Film Friday: Disney's 'TRON' – Taking back the Grid with Jeff Bridges

Among the Walt Disney Company's long list of achievements – from creating the first animated American feature film to figuring out how to get Mickey Mouse's face on a shampoo bottle – is the TRON franchise. Whether the studio wants to admit it or not, that little 1982 movie conceived by Steven Lisberger has actually had a profound influence of popular culture.

Both TRON and its 2010 sequel TRON: Legacy are not films anyone hoping to better their screenwriting skills should watch. They are films that solely hinge on their creative designs. What little story they have only exists for the filmmakers to get the audience to the computer world known as the Grid. And thanks to the incredible look of these two films, they are both entertaining on a basic level.

The story of how TRON came to be could only happen if Disney was involved at some level. Lisberger and his producing partner, Donald Kushner, brought the project to Disney in 1980, after years of developing the idea themselves. (As a side note, isn't it astonishing how the idea for TRON came to Disney in 1980 and by July 1982, the film is in theaters? Yes, Hollywood was fast back then.) Initially, the studio was wary because no film had ever combined CG animation and live action so extensively. But this is the same studio that combined hand-drawn animation with live action footage.

While Lisberger, Kushner and their team worked relatively independent from Disney executives after they got the greenlight, the final product still has the feeling of a Disney movie. And of course some of the computer animation looks unfinished compared to today's films, but there is a visual splendor to it. The film looks like a 1980s arcade game brought to life.

TRON would have benefited from a more experienced screenwriter on board. Sure, Lisberger could direct, but he really needed someone to add an extra dramatic “oomph” to make it more than just a by-the-book, good vs. evil story. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is transported to the Grid, where he helps Tron (Brice Boxleitner) and Yori (Cindy Morgan) stop the Master Program and Sark (David Warner) to free the other programs. That's basically the whole story – everything else, from the lightcycles to the gorgeous solar sailor, is all flavoring.

In 2005, Disney first hired a team of writers to work on a TRON sequel and director Joseph Kosinski came on board in 2008. TRON: Legacy hit theaters in December 2010 and even further pushed the envelope of what an audience could take with CG meeting live action. The trouble is that where TRON was the first-of-its-kind, TRON: Legacy came out in a post-Avatar world. We're used to the overuse of CG in live action, so the design work on Legacy had to be even better than what we saw in 1982. And it somehow is, with every familiar vehicle from TRON redesigned like they came from the best video game on the market in 2010.

The trouble with Tron is similar to the issue anyone who wants to write a new Jurassic Park movie faces. You have to figure out how to get your characters back to a world familiar with audiences, even though your characters know the danger. At least for Legacy, we have a new character to take us to the Grid. Sam Flynn has to find his father and save him from Clu, the program Kevin created to make the Grid perfect, with the help of Quorra, as “isomorphic algorithm.”

Unfortunately, Garrett Hedlund was cast as Sam. He proved that you can be tall and handsome, but you still need some charisma and skills to be a leading man in Hollywood. Hedlund, whose career has only included smaller roles since Legacy, has not half of the wit and charm that oozes from Bridges. If Bridges wasn't in the original Tron, it would be nearly impossible to sit through. Sadly, even Bridges' performance in Legacy is a bit... robotic. And the CG-animated Clu now looks awful, like the cut scene from a video game. (You could argue that it works though, since Clu is a computer program.) At least Olivia Wilde is pretty good as Quorra and Michael Sheen has a brilliant, but all-too-brief appearance as Castor/Zuse.

Since Hedlund and Bridges aren't at their best (at least we know that Bridges isn't at his best. Is this Hedlund's best?), the father/son story that should be at the heart of the film feels forced and rushed among the tech world. And Clu's impossible pursuit of perfection seems to foreshadow the heady ideas in Tomorrowland. It turns out that Disney's animated films aren't the only ones at the studio that need a message.

Legacy was delivered to audiences more like a half-baked duck (sorry Donald). It cost an astounding $170 million and grossed “only” $400 million. After marketing costs and exhibitors fees, Disney probably saw less than half of it. So, it's not completely shocking that Tron 3 was killed. However, forgetting about the money concerns, what would a Tron 3 be like? Why would Sam go back to the Grid, especially with Quorra? To save his father? Then you have the same exact story as Legacy.

It's amazing that the original TRON has had such an impact on pop culture, but it's not because of its story. Who even remembers what the movies are about? The truth is that the films are visual marvels, even though their graphics will probably age over time thanks to ever evolving computer graphics. The music for these films is also extraordinary, perfectly matching the visuals. Daft Punk even made a remix album out of its score for Legacy. Disney may want to consider the TRON series akin to one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters, but the fact is that their unique style could only come to life at the Mouse House. Maybe we will eventually see a TRON that finally has a story worth the visuals.

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