Movie of the Week - Tron: Legacy

It seems as if I've been waiting for the sequel to Tron forever. I loved the original movie, which admittedly I hadn't seen since it was originally in the theaters almost 30 years ago. Therefore, I hardly remembered any details. Details such as there was actually a character named Tron and that Bruce Boxleitner played him. After such a long wait and especially after reading the reviews I was ready to be mightily disappointed by Tron:Legacy. But, in fact, I wasn't disappointed at all.The negative reviewers seemed to think that the movie needed to be about some majestic theme and have a novel plot. But it's a sequel to a movie about a guy trapped in a video game. Where's the majesty or the novelty? My daughter saw it with us even though she'd already seen it (at midnight on opening day) on 3D IMAX. She liked it a lot. As she the movie is supposed to be shiny, not deep. And shiny it is. Surely you know that the movie makers created a younger CG version of Jeff Bridges to play the character CLU (another detail I'd forgotten from the original). The reviewers and my daughter thought that the CG Jeff Bridges was creepy but I didn't. The plot has a number of cliches knitted together into one story: unresolved father-son issues; son a goof-off because of those issues; a God figure (the father); a reluctant savior (the son); no Holy Ghost; cyberspace; martial arts (with shiny deadly disks); and a girl seeing her first sunrise (it's in the movie but probably not much of a cliche).

And of course great special effects. Stuff they probably couldn't even dream about in 1982. Jeff Bridges goes about in a black robe with light shining out of the sleeves, collar and hem. I want one of those.

Movies like this always have unresolved questions. Like, where is the computer that was running this computer world? But I liked the movie enough that questions like this don't bother me.

And the music, by Daft Punk (who make a cameo appearance) was great.