Tron Sucked

Um, where to even start. This movie was honestly so bad. You know I had hoped that Avatar was a one time thing that didn't set off a chain reaction of movies that are visually compelling but lacking in literally every other category (such as plot, character development and dialogue; you know unimportant things in movies like that) But between two movies I just saw in previews (Transformers: Dark of the Moon- WTF,  a movie about people trapped in a cave by someone too talented to be making it) and this little gem right here, it would seem that my hopes have been misplaced.

If I hadn't literally seen True Grit hours before I watched this, my opinion of Jeff Bridges would have taken a little bit of a nosedive. Watching him argue inarticulately with a sort of Benjamin Button ageless form of himself was actually painful, the times when it wasn't mind numbingly boring.  For people who suffered head injuries in the near to recent past and didn't grasp the plot of this movie from the thirty second commercials that were everywhere for about a four month period, basically, there is a video game Jeff Bridges created and is now stuck in, and his son goes in to get him, after growing up thinking he abandoned him. How sad. To say that this movie is predictable is like saying that a homeless person in New York in the winter is "uncomfortable." At about eight minutes into the movie it's clear that everyone's goal is to get through the portal (back to the real world). Then they....get through the portal. There are approximately four cool scenes in the movie, mainly the ones that revolve around panoramic scene shots, and involve no characters or dialogue. If you pay money to see this movie, which I don't really recommend doing, you should go all the way and do 3D. I honestly don't know what would compel anyone to watch this movie if it weren't for the special effects, but I saw Step Up 3 in 2D, (and enjoyed myself) so I think my opinion is somewhat compromised in this matter.

Back to Tron! I mean, there's not much more to say. Honestly, everyone keeps talking about how cool it looks, but really, it's just like what the world would look like if the sun was a blacklight and everyone's house was a nightclub. Watching Tron I felt like I was out on Friday night, there was electronic dance music playing and I couldn't see anything, but I wasn't drunk, wasn't dancing and wasn't having fun.  Also I was wearing glasses.

There were three good parts to this movie, the fight/car scenes when Garrett Hedlund (look out for him in Four Brothers!) is in the game before they realize he's a "user" (that's another thing- they tried to have all this cool Tron lingo, but all of it was really too intuitive to be cool. "Programs" are the things that exist inside the game. Imagine that. And the people who play the game are "users"). The second cool thing is this ONE funny line in the entire movie, when Jeff Bridges and his son played by Garrett (Sam, which is the most generic son name anyone could ever have besides Jake) are talking about what terrible shape the world is in, and Sam is numerating, "The ice caps are melting, there's war in the middle east, the Lakers Celtics rivalry..." I think someone behind me in the theatre woke up to chuckle at this, then went back to sleep. The third and final good thing about this movie was Olivia Wilde. For those of us who have been fans of hers since she was potentially a lesbian on the O.C, this was a good little movie for her. She wore the skintight blacksuit well, and had an interesting asymmetrical haircut that I was a huge fan of. You even can't blame her for the trainwreck romance between her & Sam she clearly was forced into, even in the last scene when she and Sam are back in the real world (OH NO I RUINED IT) and he takes her on his motorcycle, and they ride off while watching a sunrise. Because of course before she asked him what the sun was like.  I'm not joking, that was the last scene of the movie, the two of them riding off into the sunset. The only thing that was missing was a female vocalist from the 90's singing while the fade to black then started the credits.

Oh well. Everyone who spends money on this is movie is in my mind split into two groups, people that should have seen The Fighter and people who should have seen Tangled. Yikes.