Steven Lisberger’s 1982 science fiction film Tron became a cult classic for its pioneering use of CGI and its focus on the emerging world of video games, but it took 28 years for Disney to produce a sequel. Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy, which celebrates its 15th anniversary on Dec. 17, again pushed the envelope of digital effects — with mixed results. While its modernized spin on the virtual world of the Grid looks stunning, the de-aging effects used to create a young version of Tron star Jeff Bridges wound up looking deeply disturbing. But nightmarish visuals weren’t the worst thing Kosinski and Tron: Legacy writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz did to the franchise. They also stripped away the weirdest and coolest part of Tron’s story, leaving behind a plot that was both cliche and nonsensical.
Tron is effectively a sci-fi version of The Wizard of Oz. Bridges’ video game designer Kevin Flynn is trying to hack his former employer ENCOM when a malevolent virtual intelligence sucks him into the Grid. The digital world is populated by computer programs that share some personality traits with their creators and are played by the same actors who portray them in the real world of the film.
Like Dorothy, Flynn’s top priority is to get home. To do that he needs to confront the wicked Master Control Program and his second-in-command, Sark, both played by David Warner, who also portrayed Flynn’s scheming coworker Ed Dillinger. Flynn needs the help of Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a security program developed by Flynn’s buddy Alan Bradley, and numerous other digital entities like the earnest actuarial program Ram (Dan Shor) and the wise sphynx-like guardian Dumont (Barnard Hughes), who represents ENCOM co-founder Dr. Walter Gibbs.
Tron: Legacy largely ditches this concept. Bridges plays both the real version of himself, who has been trapped in the Grid since 1989, and CLU (short for Codified Likeness Utility), the megalomaniacal program Flynn created to be a duplicate of himself within the Grid. But having Flynn actively create CLU in his image negates the metaphysical nature of a version of himself simply emerging in the grid as part of his programming work.
An artist always puts a bit of themselves into their work, and Tron made that strikingly literal, as if the programmer endowed their code with a bid of their soul. In Tron: Legacy, CLU is more like Marvel’s Ultron — an intentional creation by a reckless genius that inevitably goes awry. The film barely even investigates what part of Flynn CLU is emulating with his need for control and desire for power. Those parts seem to have been entirely contained by the elder Flynn, who is now effectively a zen master trying to avoid conflict with his digital self.
Tron is still there, but he’s been corrupted by CLU to serve him. There’s no deeper meaning in that transition as in the real world of the film, Alan is still a good guy who wants Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) to clean up his act. Otherwise the dual casting has been ditched, which leaves the characters on both sides feeling extremely thin.
Sam mostly teams up with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), the last survivor of a species of isomorphic algorithms that spontaneously emerged in the Grid and were exterminated by CLU, who considered the abnormalities. Adding this “bio-digital jazz” is entirely unnecessary. A better version of Tron: Legacy would have just explored the wonder of the Grid becoming a much more populated place as computer programming skyrocketed in importance and so many people let pieces of themselves run wild in a digital realm. Instead the setting feels remarkably lifeless, a set for a bland father-son reconciliation, with Quorra serving both men without any motivation of her own.
The narrative of Tron wasn’t especially sophisticated, but it did create a feeling of awe around digital worlds. Tron: Legacy copied the aesthetic, rogue AI plot, and Light Cycle races and Light Flyer chases. But it didn’t grasp the personal connection to the digital characters that made the odyssey of Tron feels so beautiful.
