For my birthday Chip got me a ticket to the midnight opening of Tron Legacy at our local iMax. So, last night (and into the wee hours of this morning) we set off for Simpsonville to rendezvous with several of his work friends to see the movie.
We got to the theater a little after 11:00 pm and it was already jam-packed. There was quite the line waiting to get into the theater.
As you might expect, it was a typical geek crowd. Before and during the previews there were so many smartphone screens lit that it lit up the place. One guy sat down in the seat next to me, turned to his buddies, and said “Greetings, programs!” Chip said that if a bomb went off in the theater every network in the Upstate would be affect, because every sysadmin in the area was in attendance.
The movie itself was excellent. The story built upon the 1982 movie, but the plot was strong enough, with enough backstory provided, that it could stand on its own. The visuals of the computer world were stunning in iMax. However, the 3D aspects seemed to be fairly subtle.
Jeff Bridges was great as Kevin Flynn, and the digital anti-aging to turn him into CLU was nothing short of amazing. Garrett Hedlund was good as Flynn’s son, Sam Flynn, but my favorite was Olivia Wilde as Quorra.
I had borrowed the original Tron from Chip a couple of weeks ago. I think the one and only time I saw it was in its original theater release in 1982. It was OK, but it never made sense why this digital world existed.
Speaking of the original, getting one’s hands on a copy is next to impossible. The only listings on Amazon are for the 20th Century Collector’s Edition, and those are selling for upwards of $150. On eBay copies are going for even more. I had to wonder about Disney’s strategy of not making the original available in anticipation of the new release. Chip’s theory was that Disney didn’t want folks to see the sub-par visuals and equate the mediocre 1980’s movie with the new verson.
Regardless of the reason, I think this new one is a keeper, and Disney has nothing to fear from the original. I’ll probably try to catch it again in the theater.