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A top box-office performer over the holidays, “Tron: Legacy” has the hefty budget, established framework and sleek effects horsepower to take viewers on an exhilarating, pass-the-popcorn ride. A pity, then, that the much-heralded sequel merely coasts along with only the occasional snazzy set piece.
Note to filmmakers: Nobody entering a movie like this wants to spend 60 percent of it listening to stock characters explain banal details while sitting around. They want to see those characters enlivening the story in meaty, frequent action sequences, especially when the mise-en-scéne is this fiercely well-designed.
For instance, those ultra-chic, snakes-on-a-circuit-board motorcycle races you’ve been seeing since the film’s teaser dropped about a year ago? They account for roughly eight minutes of the finished cut. Ditto the famed gladiatorial discus duels, which are less sidelined but still denied their full cinematic potential. What we have here is a movie with its priorities out of whack — a look-at-me action flick traipsing around as a talky drama, which might have worked if the story had even half the cool, creative pulse found in the visuals and the killer score by electronic duo Daft Punk.
Back from the 1982 original, Jeff Bridges plays the tortured mastermind and wise old master of a virtual-reality realm (not to mention his younger, villainous clone, made possible by eerily cutting-edge motion-capture technology). Trapped in the world he created, Bridges’s Kevin Flynn is visited by his estranged son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who unwittingly fell down a rabbit hole, for lack of a better description. Laced with gamer-speak and unaffecting father-son sentiment, “Legacy” maps an all-too-familiar course for Sam to find his destiny, and nods to everything from “Star Wars” to “Casablanca” while we just smile and shrug.
As if unsure how to reprise his 28-year-old character, Bridges throws a little Jeffrey Lebowski into his Kevin Flynn, walking around barefoot and talking about Zen. “Patience beats aggression,” he says. Not in stylish-but-hollow sci-fi blockbusters, Dude.
Tron: Legacy
PG
Two reels out of four
Now playing in area theaters
Recommended Rental
The Social Network
PG-13
Available Tuesday
In the best picture of 2010, David Fincher directs Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook founder, 26-year-old billionaire and, according to the film, ironically antisocial mad scientist of the digital age. The character, like the movie, is deeply fascinating, dizzyingly intelligent and bound to endure for generations. SPR
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