TRON: LEGACY (2010) - A feast for eyes & ears

The original Tron was a landmark movie for special effects and computer graphics. In the 1980s, computers were just starting to come into their own in the movie business and the ability to create the sort of images we take for granted today was unheard of. Think about it: movies on the Lifetime channel probably have CGI a hundred times better than what was possible in the '80s. The computers used to make Tron had about 2 MB of memory, less than even the cheapest cell phone today, but at the time, it was the coolest thing to ever hit the screen. It's no surprise that Tron became a cult classic, and it's equally no surprise that Disney knew it'd have to pump out a sequel sooner or later when the technology wow-factor came around. So now, twenty something years and $150+ million later, we got TRON: Legacy.

The CGI is amazing. The acting isn't.

The movie opens with a flashback to 1980s, featuring a young Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) tucking in his young son Sam to bed and telling him about work at his EMCON company. Flynn leaves after promising to see Sam in a bit, and later vanishes without a trace. Twenty years later and Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has grown up into the company's biggest shareholder in the wake of his dad's disappearance. Apart from dropping by once a year to play tricks on the company executives, Sam hardly seems to care about his company, and is sort of a loner - living in a garage with his dog and riding his sleek bike around while looking cool in leather jackets.

Olivia Wilde in 3D - puts butts in seats

One night, Flynn's old friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) tells Sam about a page he received, which strangely seems to have come from Flynn's old video arcade. Sam reluctantly heads over to investigate, and finds an old mainframe waiting for him. After messing around with the keys, he is transported into a virtual world inside the computer - the Grid. Immediately after arriving in the Grid, Sam gets into trouble. He's picked up by programs and sent off to the games. The games are essentially gladiator fights to the death, and while fighting the most feared program on the Grid, Rinzler, Sam is discovered to be human. He's taken to see CLU (young, computerized Jeff Bridges), who is a copy of his father Flynn, and has become a dictator in the Grid. CLU fights Sam in the arena, and just as he's about to kill him during a light cycle race, in comes Quorra (Olivia Wilde) to save his skinny ass.

Quorra takes Sam to her hideout, which is revealed to be Flynn's home. Flynn has been trapped in the Grid for over twenty years, hostage to CLU and unable to escape. After being reunited with his father, Sam learns that the page he received originally came from CLU, as he is desperate to get out into the real world and enact his vision of a "perfect system." Flynn warns his son that it would be catastrophic if CLU got out, and both of them, alongside the oh so sexy Quorra have to do everything in their power to prevent CLU from making it into the real world, while trying to get Sam and Flynn to make it out themselves.

The de-aged Bridges. You either like it, or it freaks you out.

Right from the start, the trailer for Legacy made it pretty clear that this was obviously an effects driven movie. The light cycle scenes are insane, as is the club fight scene near the middle of the movie. On the big screen and with brutal surround sound it's really good stuff. Some of the other scenes with long shots showing the entire virtual city are pretty rad as well, and of course if you like electronic music, you'll dig the Daft Punk soundtrack. Hedlund and Wilde do a good job with their parts, though nothing spectacular really shines through. Jeff Bridges has by far the most interesting role as Flynn, but it's almost a shame how little we actually get to see of him. Also criminally underused was Tron, who gets a rushed plot twist of his own near the end which feels a bit cheap.

The Dude abides in cyberspace!

Tron: Legacy is enjoyable, there's no doubt about it. The visuals are snazzy, the music is good, and fans of the original get their long lived patience rewarded (only a 30 year wait, right?). At the end though, I was left wondering if some of that ridiculous $170 million budget could have been spent crafting a story that could match the spectacle that unfolds on the screen. Sure, it's an extravagant orgy of light, color and sound and it's exhilarating to watch it on a huge screen and with massive speakers, but Bridges seems wasted and the only thing memorable about it is the obvious set up for a sequel. Maybe third time's the charm and Disney will prove me wrong when it comes out.

TL;DR - Visually dazzling and a glorious soundtrack. Just don't ask for a great plot too - 6/10

SANCTUM (2011) - Making money off James Cameron's name

If you live anywhere in the US of A, chances are you've been bombarded by commercials and trailers for Sanctum. If this were any other movie, I guess it'd be fine, since big movies tend to get their stuff plastered all over TV anyways, but Sanctum's ad blitz was different. Right from the beginning, your puny, peasant brain is force fed huge amounts of James Cameron's name every five seconds or so. "From executive producer James Cameron... / The director of Titanic and Avatar... / The guy with a hard on for 3D... / CONVINCED YET?..." This is unfortunate, since I first saw this trailer and said to myself this might be some sort of spiritual successor to one of my favorite movies of all time, The Abyss. It's too bad James Cameron pretty much just stuck his name on the trailers to get people to pay up the $20 or whatever those ridiculous 3D movie tickets cost these days to watch this stinker.

James Franco called. He wants his climbing shit back.

Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) is an veteran cave explorer, off on an expedition in Papua New Guinea. His son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) flies out alongside his dad's friend and money supplier Carl (Ioan Gruffudd) to meet up with his father. They're also accompanied by Carl's girlfriend, Victoria, who is apparently just there for eye candy since I can't recall a single contribution she makes to further the plot throughout the entire movie. In any case, the team has already set up a camp inside the unexplored cave, complete with video and phone communications and all those other gizmos that always tend to break when a catastrophe occurs.

"Josh is a pretty cool guy. He climbs the caves and doesn't afraid of drowning."

While everyone gets settled in and ready for the dive, Frank and his partner Judes go off by themselves to check out an unexplored section. Of course, they just broke the #1 rule of survival movies: don't separate yourself from the group. Sure enough, while making their way back, the air hose on Judes' scuba gear breaks, and she drowns. Back at base camp, Josh throws a hissy fit, saying that Frank could've done more to save her, proving what an ignorant little tard Josh really is. The team decides to pack up and leave, when all of a sudden (duh?) a tropical cyclone breaks out over the island, flooding the caves with rain water, and forcing the group to have to find a way out of the massive caves before their air runs out.

Yo, that's a big ass cave tho...

It's always worrying when you watch a movie and you recognize one of the stars but cant remember what the hell they've been in or you realize you have no idea what their name is. Ioan Gruffud (how the hell do you pronounce that anyway?) was in the Fantastic Four movie, and after you watch Sanctum, it'll be perfectly clear to see why he hasn't been cast in anything else you might have seen. He over acts in every single scene, he generally comes off as an asshole, and tries hard but fails at being menacing. It's like rubbing your eyeballs on a cheesegrater. That's how bad he is in this. Wakefield and Roxburgh are also pretty unknown, but at least they do a good job of portraying the son and father who share equal parts disdain and respect for each other. Everyone else is mediocre. This really is no surprise: people who watch Sanctum are doing it because of the 3D (which is very well done actually), but the characters are forgettable and boring.

I was rooting for the cave to take them all out. True story.

Sanctum is a gimmick movie, plain and simple. If you want to see it, watch it in theaters while you still can. If it wasn't for the 3D action sequences, this thing would have gone straight to DVD, sharing the shelves with other great classics like Snakes on a Train and Transmorphers. If 3D is not your thing, don't bother.

TL;DR - cave explorers try to survive flooding caves and movie execs try to get your dollars with DAT 3D - 4/10