Tron: Legacy

If CGI technology had been around in 1982, then this is probably the film that would have got made.

Tron: Legacy shuns the very notion of pandering to a modern-day audience, and shamelessly goes straight for 1980s fashions, icons, music and even TV aspect-ratios.

Oh, and if you've never seen or don't remember the original, then don't worry because that made very little sense either.

For those of us who grew up in that era, Tron: Legacy is an absolutely gorgeous way to spend two hours. I turned my brain off at the start, and positively wallowed in the cool laser effects, synthesised soundtrack and early two-tone computer graphics. It didn't just look great - it sounded great too! This was how, as a teenager, I believed the future of computers was actually going to look and sound - everything multiplied except for the level of definition.

I mean okay so all the virtual computer systems speak with stunted dialogue while the virtual people don't. All right so they have guns and bombs but still fight by throwing discs at each other. And I don't even want to ask why Kevin had that power to attract his enemy and destroy everything for all these years but never used it.

(I could go on. And on. And on...)

Basically a deeper script here could have ruined everything.

Sam: "You went in?"
Kevin: "That's right. I got in."

Just imagine if they'd handed this over to someone like The Matrix's Wachowski brothers for the final draft. Just how ponderous, miserable and cynical could these 127 minutes of joy have instead been?

Neo: "You went in?"
Oracle: "Oh honey, what are in and out but abstract concepts which limit our understanding of ourselves and the version of reality in which each of us chooses to believe?"
Neo: "Whoa, totally far out, Oracklees-babe."

That said, I liked the idea of life emerging from lifelessness against all our heroes' expectations to the contrary, but this was mainly because I think that aspect of the theory of evolution is science-fiction anyway.

Like its predecessor, Tron: Legacy may lack substance, but is once again definitely a movie with style.

Available here.