Now, I am a bit of a geek (if by "a bit of a geek," you mean "a huge mega-geek"), so I get all tingly in my pants any time Hollywood tosses a bone to anything remotely nerdy. I mean, I saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in theaters, I paid money to see it. If knowing is half the battle, I really hope the other half has nothing to do with Marlon Wayans.
So needless to say I got doe-eyed and hopeful when I heard they had a new Tron on the table and my little nerd heart got excited when it heard that Jeff Bridges would be returning and other parts of my body got excited when I saw Olivia Wilde in her Tron suit.
Jeff Bridges returns, playing the charismatic, kinda hippy-ish and goofy The Dude, I mean The Dude plays Kevin Flynn, I mean Kevin Flynn is The Dude, I mean...Jeff Bridges is awesome.
It has been awhile since Kevin Flynn got downloaded onto a computer, he has started a hugely successful software business and has had a kid, Sam, but he disappears one night and no one can find him.
Twenty-years-later Sam is played by Garrett Hedlund. Sam is kind of a bitter about the whole being-abandoned-by-his-father thing and Hedlund plays him with a nice touch of anger and rebellion.
Sam gets sucked into the grid, just like his father, and,just like his father, is forced to play in "the Games." If you saw the first Tron, you remember that "the Games" was when they would force you to throw discs at your opponent or ride around on a crappy CGI motorcycle. It's pretty much the same in the new Tron except A BILLION TIMES MORE AWESOME because they are all amped up on new technology and in 3D.
Sam meets a guy who looks exactly like his father, except it isn't his father, it is a clone his father created named Clu (played by Jeff Bridges.) Clu runs the grid and guess what? He is evil.
Sam gets rescued by Quorra, a bad ass and kind of dorky program played by Olivia Wilde who is a bad ass dork. She takes him to his real father who has been hiding for 20 years after Clu betrayed him and trapped him in the computer.
The script is very well done: action packed, thought provoking, funny. The club scene (where Daft Punk makes a cameo) had me laughing like a madman and the fight scenes took my breath away. They didn't play up the romantic sparks between Sam and Quorra, which actually gave it some room to grow.
The special effects, like I said, were awesome. the only thing that didn't quite click was Clu, who was played by the 60-year-old Jeff Bridges but digitally altered to look like the 30-year-old Jeff Bridges, it is pretty good, but something just felt off and was just a tad creepy, but then again Clu is the bad guy so maybe it is a good thing that he is just a bit off and creepy.
Daft Punk did the soundtrack. I am not too wild about electronica, if my music doesn't have an electric guitar or a singer who drinks Jack Daniels I tend to tune out, but Daft Punk is a rare exception to this rule as their beats are hypnotic, tantalizing, and -- given that most of the movie takes place inside a computer -- entirely fitting.
The movie is amazing: the combination of great acting, fantastic story, and mind blowing special effects make for a heady brew of joy juice. I only hope Disney doesn't fuck it up by doing direct-to-DVD sequels or a shitty animated series or something.
4.6 Discs.
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