one. So one can appreciate this even without watching the original Tron. We have watched this movie many times over and somehow this film gets better every time.
Now for those into visual details, CGI might not be up to Star Wars Awakening standards, still we didn't feel this hampered in its story telling. We like to see more sequels in the future.
We hope that we don't see the sequel in the next 38 years or so.
