yea me and a bud caught the midnight show last night. the story was alright, but it was a pure visual feast for the eyes. I loved the design of everything, it all looked super cool.
I thought the story actually wasn't too bad...and I am normally a sticker for those sort of things.
The CG was amazing. I noticed a lack of 3D, even when they were in The Grid. There was no "in your face" cg shots, which I am fine with. I took my glasses off for about 5 minutes when they were in The Grid and you could hardly tell the movie was in 3D.
Overall I loved the movie and was blown away. It was much better than I expected and the negative reviews it got were not justified IMO. Definatly recomend it.
Oh and Olivia Wild in her cute wig gave me the first boner I have ever gotten in a PG movie.
I dunno guys, obviously I had huge expectations - but the 3D really didnt work for me. Even in Imax 3D, it just didnt add much to the movie at the cost of making it quite weird an unfocused. If Tron-type visuals dont make 3D work, then nothing can! I remember LCD shutter glasses at amusement parks - they worked soooo much better than this cheap polarized thing.
The only cool 3D part were the little dots on Flynns window and the opening arena shots. Now obviously not everything HAS to be 3D in your face .... but if only a few shots are justifying it, then why doing it at all ?
I am sad that the Bit wasnt there, apart from the little replica/knockoff at Flynns apartment. Overall I liked it, loved the references to the original (Now THAT is a big door!) but I was expecting more creative use of CG and stronger abstractions in the Grid world. Like, Lawnmower Man kind of thing. I thought that the original visual screen test teaser that was shown 2 years ago looked cooler and crisper.
Oh and, Daft Punk rocked! Plus congrats to Daniel Simon, great job on everything!
As for the not being able to see 3D that actually is a common thing for even people with regular eyes. A friend of mine works at one of the studios that dose 3D conversion for movies and apparently like 1 out of 25 people cant see 3D at all.
I'm sure the 3D was lacking (as almost every 3D movie dose) is becasue its not shot in 3D. That is the biggest problem. Almost all 3D movies are done after the fact so nothing is really 3D. You just have people specify what should be foreground, background and middle ground. Movies like Toy Story work because they are full CG movies and can be rendered in 3D. Live action movies if not shot in 3D have to be converted to 3D and hence why all 3D live action movies that arnt Avatar (which was shot in 3D with a 3D camera) suck.
Surprised with all the cg in Tron that the 3D wasn't amazing though. But who cares right? its Tron! Awesome style and killer music.
one thing I noticed is that before they get in the grid, the 1st 15 mins or so is almost completley 2d, then the 1st few initial shots when he enters the seem to have this popping depth to them, subtle enough to be classy but to me seemed like it helped signify the transition into the digital world.
I was actually kinda happy they restrained themselves and didnt have shit popping out the screen like they would have had so many opportunities to do, for 3d I like it as a subtle depth like most of avatar did.
the trailer for pirates before it was in 3d and the stupid sword through the door popping out of the screen just was an eye rolling moment for me.
music was awesome and the cameo from daft punk was cool. the CG C.L.U. jeff bridges suffered a bit from the dead eye syndrome and some weird looking expressions/facial softness which kept taking me out of it a bit.
The only "holy crap that looks flippin sweet" 3D shot that could tell was totally 3d was when
*spoilers*
they were on the cargo ship heading to the portal and Sam and Quorra were sitting down talking and Flynn opens his eyes and you see the two of them with the solar flares of the cargo ship behind them and the portal in the distance. Epic epic shot.
The look she had on her face while they were riding off into the sunset in the end and then buried her face into him was priceless.
Totally priceless. Fit her 'grown up but still a kid at heart' character to a 't'.
Something that just struck me about this movie was the pacing.. it felt in some ways similar to 5th Element - just the right mix of action and story at any given time.
Yeah, I read some reviews and a lot of people cite "plot holes" without actually giving examples of plot holes. While driving back from the theater, I was racking my brain trying to think of reasons why people would hate on this movie so hard, as some of the reviewers basically lumped it in with Last Airbender and Transformers 2 in the "plot makes no sense, typical Hollywood BS" sort of way.
I could think of one actual plot hole and one potential plot hole, tho it's really just left unexplained, not really a hole, but...
Plot Hole 1:
When Sam enters the grid, the portal is opened. It is later explained that the portal is like a beacon, that it let everyone know when Flynn was in the grid, and it made the programs happy to see it. No one seemed to notice it, including CLU, who was the guy who sent the page and thus should have been keeping an eye out for the portal. His plan also suggested that he was expecting the portal, so the fact that no one noticed it is strange.
Plot Hole(?) 2:
Tron and CLU fight, and the last you see of Tron is CLU about to derez him, but you find out that Tron is still alive and that CLU has somehow corrupted him. I guess. Tron was made to prevent any one program from having full control of the system (in the original film), so to help CLU become a dictator is a pretty big deal, and way outside his character. It's never explained, but maybe it's better left to a sequel to deal with that.
But yeah. People are bitching about this movie having more holes than Bonnie and Clyde, and I can't really see them. There's a lot of stuff that happens that's not really explained, but it's also stuff that you don't really need explained to 'get' the story and the plot, so it's like people bitching that there aren't more 'as you know...' scenes. Coming from critics, it doesn't make much sense to me.
I wouldn't call them plot holes - its more about some rules of the Grid world being weirdly explained or slightly bent in an annoying way. (granted, there was some too in first movie!! but the world being so abstract and sterile/eerie in the first story made it all fit together).
I thought the Disc stuff was weird, its unclear whether its some kind of uber ID (if you loose it, and get controlled by a sentry and you have nothing to show, youre screwed and get arrested), or something more deep. I always assumed it was some deep essence thing, but this movie makes it feel more like a plastic drivers license, kinda.
I had a bit of a Phantoms Menace gut feeling during the movie, eek.
Clu is the one who sent out the page, but wasn't sure when or *who* would come through the portal, and seeing as everyone, including Tron, assumed Sam was just another program (much like what happened to his father in the original movie), Clu had to wait for the new User to reveal him or herself.
In regards to Plot Hole #2, it's actually pretty clearly explained by Flynn Sr repeatedly:
He told Clu "we must make this place perfect", and Clu took that took a Final Solution kind of extreme. Meanwhile, Flynn Sr goes through a kind of "oh... I screwed up saying that.. perfection is a failure of a goal".
I enjoyed the movie, more on the audiovisual side of things though. The story was basic, not bad but not great. I think the movie excels in other parts - it's audiovisual experience. Visually stunning.
I didn't really notice any big plot holes to speak of. The two points brought up here were explained above. Again, I can't think of anything else either. I was so focused on the movie that it didn't leave much time to nitpick on such things.
The 3D part was a bit of let down. I too expected the 3D to be in a bigger part in a movie like this were it would have been suitable to use it. I don't mean it has to be in your face all the time, but certainly there were events on the Grid that I expected to have more "in your face" feel.
Overall, I'd watch the movie again. Good sequel, not as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be.
In regards to Plot Hole #2, it's actually pretty clearly explained by Flynn Sr repeatedly:
He told Clu "we must make this place perfect", and Clu took that took a Final Solution kind of extreme. Meanwhile, Flynn Sr goes through a kind of "oh... I screwed up saying that.. perfection is a failure of a goal".
CLU's motivation gets explained, but not Tron's (Rinz'ler through most of the movie).
Sorry for all the spoiler tag discussion. I'll stop now.
the first 1/3 of the movie wasnt even in 3d, so you could take your glasses off and watch it normally and get all the color. the parts that were in 3d were totally unnecessary. it definitely felt like 3d was an afterthought and was done cheaply ( i dont know how to explain it, it seems simplified, like there was a background, midground, and foreground, and thats it).
overall, i think it hurt the experience, it dulled down the colors and brightness a lot.
besides that, it was a great story, good plot twists.
Absolutely loved the movie. I'm a big Tron fan, and have been anticipating it for a long time. I did actually go in with expectations of the story being pretty bad, and I was surprised that it was better than expected. I saw it in IMAX 3D. I actually like the fact that it wasn't a bunch of in-yo-face 3D, because when I buy this on bluray, I'm not going to be watching it on a 3D tv. A lot of "3D centric" movies have to be totally awkward to watch on a 2D screen, like you feel left out.. (Alice in wonderland anyone?)
It was cool to watch. I liked how they visually translated all the computer stuff.
Young Jeff Bridges, however, was distractingly lost in the uncanny valley. I don't understand how it could be that bad in the post-Benjamin Button era. His character was lifeless. None of the other characters were in conflict, so to me, there was no drama.
It was good if you think of it as a big Daft Punk music video, which is cool by me.
It was pretty entertaining, the 3d was lackluster though. also, it was slightly over SEVENTEEN bucks at my local theater, for the "imax" one which isn't actually an imax theater.
So I saw the film tonight and I have to say that it was pretty mediocre at best, with an uninteresting story that dragged on for way too long. Granted, it's very pretty and will make for one hell of a blueray "show off" my (TV / Monitor) disc if nothing else. If people are going into this expecting to be blown away as they were in say Avatar or the Dark Knight then they're going to be extremely disappointed. This film felt like one big and expensive wasted opportunity, that isn't much to right home about. It's a shame to because this could have been an instant classic, such as the Matrix, Avatar, Terminator 2, Star Wars, Aliens, or The Dark Knight!
Also, did anyone else cringe every time the young Flynn /CLU was on screen. I might have looked past this had the story been more compelling or interesting but I couldn't. I was talking about this with a friend of mine who's a fellow artist / animator and he made a good point. He said that either the film makers didn't have the budget / time to do the lip syncing correctly "See Avatar" or they made the CG character off on purpose to convey the fact that he was a computer program / avatar. I'm inclined to go with the later considering the CG teams had 64 weeks of post production, which I would imagine being more than enough time to get it right.
Despite my overall feelings there are a number of things that I liked about the film, which not surprisingly are mainly sensory.
· The CG Visuals
· Art Direction
· The Sound effects
· Imax 3d / not the best 3d ever but a step above the rest
· Olivia Wilde / no seriously, she was the most compelling character in the film
· The Score / more on this below
· Cinematography
One last thing. As much as I liked the score it seemed like such a rip off of the scores from both Batman films and especially Inception! It's rumored that Disney hired Hans Zimmer to "tweak" the Daft Punk score to make it more film appropriate. This certainly doesn't surprise me given how similar the score is to the above mentioned films. Don't be surprised to hear that it's in fact the case.
Overall this wasn't a bad way to spend 18 bucks so I can't say that I'm completely burned. I was just hoping for a bit more. Ah well. At least it has inspired me to used more emissive maps in my personal works.
Young Sam room is 90s, not 80s! Hes around nineteen years old or in his early 20s during the present day events (he's referred to as "some kid") and the ps2 came out in 2000 So it all fits - at the exception of the old computer on the right of the room. But it might be just for display (like,the first computer his dad gave him).
1: That intro scene has overtext saying its in 1989
2: Sam is 27 in the modern day events, as stated over the dinner table when he meets his father again. (he'd be 19 at the ps2 release)
3: When Old Flynn asks Sam about his grandparents, assuming their death, he mentions "grandma when I was 12, just a few years after you left. Pa a few years later"
I personally don't see a problem with a movie being nothing but a sensory feast once in a while. Not every movie has to be a totally engaging mind fuck like Inception (probably my fav movie of all time at this point).
I didn't expect much from Tron, other than action and eyecandy and it sounds like they nailed that. So tomorrow I'm going to sit down, watch some IMAX3D hotness and be entertained.
Overall I enjoyed the experience of Tron Legacy and I definitely don't think it's deserving of all the negative reviews it received. The visuals were obviously of an amazingly high standard (particularly Daniel Simon's vehicles) but I found myself getting a little tired of the Tron world after a while. The aesthetic is very striking, but setting almost an entire movie inside a world which is 90% black with orange, blue and yellow accents gets pretty monotonous after a while. I found myself yearning for some daylight! Maybe the off-grid areas could have been more unique - I dunno.
I thought the acting overall was pretty good. Garret Hedlund was solid and Olivia Wilde's character was charmingly naive. CG Jeff Bridges was very distracting though. Even his default expression (kind of a tight-lipped smile thing) looked off. If they had just used those effects within the Tron world then you could have excused the uncanny valley-ness of it as a way of differentiating between CLU and the real Flynn, but they used it in the real world too and it just didn't cut the mustard.
Agree about the 3d being largely superfluous. I thought the trailer they showed for that nature documentary beforehand had much more impressive 3d in terms of depth and tangibility. At least in Tron Legacy they didn't feel the need to poke objects at the camera at regular intervals to remind everyone that it's a 3d movie (Pirates of the Carribean 4 take note!).
Will definitely pick up the artbook for tech inspiration. The movie's worth a watch.
Honestly, I'd forgotten for a good chunk of the film that Clu was CG. About the only scene it caught my attention was a close-up during near the end, and even then it was brief enough to ignore it.
I didn't really pay attention to Clu being CG until the latter part of the movie. Can't remember what triggered it, but after that Clu seemed to be more and more in the uncanny valley.
The movie was sappy, Jeff Bridges had to carry the story and emotional impact himself, and the visuals get a bit stale by the end, but i f*cking loved it, made me feel like a kid again. This is the first movie I've seen in over a decade that felt like a Disney movie. I Recommend it to anyone, particulary dudes in their 20's-30's, nostalgia overload.
My family said they liked it, but my daughters thought the ending was kind of weak (and I agree). It felt too focused on leaving an ending for a sequel.
Overall, I felt it was a good movie, but I wish I had just waited until it was on blu-ray. It dragged a bit, and I really only enjoyed the Jeff Bridges parts. I think the actor playing Sam is good, but the scenes around him just weren't that interesting most of the time. I wish the movie had more 'game' time.
The young Flynn bothered me too. I would have been fine with the CG work, if it was in the digital world (since he would be computer generated). But, Flynn in Sam's room, was obvious enough, that my wife turned to me and referenced 'obviously CGI'.
I think, if you're an uber fan of Tron, then go see it. If you're a casual fan, like myself, then wait for the video release, or catch a matinee (like I did).
I didnt find good story in TRON,
but I absolutely fallen in love in neon culture , style, and the music in that movie.
music wise , no doubt its the best of 2010.
even if it has to turn into silent movie, I would still watch it for other than story.
its like high budget experimental movie. not a mindfuck, but seriously visual-and-hearing fuck
Just saw it on iMax 3D at Universal. Was pretty good, not like a mind-blowing experience, but still very much enjoyable. CG Jeff Bridges was seriously off, maybe it's because we're CG nerds, but I just couldn't accept that he was an actual character. But I don't really know that I can pin-point why. The lip-sync in LA Noir beats CLU by a mile.
Best part of the movie? When the guy next to me slapped (yeah, that's right) the girl sitting next to him because her phone went off. Lols for me and my buddies for free.
Come to think of it, I find it kinda sad that whoever was in charge of the music video for shitty band BEPs nailed the look of a modernized TRON better than Legacy.
A CG CLU could look like this :
(The low res polygons would totally make sense)
And where did the Bit go! Well here it is :
It leaves quite a bitter taste haha. Okay time to do some Tron fanart now hehe
Replies
Going to watch it this weekend. It'll be 2d either way - my buddy can't see 3d unfortunately.
Been waiting far too long for this movie.
Many a causes.
I heard its the real world sequences that are 2d, and the in-machine one are 3d.
Went to the midnight showing and it was awesome. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
>End of line.
@Dreamer - one of his eyes has perfect vision, the other one sees nothing but a blur. He barely has any sense of depth perception, at all.
The CG was amazing. I noticed a lack of 3D, even when they were in The Grid. There was no "in your face" cg shots, which I am fine with. I took my glasses off for about 5 minutes when they were in The Grid and you could hardly tell the movie was in 3D.
Overall I loved the movie and was blown away. It was much better than I expected and the negative reviews it got were not justified IMO. Definatly recomend it.
Oh and Olivia Wild in her cute wig gave me the first boner I have ever gotten in a PG movie.
The only cool 3D part were the little dots on Flynns window and the opening arena shots. Now obviously not everything HAS to be 3D in your face .... but if only a few shots are justifying it, then why doing it at all ?
Oh and, Daft Punk rocked! Plus congrats to Daniel Simon, great job on everything!
I'm sure the 3D was lacking (as almost every 3D movie dose) is becasue its not shot in 3D. That is the biggest problem. Almost all 3D movies are done after the fact so nothing is really 3D. You just have people specify what should be foreground, background and middle ground. Movies like Toy Story work because they are full CG movies and can be rendered in 3D. Live action movies if not shot in 3D have to be converted to 3D and hence why all 3D live action movies that arnt Avatar (which was shot in 3D with a 3D camera) suck.
Surprised with all the cg in Tron that the 3D wasn't amazing though. But who cares right? its Tron! Awesome style and killer music.
I was actually kinda happy they restrained themselves and didnt have shit popping out the screen like they would have had so many opportunities to do, for 3d I like it as a subtle depth like most of avatar did.
the trailer for pirates before it was in 3d and the stupid sword through the door popping out of the screen just was an eye rolling moment for me.
music was awesome and the cameo from daft punk was cool. the CG C.L.U. jeff bridges suffered a bit from the dead eye syndrome and some weird looking expressions/facial softness which kept taking me out of it a bit.
The only "holy crap that looks flippin sweet" 3D shot that could tell was totally 3d was when
*spoilers*
they were on the cargo ship heading to the portal and Sam and Quorra were sitting down talking and Flynn opens his eyes and you see the two of them with the solar flares of the cargo ship behind them and the portal in the distance. Epic epic shot.
Something else that myself and many others noticed, which we were actually quite happy with...
*spoiler*
The look she had on her face while they were riding off into the sunset in the end and then buried her face into him was priceless.
OKAY SORRY, but that's what i think
Saw it in imax 3d. Not worth it. Imax = great, 3d not really noticeable (except intro, cycle and jet battles)
Good times had by all (since it was free).
Yah, the audience was actually cheering at that (myself included).
Totally priceless. Fit her 'grown up but still a kid at heart' character to a 't'.
Something that just struck me about this movie was the pacing.. it felt in some ways similar to 5th Element - just the right mix of action and story at any given time.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10011582-TRON_legacy/
I could think of one actual plot hole and one potential plot hole, tho it's really just left unexplained, not really a hole, but...
Plot Hole 1:
But yeah. People are bitching about this movie having more holes than Bonnie and Clyde, and I can't really see them. There's a lot of stuff that happens that's not really explained, but it's also stuff that you don't really need explained to 'get' the story and the plot, so it's like people bitching that there aren't more 'as you know...' scenes. Coming from critics, it doesn't make much sense to me.
I thought it was awesome.
I thought the Disc stuff was weird, its unclear whether its some kind of uber ID (if you loose it, and get controlled by a sentry and you have nothing to show, youre screwed and get arrested), or something more deep. I always assumed it was some deep essence thing, but this movie makes it feel more like a plastic drivers license, kinda.
I had a bit of a Phantoms Menace gut feeling during the movie, eek.
I didn't really notice any big plot holes to speak of. The two points brought up here were explained above. Again, I can't think of anything else either. I was so focused on the movie that it didn't leave much time to nitpick on such things.
The 3D part was a bit of let down. I too expected the 3D to be in a bigger part in a movie like this were it would have been suitable to use it. I don't mean it has to be in your face all the time, but certainly there were events on the Grid that I expected to have more "in your face" feel.
Overall, I'd watch the movie again. Good sequel, not as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be.
Sorry for all the spoiler tag discussion. I'll stop now.
the first 1/3 of the movie wasnt even in 3d, so you could take your glasses off and watch it normally and get all the color. the parts that were in 3d were totally unnecessary. it definitely felt like 3d was an afterthought and was done cheaply ( i dont know how to explain it, it seems simplified, like there was a background, midground, and foreground, and thats it).
overall, i think it hurt the experience, it dulled down the colors and brightness a lot.
besides that, it was a great story, good plot twists.
satisfactory
Young Jeff Bridges, however, was distractingly lost in the uncanny valley. I don't understand how it could be that bad in the post-Benjamin Button era. His character was lifeless. None of the other characters were in conflict, so to me, there was no drama.
It was good if you think of it as a big Daft Punk music video, which is cool by me.
Also, did anyone else cringe every time the young Flynn /CLU was on screen. I might have looked past this had the story been more compelling or interesting but I couldn't. I was talking about this with a friend of mine who's a fellow artist / animator and he made a good point. He said that either the film makers didn't have the budget / time to do the lip syncing correctly "See Avatar" or they made the CG character off on purpose to convey the fact that he was a computer program / avatar. I'm inclined to go with the later considering the CG teams had 64 weeks of post production, which I would imagine being more than enough time to get it right.
Despite my overall feelings there are a number of things that I liked about the film, which not surprisingly are mainly sensory.
· The CG Visuals
· Art Direction
· The Sound effects
· Imax 3d / not the best 3d ever but a step above the rest
· Olivia Wilde / no seriously, she was the most compelling character in the film
· The Score / more on this below
· Cinematography
One last thing. As much as I liked the score it seemed like such a rip off of the scores from both Batman films and especially Inception! It's rumored that Disney hired Hans Zimmer to "tweak" the Daft Punk score to make it more film appropriate. This certainly doesn't surprise me given how similar the score is to the above mentioned films. Don't be surprised to hear that it's in fact the case.
Overall this wasn't a bad way to spend 18 bucks so I can't say that I'm completely burned. I was just hoping for a bit more. Ah well. At least it has inspired me to used more emissive maps in my personal works.
1: That intro scene has overtext saying its in 1989
2: Sam is 27 in the modern day events, as stated over the dinner table when he meets his father again. (he'd be 19 at the ps2 release)
3: When Old Flynn asks Sam about his grandparents, assuming their death, he mentions "grandma when I was 12, just a few years after you left. Pa a few years later"
Most people seem to forget that the original Tron had a flimsy story and pretty terrible acting, but the visuals more than made up for it.
I personally don't see a problem with a movie being nothing but a sensory feast once in a while. Not every movie has to be a totally engaging mind fuck like Inception (probably my fav movie of all time at this point).
I didn't expect much from Tron, other than action and eyecandy and it sounds like they nailed that. So tomorrow I'm going to sit down, watch some IMAX3D hotness and be entertained.
I thought the acting overall was pretty good. Garret Hedlund was solid and Olivia Wilde's character was charmingly naive. CG Jeff Bridges was very distracting though. Even his default expression (kind of a tight-lipped smile thing) looked off. If they had just used those effects within the Tron world then you could have excused the uncanny valley-ness of it as a way of differentiating between CLU and the real Flynn, but they used it in the real world too and it just didn't cut the mustard.
Agree about the 3d being largely superfluous. I thought the trailer they showed for that nature documentary beforehand had much more impressive 3d in terms of depth and tangibility. At least in Tron Legacy they didn't feel the need to poke objects at the camera at regular intervals to remind everyone that it's a 3d movie (Pirates of the Carribean 4 take note!).
Will definitely pick up the artbook for tech inspiration. The movie's worth a watch.
Seriously.
How awesome would it be to have a Tron 1 & 2 art book collection go on sale. :poly142:
Overall, I felt it was a good movie, but I wish I had just waited until it was on blu-ray. It dragged a bit, and I really only enjoyed the Jeff Bridges parts. I think the actor playing Sam is good, but the scenes around him just weren't that interesting most of the time. I wish the movie had more 'game' time.
The young Flynn bothered me too. I would have been fine with the CG work, if it was in the digital world (since he would be computer generated). But, Flynn in Sam's room, was obvious enough, that my wife turned to me and referenced 'obviously CGI'.
I think, if you're an uber fan of Tron, then go see it. If you're a casual fan, like myself, then wait for the video release, or catch a matinee (like I did).
but I absolutely fallen in love in neon culture , style, and the music in that movie.
music wise , no doubt its the best of 2010.
even if it has to turn into silent movie, I would still watch it for other than story.
its like high budget experimental movie. not a mindfuck, but seriously visual-and-hearing fuck
kudos!
summarizing TRON
Best part of the movie? When the guy next to me slapped (yeah, that's right) the girl sitting next to him because her phone went off. Lols for me and my buddies for free.
A CG CLU could look like this :
(The low res polygons would totally make sense)
And where did the Bit go! Well here it is :
It leaves quite a bitter taste haha. Okay time to do some Tron fanart now hehe