Tron: Keeping your mind off important stuff since 1982

Before I start I just wanted to say thank you for all the emails and notes about Vash. Jeremy and I appreciate it.

So Tron.

Last night I watched Tron: Legacy (2010) with friends, and it was... Forcedly gorgeous? I spent most of my time marvelling at the costumes and the design and pretty camera pictures. The music was great, too. Very beat-y.

If I watch it again it will be in the context of a very long, very confusing music video. Or to test the speakers.

At one point, as yet another thing was flying through a beautifully stormy backdrop, I said, "Man this would have been a great movie if it had an actual story." And it would have been. Or characters. Or decent acting.

There were only a couple of scenes where an actor acted, and it made that actor seem out of place. Because all of the other "actors" were secretly scenery and were too busy standing around looking bored, or slick, or like the minute the camera turns away they might yawn. But no one gave the acty actor the memo, and he acted his sad, lovable little heart out...

And would it have hurt to have decent dialogue? I understand so many fingers go into a movie pie, and good intentions get warped into fluffy evil, yadda yadda yadda. But damn. Damn! Father says to son woodenly, first time he's seem him in 20 years, "You're so big." Crickets.

HUGE fight scene, lots of tension, guy says something like "This isn't good." And the response is, and I remember this, "You're probably right."

PROBABLY? There's no PROBABLY'S in invisible plane shootouts! Way to murder the tension.

And then there's the issue with the lead actor, Tron Lebowski, looking extraordinarily creepy in a CGI death mask for most of the movie. One could make the excuse that his speech patterns are stuck in the 80's so of course he uses different expressions, which just happen to be exactly like his Big Lebowski character.

Even if you could suspend your disbelief that long, which I doubt because by then you would have choked on it, his suspiciously recognizable speech patterns were too distracting.

I just wanted to hand the guy a white Russian, pat him on the head, and ask him to nap in his trailer until it was over. Just, get out of the way, sweetie...

So the only good thing about Tron--besides it being pretty on the eyes and ears-- was that it distracted me for 2 hours with its badness. And so I award it two thumbs of mediocrity. Whatever that means.