TRON LEGACY

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Starring Jeff Bridges

Trailer

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Gus Van Sant directed a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho where he copied every frame of the original film to the letter, shooting a completely faithful shot-for-shot simulacrum because he’s a fat, demented voyeur with a penchant for filming incestuous Frenchwoman ripping their clitorises off with household appliances. So how faithful should you be to the work of an auteur? Tron Legacy isn’t a remake, but it may as well be; only John Lassister and two dogs who walked in by mistake watched the original in 1985 and the film’s subsequently sunk to a level of public recognition somewhere between Peter Sutcliffe and The The. Tron’s also not strictly the work of an auteur, but since no one can remember the director’s name and he didn’t do anything else of note, it almost fits the bill. A stark but striking experiment of emptiness, the 1982 model is near impossible to watch today, being devoid of emotion, narrative interest and slower than Peter Andre. It sits as a relic of technological progress, the first feeble jump to the CGI domination that invigorates/degrades every high-price lump of drama you’ve seen over the past ten years. No Tron, no Toy Story 3, no Tron, no Clash of the Titans. A mixed Legacy, rather like its sequel. HAHAHAHAHAHAA.

If the second Tron’s aim was to emulate the original in every conceivable way it’s succeeded admirably, producing a technologically updated 2.0 that improves visually and orally on its predecessor in every neon-coated, 3D-gouging manner, but then 28 years of dicking about with a mouse mat will do that. Where the sequel is most faithful is in its unflinching depiction of utterly unreal, implausible human relationships and dialogue, with even the ever-excellent Jeff Bridges failing to instill feeling into a script beeped out by a processor. Three decades have done wonders for the design, graphics and spectacle, but nothing for the words written on the script; it’s the same empty, un-relatable cack-talk that was peddled out in 1982 underneath a veneer of progress, even though this time it’s meant to revolve around a troubled father-son tete a tete and the emergence of a digital utopia. Eye twisting to look at and beautifully realized, it’s a worthwhile addition to a film with diminished horizons in terms of basic human emotions, and as such Tron Legacy is truly the child of its 80s forebear; an impressive, humourless spectacle, one point removed from all the other soulless money-vacuums playing the in the multiplex. Sweet light cycles though, wicked.