I sometimes reserve weekend and/or holiday mornings for seeing movies my wife, Ellen, will not see with me. There is no particular rhyme or reason as to which movies she is interested in going with me to see and those not, with the one mild exception perhaps of quality – the lower the quality the more likely she won’t go. Thematically, other than that quality thing, films that tend to be science fiction and/or contain violence of some sort are often on the do not go with Dan list.
The movie theatre that starts showing movies earliest, at least the one that is close to us, is the AMC Movie theatres at Tysons Corners. Since they also have an IMAX theatre, they are my most likely to be the go-to-a-movie-theatre-by-myself location.
Anyway, that is why I found myself, by myself, at Tysons, for the 10am showing of Tron Legacy, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10011582-TRON_legacy/, in 3D IMAX, Christmas morning.
I suspect that anyone who is particularly likely to see Tron has already done so. And since I don’t really do movie reviews, I will note that if I accidently write a spoiler or two I apologize in advance for doing so.
For those who haven’t seen Tron Legacy, I will say that having only read about, but not seen, the original, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tron/, I suspect I didn’t really understand all of the references.
My quick summary is that if you like relatively mindless, loud, cgi-intensive movies Tron Legacy provides a few hours of distraction. Though, I kept thinking I was watching a version of The Big Lebowski, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_lebowski/, versus the Super Mario Brothers.
So Jeff Bridges in the original evidently went into a digital world, created a copy of himself called CLU which stands for three words that being with C-L-U, and a helper called Tron. Whatever happened in that original one, he never returns to ‘real life’. I could call real life, off-grid but evidently you can be on the grid inside the digital world or off the grid, so we will call the outside world off-off-grid.
The movie starts off-off-grid, where Bridges son has grown up and has lost control of the company that Bridges owned/founded (whatever) and which the son, Sam, is the largest shareholder in. The company is called Encom, which is an interesting name though the original movie was released years before the Enron scandal.
The obligatory Hollywood poke at everything capitalistic, except that is in Hollywood, is gotten over with at the beginning of the movie when it is announced that Encom is releasing its newest, most secure operating system called version 12 (I guess five is better than seven?). When the CEO is asked what has been changed about the new operating system, the answer is we put the number 12 on the box. There is lamenting about how the operating system should be open and free to the public; coincidentally Sam has copied and released the operating system to the world during the course of this conversation. My supposition is that Encom at this point represented Microsoft, which it seemed to me hasn’t been doing well enough these days to be represented as such an evil organization.
In any event, after a while, Sam through the help of an old friend of his father, imported from the original Tron movie, played by Bruce Boxleitner, who I liked better in Babylon V, enters the grid, where he wanders from the grid to off-grid and back on the grid. I cannot summarize, or in fact even afterwards entirely understand the plot from that point until the end of the movie.
While in the grid, Sam meets Clu who evidently is an actor with Jeff Bridges face looking like it did in the original film, which was a bit creepy and his actual father, played by Jeff Bridges with his current face, who as I mentioned earlier is channeling The Dude. I noticed that in the key age old question as to whether the male hero should end up with the blonde, Beau Garnett in this case, or the brunette, Olivia Wilde, Tron Legacy came down on the side of the brunette. This is always a key issue in fanboy movies.
My favorite performer was Michael Sheen who played a nightclub owner pretending to be Martin Short. Michael Sheen is wonderful in every movie I have ever seen him. Even when my younger daughter, forced me, to see Twilight New Moon, he represented the one part, and I emphasize in that case, the only part of the movie I found more than drivel. Well, in the interests of honest disclosure the reality is that I wasn’t forced, I went because of my endless need I have to spend even a few minutes with either or both my daughters; though if asked to go to another Twilight movie would be the ultimate test of that need.
In any event, another movie checked off. I suspect if it stays in movie theatres long enough, my next by-myself movie will be Rare Exports, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rare_exports/.
BTW, does anyone know why the Tysons in Tysons Corners has an s and no apostrophe?