The original Tron is one of those rare cinematic relics that feels both gloriously dated and perpetually ahead of its time, like a lava lamp wired to the Internet. Released in 1982, it was Disney’s neon-soaked love letter to the burgeoning digital age, back when computers were mysterious portals rather than petty tyrants. It had everything. It had Jeff Bridges in spandex, identity discs that doubled as frisbees, and a visual aesthetic that looked like someone broke into an arcade cabinet and decided to live there. It was weird, it was bold, and it was, in the most literal sense, electric.
Then came Tron: Legacy, the long-awaited sequel that proved the danger of trying to reboot something that was already perfect in its weirdness. To its credit, the film looked spectacular. The digital world was sleek and moody, and Daft Punk’s score was so pulse-pounding it practically gave the film a heartbeat. Jeff Bridges returned, now an aging Flynn who’d gone full digital guru, occasionally slipping into his Big Lebowski drawl as if the Dude had found religion inside a motherboard. Those moments made me giggle like a twelve-year-old hopped up on Mountain Dew.
But then there was everything else. The plot was a muddle of code and clichés, a story of good versus evil Flynns that quickly devolved into a family therapy session rendered in binary. The digital de-aging of Bridges’ villainous alter ego, Clu, was a sight to behold, and not in a good way. His face, a waxy simulacrum of youth, looked like it had been stretched across a toaster screen and brought to life by an overworked intern. Each time he appeared, I half-expected Clippy from Microsoft Word to pop up and ask if I needed help escaping the uncanny valley.
And then there’s that club scene, a blindingly neon nightmare that exists for no reason other than to remind you Daft Punk was in the movie. It’s a sensory overload so divorced from the plot that it feels like someone accidentally spliced in a long-form music video.
By the end, Tron: Legacy feels like a glossy museum exhibit dedicated to itself, stunning to look at, but emotionally inert. It’s Disney at its most self-serious, all style, no soul, like a teenager who just discovered Nietzsche and won’t stop quoting him at the Cowboy’s watch party.
Still, I’ll admit it. I can’t quite hate it. The score still slaps, the light cycles still shimmer, and Jeff Bridges remains Jeff Bridges, the kind of actor who can make even digital nonsense feel spiritual. But somewhere between the glowing grids and the overwrought monologues, I found myself fighting to stay awake. And in the world of Tron, that’s the real game over.
