My holiday in New York was pretty relaxed. I didn’t schedule too much because I was busy writing my chapters for a book I’m contributing to. I did get a chance to see the 3D Imax version of TRON: Legacy. I’d read some of the reviews from a number of people, “It’s a terrible movie” or “I can’t believe how they ruined the storyline”, or the best one yet, “What a fantastic music clip though a poor movie”. With reviews like that, I figured it’d be best to see it whilst on the big screen and with great audio at the same time, so off I went to see Tron on the big screen.

Just like in Avatar, the 3D effects strike you from the start, with a flying in movement that literally makes you feel like you’re floating through the air. After a while you adjust and the 3D effects start to become less noticeable.

Even though this latest incarnation apparently “ruined the original storyline”, I kind of liked the movie for what it was. The first fifteen minutes does a good job at creating excitement and wonder.

I had to really question the whole motorcycle chase scene and the breaking into the company but the “broken childhood” of the main character and how those skills are later put to use make a whole lot of sense. It really wouldn’t have been quite the same.

I also appreciated the use of a termail and the “kill -9” process by one of the sideline characters that doesn’t attempt to over-glamourise the techie side to it.

As expected, the movie spends most of its time in the “digital world”, where the club-like UV effects make their most impact on the dark backgrounds and where all the great action scenes come to life. Despite how easily the whole movie could have centred around the action fight scenes created by the light-cycles, I think they did a good job of the cool factor without over-doing it. In fact, I think this underuse made the point very well.

What really stood out for me was the fantastic soundtrack instrumented by French DJs, Daft Punk. Dark, moving, and bass-thumping tracks for once adding that extra dimension to feeling like you were really part of a club. It’d be nice to think that a digital world could be as club-like as they made it out to be 🙂

This isn’t a movie that will win any awards. I think it’s an ambitious project to try to replicate something that already exists. In fact, I remember watching the original as such a young kid I remember nothing to compare it to other than the name, so for me it works.

As far as entertainment it works for me. The story doesn’t take any unexpected twists but you know what? That’s fine with me.