Tron 3 is coming (and Garrett Hedlund is confirmed to come back)

[Christopher]

Honestly, I'm not that broken up about it. The original TRON was an ambitious and admirable failure, an attempt at doing something groundbreaking that the technology wasn't quite up to; but it didn't really have that great a story, and its appeal is largely nostalgic. TRON Legacy was simultaneously an attempt to cash in on that nostalgia and a step away from many elements of its aesthetic and story; it was a far more conventional action/CGI movie, very stylish in its own way but still relatively ordinary in comparison to what it tried to mimic. And like the original, it didn't really have that much going for it beyond the nostalgia of seeing Bridges and Boxleitner reprise their roles. Uprising was somewhat more interesting and effective at building out the world of the programs, and was also fairly striking stylistically, although it was an acquired taste (I never much cared for Peter Chung's character design style, and the female physiques in the show were rather ridiculous). But overall, TRON isn't one of the great SF franchises. It seemed to me that it had been largely forgotten before Legacy came along.

Sure, it's possible a third movie could've been moderately worthwhile, maybe improved on Legacy in some way or at least resolved Tron's story arc. But I don't feel its loss all that keenly.

Although, as I said, films in development start and stop all the time. Sometimes a project will get cancelled multiple times and then eventually get made. So there's no guarantee that this film is dead forever.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I still want to believe that we'll get a third film before too long. They've cancelled and restarted plans for a Black Hole remake for years and Tron at least seems to have a larger audience.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Honestly, I'm not that broken up about it. The original TRON was an ambitious and admirable failure, an attempt at doing something groundbreaking that the technology wasn't quite up to; but it didn't really have that great a story, and its appeal is largely nostalgic. TRON Legacy was simultaneously an attempt to cash in on that nostalgia and a step away from many elements of its aesthetic and story; it was a far more conventional action/CGI movie, very stylish in its own way but still relatively ordinary in comparison to what it tried to mimic. And like the original, it didn't really have that much going for it beyond the nostalgia of seeing Bridges and Boxleitner reprise their roles. Uprising was somewhat more interesting and effective at building out the world of the programs, and was also fairly striking stylistically, although it was an acquired taste (I never much cared for Peter Chung's character design style, and the female physiques in the show were rather ridiculous). But overall, TRON isn't one of the great SF franchises. It seemed to me that it had been largely forgotten before Legacy came along.

Sure, it's possible a third movie could've been moderately worthwhile, maybe improved on Legacy in some way or at least resolved Tron's story arc. But I don't feel its loss all that keenly.

Although, as I said, films in development start and stop all the time. Sometimes a project will get cancelled multiple times and then eventually get made. So there's no guarantee that this film is dead forever.

I think both Tron movies are great. The original was not a failure and the special effects are still fantastic looking even for today. It had some nice use of early computer graphics as well as animation. The story was thin but it was interesting and made sense for the universe it portrayed. Tron Legacy was also excellent and had nice fleshed out story and gave us another experiment with tech by giving us a de-aged Jeff Bridges for much of the movie(Yeah its been done before but not for so much of the screen time). Sad they wont be making a follow up but the second did give us closure even if Flynn possibly expired.

 

[Gaith]

Almost five years later, and I'm still baffled by the Legacy filmmakers' decision to have CLU's big plan be crossing into and taking over the real world, as opposed to the online world of the Internet. Seeing as they were digital beings, the latter would have made far more sense, and I imagine the world economy at least would be pretty well hosed if a megalomaniacal AI were to run loose all across cyberspace, so it's not as though an Internet takeover threat wouldn't be compelling stakes.

But for the plan to just be "materialize all these tanks and take over everything with an old-school boots and vehicles on the ground invasion"... that was seriously weak, and frankly makes me not inclined to ever revisit the flick. (Though if I ever get an awesome 3D home theater setup, I'm not saying I'd never watch the arena and subsequent chase sequence again. )

 

[Hound of UIster]

That is more because Clu is still very much a very twisted copy of Kevin Flynn.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Almost five years later, and I'm still baffled by the Legacy filmmakers' decision to have CLU's big plan be crossing into and taking over the real world, as opposed to the online world of the Internet. Seeing as they were digital beings, the latter would have made far more sense, and I imagine the world economy at least would be pretty well hosed if a megalomaniacal AI were to run loose all across cyberspace, so it's not as though an Internet takeover threat wouldn't be compelling stakes.

But for the plan to just be "materialize all these tanks and take over everything with an old-school boots and vehicles on the ground invasion"... that was seriously weak, and frankly makes me not inclined to ever revisit the flick. (Though if I ever get an awesome 3D home theater setup, I'm not saying I'd never watch the arena and subsequent chase sequence again. )

Users such as Flynn go to the computer world so its logical that CLU who is basically a version of Flynn would want to go to the real world.

 

[Tosk]

Almost five years later, and I'm still baffled by the Legacy filmmakers' decision to have CLU's big plan be crossing into and taking over the real world, as opposed to the online world of the Internet.

To what end? Clu doesn't want to be digital any more. He wants to be out in the real world.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Almost five years later, and I'm still baffled by the Legacy filmmakers' decision to have CLU's big plan be crossing into and taking over the real world, as opposed to the online world of the Internet. Seeing as they were digital beings, the latter would have made far more sense, and I imagine the world economy at least would be pretty well hosed if a megalomaniacal AI were to run loose all across cyberspace, so it's not as though an Internet takeover threat wouldn't be compelling stakes.

But for the plan to just be "materialize all these tanks and take over everything with an old-school boots and vehicles on the ground invasion"... that was seriously weak, and frankly makes me not inclined to ever revisit the flick. (Though if I ever get an awesome 3D home theater setup, I'm not saying I'd never watch the arena and subsequent chase sequence again. )

He likely wasn't aware of the internet. Plus he's an intentional limited character. He can only think certain ways due to be being a program and a copy of Flynn, he can't change. He is still trying to carry out his original program, to create the perfect system. That's why he wiped out the ISOs and turned on Flynn, they were imperfect. He also has some level of jealousy and resentment towards Flynn.

 

[Mr Light]

<<But for the plan to just be "materialize all these tanks and take over everything with an old-school boots and vehicles on the ground invasion"... that was seriously weak, and frankly makes me not inclined to ever revisit the flick. (Though if I ever get an awesome 3D home theater setup, I'm not saying I'd never watch the arena and subsequent chase sequence again. ) >>

I love Tron Legacy, but yeah that one aspect of the movie was incredibly stupid.

 

[Christopher]

Almost five years later, and I'm still baffled by the Legacy filmmakers' decision to have CLU's big plan be crossing into and taking over the real world, as opposed to the online world of the Internet. Seeing as they were digital beings, the latter would have made far more sense, and I imagine the world economy at least would be pretty well hosed if a megalomaniacal AI were to run loose all across cyberspace, so it's not as though an Internet takeover threat wouldn't be compelling stakes.

Right. Sark's plan in the original was to take over the world by taking over the computer network, in that case giving him control of the world's nuclear missiles. So it was silly that the villain's plot in the sequel was so much less computer-based. Just one of the multiple ways it doesn't really work as a continuation of the original ideas.

Users such as Flynn go to the computer world so its logical that CLU who is basically a version of Flynn would want to go to the real world.

First off, was Clu really a version of Flynn? Sure, he looked like Flynn, as all the Programs looked like their programmers. But in the original movie, certainly, they had somewhat distinct personalities. They reflected their programmers' ways of thinking (and maybe inherited some portion of their souls, in the more fairy-tale version of the original), but weren't actual copies of their minds.

Besides, even if he did want to go to the physical world, it'd be stupid of him not to take control of the Internet first. They aren't mutually exclusive goals.

Not to mention that it shouldn't have been possible to materialize an army physically. In the original movie, the laser digitization system worked pretty much exactly like the TNG-era explanation of the transporter in Star Trek: It scans the pattern information of an object while disassembling its particles and either storing them in a buffer or transmitting them elsewhere, then reassembles them according to the stored pattern information. The user's avatar inside the computer world is the pure pattern without the particles of the body. So the only available source of particles for turning Programs into flesh is what's already stored in the buffer. The younger Flynn could bring Quorra out because the mass of Kevin's body was still in storage, so she could've been assembled from his leftover particles with a certain amount of mass to spare. But there wouldn't be anywhere near enough stored matter to turn tens of thousands of soldiers and tanks into physical form. It just shouldn't have worked, by the established rules of the original film.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Maybe they should stop getting these Miyazaki-influenced Pixar directors like Stanton and Brad Bird to direct their summer films. Just saying. What works in CGI doesn't necesarilly translate to film.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Wow...agenda much?

 

[Christopher]

(To Doctorwhovian) Lots of "live-action" films these days are largely CGI anyway. And the medium doesn't determine quality. Bird's animation-trained sense of action, timing, and composition worked brilliantly in Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol. And Stanton's John Carter was a visually magnificent film with highly effective action sequences. I'd say their animation experience helped them considerably.

Heck, movie action storyboards are basically comic-book panels to begin with. I saw some storyboard art from Mad Max: Fury Road yesterday, and it literally had comic-book sound effects written into it.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I agree with all of your criticisms of Legacy, Christopher. I am not a huge fan of it but was curious how they would continue the story. But I am not really disappointed if this never happens.

I think all the issues you raise would have been a problem with a 3rd film too. I think one of the reasons this was in development so long is they had no real plan for Quorra in the real world.

What would make her different than a human being? What is Tron without all the visuals of The Grid? The thing that kept Tron alive to fans is how it predicted a lot of online language. But the sequel did not tap into any of that.

A better ending would have been for Quorra to appear to Sam as Facebook friend request in our world? Leaving it a mystery as how she is able to do that.

 

[Christopher]

I agree with all of your criticisms of Legacy, Christopher. I am not a huge fan of it but was curious how they would continue the story. But I am not really disappointed if this never happens.

The original was a product of its time. It was a fantasy from a time when computers were still a mysterious new thing and could be approached with a sort of magical realism; the Programs were not intentional AI constructs but pieces of software that were imbued with pieces of their programmers' essence without the programmers even knowing it, and their Grid was the actual essence of the computer network itself rather than a mere VR simulation. (Much like ReBoot and Digimon later on.) More fundamentally, it was an experiment with the then-new technology of computer animation, an attempt to emulate its novel, intriguingly unrealistic aesthetic using live actors and cel animation, and thereby experiment with a brand-new art form.

But Legacy is a product of a different age, and lacks so much of what made the original unique. It's just another cyberspace film after so many others, and just another CGI environment after so many others. The original tried to make reality look as unreal and animated as possible, to experiment with the novel visual possibilities of the art form; but since then, CGI has embraced the opposite aesthetic goal, to look as much as possible like physical reality. Legacy did so as well, even in the Grid, most of whose locations were actual physical sets, and whose CGI settings were designed to look just as tangible and solid. It just didn't stand out from its contemporaries like the original did. It didn't break new ground, just evoked nostalgia. It was a much more ordinary film.

I think all the issues you raise would have been a problem with a 3rd film too. I think one of the reasons this was in development so long is they had no real plan for Quorra in the real world.

What would make her different than a human being? What is Tron without all the visuals of The Grid? The thing that kept Tron alive to fans is how it predicted a lot of online language. But the sequel did not tap into any of that.

A better ending would have been for Quorra to appear to Sam as Facebook friend request in our world? Leaving it a mystery as how she is able to do that.

That seems a bit too abstract for the mass audience. And I'm sure a third movie wouldn't have been set entirely in the real world -- probably it would've contrasted Quorra's experience as the newcomer in the physical world with Sam's or someone else's experience coming into the Grid. Or maybe Quorra would've decided she liked the real world and didn't want to go back, but then would've had to return to help save Tron or the Grid itself.

 

[Reverend]

Quorra entering our world was probably the best way they could have ended the movie as it's the next logical step in expanding the concept. As for how that'd even work: well how does the reverse even work? A human in a computer system makes even less sense than an emergent intelligent and sapient program made solid.

I'd have been interested to see what they had in mind for what came next. Since we saw that both Flynns semi-subject to the rules of the digital world and yet still partly human (eg: we see Sam bleed) it's fair to assume that Quorra would also retain her fundamental nature but also still subject to certain physical laws.

Of course it wouldn't really be a Tron movie without the grid, so I'm sure the bulk of the movie would have taken place in a new digital world. Maybe the internet itself, which compared to the old Incom mainframe and Flynn's little world must be an infinitely more vast, complex and dangerous place.

Consider: both the previous grids were unified systems, both built for a specific purpose and slaved to a single controlling authority (MCP & CLU, respectively.) The internet would make the wild west look like a picnic. Instead of being rare and obscure deities or an absentee father figure; users, or at least their activities would be legion. Imagine the kind of free-wheeling chaos of Caribbean piracy in the 16th/17th century mixed with the active intervention and constant feuding of the Greek Gods, 'Jason and the Argonauts' style.
Imagine roving hordes of malware programs, invading systems in the name of their hacker wargods. Imagine online gaming networks translated into vast gladiatorial arenas that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Imagine great bastions of knowledge and communication, bright shining citadels and the broken down slums of long forgotten servers caches.

Just from a visual standpoint, there's a ton of potential for world building in there.

 

[davejames]

But Legacy is a product of a different age, and lacks so much of what made the original unique. It's just another cyberspace film after so many others, and just another CGI environment after so many others. The original tried to make reality look as unreal and animated as possible, to experiment with the novel visual possibilities of the art form; but since then, CGI has embraced the opposite aesthetic goal, to look as much as possible like physical reality. Legacy did so as well, even in the Grid, most of whose locations were actual physical sets, and whose CGI settings were designed to look just as tangible and solid. It just didn't stand out from its contemporaries like the original did. It didn't break new ground, just evoked nostalgia. It was a much more ordinary film.

No doubt the original was much more visually groundbreaking and original at the time, but I still thought Legacy did a great job reimagining the world for today's audiences and coming up with a really cool and dynamic look that worked really well and felt unique enough from any other CG worlds we've seen recently (and of course the Daft Punk score played a huge part in giving it a really unique personality as well).

And yeah maybe a lot of Legacy's appeal was just in the pure nostalgia of it, but that's fine with me. And pretty much what I want to feel when watching a sequel to a 30 year old movie. And it certainly did a better job hitting those nostalgia buttons than something like Indy 4.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Having never seen the original. I can definitely say the movie stood out on its own as its own separate story. Though I did like the fact that Captain Sheridan from B5 showed up in a supporting role. It was certainly better than some of his other post-B5 roles.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Pity that we'll never see Dillingers Jr. and Sr. team up like Tron3 was reportedly going to have.

 

[Garak]

So this is because Tomorrowland tanked?

Fuck. You. George Clooney.