TRONTASTIC

A Deaf Person’s Favourite Movie

The 2010 Tron film is amazing to watch, provided you are either deaf or just don’t care about a plot/decent writing. The movie looks fantastic; never have roman gladiator battles been so sleek and modern; never have inflatable motorcycles looked so realistic; never has Obi Wan Kenobi dressed so much like Morpheus. It is modern eye candy that explodes off the screen in dazzling effects.

The actual content however, is a muddled heap of garbage that borderlines the film on comedy territory. Here is the basic plot: ten year old son and father have clichéd conversation, father leaves and disappears, son grows up and goes all Tony Stark on his life minus the cool factor of Robert Downey Jr., son grows up and finds his way into grid world where he finds his father trapped by the evil supervillian Clu! Oh and there are glowing Frisbees that are crucial to your survival but you can also chuck them as weapons. The title of the film I think comes from the video game from which the movie is based, and is also the name of a character who was good but now is evil but then becomes good again so in the end it is all cool.

What is actually cool is Jeff Bridges, who plays the father/creator -of-the-grid/zen-master and then as a separate character plays Clu as well. Jeff Bridges is what would happen if you combined Gandalf with a very rugged lumberjack, and then added a touch of God to the mix. In short, he is awesome. Sure the director makes him do stupid stuff like whack a guard on the head to reprogram him, or create a swirling tornado out of nowhere but that is only because Jeff Bridges is a good sport. Also it is because he got paid millions.

The movie in total cost 170 million to make, and I would make an educated guess and say that most of that money was spent on making things look wicked sweet. The problem however, is that when things look wicked sweet, they don’t look real. It’s hard to care about a violent Frisbee battle when it just looks like a dramatic video game. It is even harder to care when the dialogue from the protagonist-with-daddy-issues goes something like this: “Is this really happening?” pause for something to explode “OMG it really is.” Olivia Wilde as the Trinity of the film also seems fairly hollow. She’s unconscious for a portion in the middle of the film and the audience really doesn’t notice a difference. On a side note: can a human and a program hook up? Because that just seems weird to me.

I have not seen the original Tron, nor do I want to. Wikipedia says that it was criticized for its weak plotline, which its sequel clearly did not learn from. In the end, I just think Hollywood just needs to hold some teamwork seminars and figure out how writers like Aaron Sorkin or Diablo Cody could write the scripts for movies with awesome special effects. Like Juno but with aliens as the characters, or Tron with diaologue as fast and impressive as the motorcycle chases. That’s all I want, but I think it is about as likely as a blind person liking Tron.

Rating: S-a-b-r-e