The wife and I just got Tron Legacy from the library. We watched it in two parts: the first boring half and the last insufferable half. Here’s the lowdown, and of course, if you don’t want to read spoilers, don’t read this article!

Tron Legacy is a sequel to the original Tron movie, which was kinda neat but I don’t remember that much from it. It involved Jeff Bridges getting sucked inside a computer and playing lots of the games he created against computer programs and whatnot. The sequel has Jeff Bridges stuck in the system and missing from the real world for the last however many years. Of course he left behind a son that thought the world of him and hasn’t come to grips with the loss yet (or the fact he’s the largest shareholder in the mega tech company his father left behind – kinda Bruce Wayne-esque, at least in the Christopher Nolan movies).

His son ends up getting sucked into the system and finding his dad, and the rest of the movie focuses on them trying to get back to the “portal” so they can get back to the real world. Fighting against them are computer creations CLU (a mirror-image of Jeff Bridges), Tron, and Zuse. Jeff doesn’t seem to have a lot of motivation to get back, and at the end when he destroys CLU with basically a wave of his hand (along with himself), it only raises questions why his powers weren’t enough to handle all the bad guys to begin with.

I was hoping for more cool games – there are a few scenes, but nothing too neat. The movie seems a little full of itself. Scenes are a little slow as if we have some deep attachment to the characters (we don’t) and as if we’d enjoy just staring at them. There are way (WAY!) too many people falling great distances and landing on one knee with a hand back (there needs to be a YouTube video of this, akin to the walking-and-looking-away-from-an-explosion ilk). As all the main good guys are in a ship making their way to the portal, the portal is seen on the horizon. After some bad guys start chasing them, they kick the ship into another gear (why weren’t they already going as fast as they could?!). Then later the portal still seems to be on the horizon. Can you say drawn out (like this article)?! The end scene with the son trying to convince the dad to come with him is total cliché – “I’m not leaving without you” garbáge.

I guess in the end I was hoping for more plot than “let’s get back to the portal”. The animation of CLU, which is a younger version of Jeff Bridges, is sometimes good, but at most times just a Polar Express-like “meh”. In the end the son and a random program creation called an “ISO” escape and I suppose live happily ever after. Yes, the program comes to life – it’s a miracle.

This movie is not worth watching. But in case you’re up with insomnia, here’s a preview: