Tron: Legacy (2010)

Somewhere along the way, the folks who own the rights to that first Tron movie from the 80's (the same ones who almost single-handedly destroyed the idea of public domain) figured out that The Matrix did the whole "people living inside a computer" thing way better.  These folks thought they'd take a little of the "polish" of The Matrix and mix in a little of their "spit" leftover from their original masterpiece  - out comes Tron: Legacy.

The film starts with an introduction to Flynn (Jesus) and his son. Don't worry if you haven't seen the original. This Flynn guy is quickly explained as the Socialist Bill Gates who wants to create computer software and give it away for free to everyone.

Socialist Bill Gates is a little disappointed in your Capitalist ways, but he hides it well

He disappears though and his kid becomes a young James T. Kirk who disapproves of the Capitalist tendencies of his dad's old company. Thus he becomes: the cliche'd young guy who really wants to impress his father into retroactively not abandoning him.

Seriously, didn't we see this before?

Yep, pretty much.

Once the kid (now 27 year-old Sam) gets inside the computer (The Grid), we see the director's knack for Barbarella-like costuming.

They wore more mustaches in Barbarella, though.

Mostly, other than a fair amount of nonsensical action, visual design is really all we get for most of the film.  Much like a gold-plated hand grenade: it's pretty and goes boom.

I'm pretty.

I go boom.

I'm not sure why so many films that deal with living inside computers go about it with some type of vaguely religious motif, but this one is no exception. Sure, the original clearly did it too. But the story here is essentially some yin-yang, Eastern Mind vs. Western Body type of thing. It will suffice to say that old Flynn gets trapped in the computer with his Mirror, Mirror version and there can be only one...or something.

Pretty close, right?

Of course, there's some other stuff about a new species with "digital DNA" getting totally  (almost) wiped out because the Mirror, Mirror dude (Clu) is a Hitler-minded guy who thinks they're an "imperfection" in the system. All of this is related to the audience in a solid chunk of 20 minutes worth of exposition right smack-dab in the middle of the movie.

Even if you look good when you're "telling" instead of "showing", you're still "telling" instead of "showing".

The whole thing's like a big video game, and we're supposed to think, "I play video games, so this is a movie that's right up my alley!" But the filmmakers have forgotten that even video games have to rely on a good story. Hell, they had to rely on it even more back when Tron was just a baby of an idea. Otherwise, how else could anyone have gotten away with making "games" out of one square chasing another square that's a different color.

But we were never talking Shakespeare with this franchise (can you call it that after only two movies?). So we can't really expect too much (I don't think it's too much to ask for a story from a story-based medium, but that's for another conversation), and I didn't. But this movie is just a series of hobbled-together ideas that lead to action set-pieces about as logically as any sequence of events in a Troma film.

I'm a cop...

...who eventually turns into this.

For the record, there's something in there about sacrifice (or, as they oddly call it in the film, "removing yourself from the equation"), maybe a bit about the nature of technology and the human condition, and possibly a healthy bit of the Biblical Rapture in the spine of the film somewhere.

Megiddo: The Director's Cut

The fact that I can't really discern much of it is a testament to how absurdly thick all the spit and polish really is.