TRON: Legacy (2010) Review: A Neon Dream, Thinly Plotted

Is TRON: Legacy worth watching?

Mostly yes. TRON: Legacy is one of the most striking-looking and best-sounding blockbusters of its era, even if its story is little more than a frame for the spectacle. Joseph Kosinski’s debut feature builds a gleaming, black-and-neon digital world, and Daft Punk’s score gives it a pulse that has outlived much of the film around it. The reservations are real: the characters are thin, the dialogue is stiff, and the drama never matches the design.

What is TRON: Legacy about?

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) is the restless son of Kevin Flynn, the visionary game designer who vanished when Sam was a boy. Years later, a strange message leads Sam to his father’s abandoned arcade, and from there into the Grid, the digital world Kevin created. Inside, Sam finds a society ruled by Clu, a program built in his father’s image, and an ally in Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a mysterious program who knows more about the Grid’s history than she first lets on. Clu, meanwhile, has ambitions that reach beyond the computer and into the real world.

Jeff Bridges plays both Kevin Flynn and a digitally de-aged Clu, Bruce Boxleitner returns from the original TRON, and Michael Sheen appears as a flamboyant nightclub owner. Cillian Murphy has a brief uncredited cameo in the real-world scenes. TRON: Legacy is an American Disney production in English, running 126 minutes and rated PG.

A world designed to be heard as much as seen

The film’s great achievement is its sensory identity. Kosinski, who trained as an architect, gives the Grid a clean, monumental geometry: dark glass, glowing lines, vast empty spaces and vehicles that seem to be drawn from light. The light cycle and disc game sequences update the original’s iconic ideas with real speed and grace, and the film switches from flat, muted real-world scenes to the Grid’s heightened 3D palette in a way that still feels like stepping through a door.

Daft Punk’s score is the other star. Mixing electronic pulses with a full orchestra, it gives the Grid a mood that is part cathedral, part nightclub. It is one of the rare blockbuster scores that works as an album on its own, and in the film it often carries emotion that the script cannot.

Where the story short-circuits

For all its polish, the film struggles as drama. Sam is a generic hero, and Hedlund has little to work with beyond defiance and wonder. The father-son relationship, which should be the emotional core, is sketched in speeches rather than developed through scenes, and the film’s themes of creation, perfection and control are stated more than explored.

The de-aging effect on Clu, ambitious for 2010, has not aged well; the face often looks waxy in close-ups, which undercuts a villain who should feel imposing. Bridges is far more effective as the older Flynn, a man who seems to have found a kind of weary Zen inside his own creation, although the performance occasionally drifts into self-parody. Michael Sheen’s scene-stealing turn is fun but belongs to a livelier film.

Olivia Wilde’s Quorra and the sequel’s lasting pull

The most engaging character is Quorra. Wilde plays her with curiosity and warmth, a program who is fascinated by the human world she has only heard about, and she brings a lightness the film badly needs. Her scenes with Bridges hint at the richer story about wonder and discovery the film could have been.

It is also worth noting how the film’s reputation has changed. Its look and sound influenced a generation of design, and it is often revisited now as an audiovisual experience rather than a narrative one.

Who should watch TRON: Legacy?

It suits science fiction fans, anyone who loves electronic music and production design, and viewers who want a blockbuster to watch on the biggest, loudest screen available. Knowing the 1982 original helps with a few references but is not essential. It is rated PG, with stylised, bloodless action in which programs shatter into cubes, making it suitable for most older children.

If the Grid works for you:

• Oblivion, Kosinski’s next science fiction film, with the same sleek architecture and another strong electronic score.
• Top Gun: Maverick, where Kosinski’s gift for machines in motion finally met a story with real emotional weight.
• More on the science fiction shelf for other visually led genre spectacles.

The verdict

TRON: Legacy is a glittering, immersive audiovisual experience with a hollow centre. The story and characters never catch up with the design and music, but as a piece of pure atmosphere it remains one of the more memorable blockbusters of its decade.

Rating: 3.5/5