Last Night I Saw Twenty-Three Minutes of Tron: Legacy

Last night, I attended one of Disney’s special “Tron Night” sneak previews at the Boeing IMAX theater, where they screened twenty-three minutes of the new film Tron: Legacy (which apparently is not pronounced Tron: Lagasse and has nothing to do with Emeril. Go figure).

But before I could get my first glimpse a film for which I am mildly enthused, Disney’s Scary Men in Black Suits made me check in my phone—a typical precaution at an event like this, but one which made the long wait in line, by myself, interminable. For entertainment, I had only the reverent waxing nostalgic of the die-hard Tron fans in front of me. One of them talked about recently repurchasing the entire Tron trading card set from 1982, and his buddy recounted—in a rendition overstuffed with personal backstory—the time he first saw Tron when he was twelve years old. He then went on to discuss his early attempts at Tron cosplay (legwarmers and socks apparently played a huge role).

The theater was hardly packed—I’d venture to say its 405 seats were maybe only one-third full. Kind of surprising, as it’s hard to imagine a better venue for this glitzy, 3-D pixel-porn tentpole. The footage was preceded by a text scroll—credited to Tron: Lagasse Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski—explaining how to wear and use our freshly bleached, lice-free 3-D glasses, and how the footage we were about to peep was just random, disassociated scenes.

A good chunk of the footage was taken up by the necessary introductory real-world sequence, where it was established that Sam Flynn, son of Jeff Bridges’ character from the original, is living in a sweet studio apartment/storage unit down by the docks in Vancouver/wherever Tron is supposed to be set. Bruce Boxleitner, the OG Tron himself, comes across like a total champ in this sequence, acting circles around lightweight male lead Garrett Hedlund, who has the stiff, mannequin-like demeanor of a sex-changed Malin Ackerman.

The obligatory scene of him checking out his Dad’s dusty old arcade (“What the hell, I’m supposedly a little drunk on two beers”) felt like more tedious blue-balling before things finally switched over to the stylized, eye-catching Tron world (“Might as well pop a quarter in this old Tron game, what’s the worst that could happen?”), but there was at least one fun touch: when Sam flicks the switch and all the games come glowing to life, the sound system starts blasting one of the Journey songs (I think) from the original Tron soundtrack. As Sam explores the secret passageways underneath the arcade, the music gets all faint and reverbed-out, which sounds especially cool when the track switches over to the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

ANYWAY, Tron land: Sam shows up, is captured by a giant glowing red staple, and mistaken for a program. They send him to a room full of fembots (the script refers to them as “sirens”) that live in white wall-mounted coffins, just waiting for sexy mannequin men to show up. They all walk in lockstep unison towards Sam, disrobe him using special laser fingers (“There’s a zipper,” he quips), and then give him some sleek new Tron duds (part of this scene is visible in the “Derezzed” music video excerpt that recently debuted online). Then they’re like, “Peace,” and go back to their coffins.

More thoughts after the jump.

This was followed by an impressive action sequence where Sam takes part in an evil Frisbee fight a disc war. During this, and the subsequent two lightcycle chases, I was actually pretty impressed by the 3-D. I still don’t care for movies looking like pop-up books—or the subliminal 3-D strobing effect that, combined with a feeling of permafried-ness and the ingestion of too many Christmas cookies, put me to sleep during the last act of Avatar—but the visual overload of the Tron world was fairly arresting.

We were treated to a chase sequence that introduced Olivia Wilde’s Tron-world love interest, where she takes Sam “off-road” (what?) in her fancy Tron four-wheeler. They go out to the Tron-‘burbs to visit Jeff Bridges, who is living in an all-white Kubrick-esque manse in Beverly Hills Tron Hills. When we first see him—and this was pretty dope—he’s meditating on a platform with raindrops falling upwards from it towards the ceiling. Bridges’ elder Flynn looked like I feel: all New Age-y in white robes and beads, but with a big, cumbersome disc on his back.

After a tearful reunion with his son (Hedlund looking like someone squirted him with a water pistol across the general “eye area” between takes), Bridges just cold ditches his son and walks outside through his hologram window to stare at Tron-ville. “Dinner, we’ll talk at dinner,” he says, because apparently even programs need to eat. What, I don’t know. Astronaut food?

The rest of the preview was taken up with more brief, coquettish teases, like we’ve seen before in trailers and sizzle reels: Michael Sheen’s Tron Bowie introducing Daft Punk (to my frustration, last night’s footage conspicuously failed to give a strong impression of their buzzed-about original score), more lightcycle chases, and the hilariously shitty-looking digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges as Flynn’s evil counterpart, Clu.

Had the film really appeared to be about man’s relationship with technology, and the way it estranges us from personal, intimate interaction with our fellow man—and not another cookie-cutter “family values” Disney yarn about a father and son reuniting—I might have given pause when I got my phone back, but mostly I was just like, “Give me my fucking phone back.”