Tron Legacy: 2010: A Digital Odyssey

Tron Legacy is best seen at The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. That's where this blogger saw it just over an hour ago. The grand space with it's indirect lighting is the perfect backdrop for a most unsettling movie.

Tron Legacy is so because it's a cross between the 1982 Tron and 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, you should see both of those movies before you set foot into the Grand Lake to see Tron Legacy. The Jeff Bridges-starring flick makes you think about the meaning of your own existence. It's also yet another story featuring White Guy Playing God While Not Mentioning God.   That was the unsettling part: the man-replace-God theme, again.

Yep. The "White Guy Playing God While Not Mentioning God" theme is hammered into us everyday.  Be it Stephen Hawking working to say God doesn't exist, and trying to make himself look like one in the process, or some Atheist like Christopher Hitchens asserting his all-knowing self into your life, telling you there is no God to trust in him, Christopher.

This happens so much so I view it as part of The Matrix. And in order to avoid being brainwashed by The Matrix you have to question of frequency of what you see. How many times have you seen the "Black Guy Playing God While Not Mentioning God" theme in a movie? How about in life? Hard to find an example, eh?   And frankly, I find that idea just as unsettling as the "White Male God" message.

But I digress.

Everything about Tron Legacy is 2001 A Space Odyssey, all the way down to these connections: Hal 9000 is Clu, the program-human created by Kevin Flynn (Bridges) that becomes all too self-aware. Kevin Flynn and Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) are Dave in 2001: the person we take the journey with to where he eventually becomes the star-child, the entity around which a new life form is born. That life form is represented by Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who was created by Kevin Flynn and is the last of her kind.

Ultimately, it's left to the elder Flynn as Dave to take down Clu as Hal 9000.

While I've given away the central theme of Tron Legacy, that doesn't mean it's not a film worth $11 and 3D glasses to see. It's worth every penny.  Even if the 3D wasn't really all that necessary.  In fact, there's a disclaimer at the start of the movie that some parts of it are presented in 2D, not 3D.  But I found myself pulling up my 3D glasses to get a view of Tron Legacy without them.   What I saw wasn't too bad.   Yes, 3D added something, but it wasn't the WOW factor we've come to expect from movies like Avatar, the Gold Standard for 3D to date.

Jeff Bridges Was OK

Jeff Bridges was just OK in his role as Kevin Flynn.  His flip 1960s hipster / LA Lakers Coach Phil Jackson-esque style injected just the right amont of humor into tense moments, though I can see how some would be annoyed with the act.

Garrett Hedlund was a little too action frat boyish to be believed, but we accept him as Sam Flynn, Kevin's son.

But where Garrett Hedlund was subpar, and that's due to the way the character of Sam was written, not to his acting skills, Olivia Wilde as Quorra was awesome.  She was, of all of the characters, the one you rooted for the most.  Quorra, a digital creation, was the most human of all entities in Tron Legacy.  Seeing her escape the digital world feel the sunlight at Tron's end, made up for whatever discomfort I had with the whole "White Man God" thing.

And why the discomfort?  Regardless of who does the God thing, human's aren't ready to be God, let alone play God.  Our idea of God as expressed in movies and books has little to do with being good, and everything to do with lording over other people, against their will.  

Lord, help us.