Tron. Crap. Synonyms. – Stallion Cornell

Tron 2 is in development.

They’re not calling it Tron 2, though. They’re calling it TR2N. Which is unreadable and annoying, much like the first Tron movie.

Make no mistake – Tron blows.

I had a vague recollection of seeing this thing when it was in theatres and not liking it, but I also remembered playing the video game with the speeding light cycles and liking that. As buzz for TR2N began to build, and as the likes of Harry Knowles at AintItCoolNews began to sing the praises of the original, I managed to convince myself that my memories of the film were somehow inaccurate, and, convoluted as those memories were, I ought to give Tron another chance.

So we Netflixed it. Not a good plan.

It’s not just that the movie looks like it’s been filmed through a muddy digital lens with only twelve pixels. Indeed, the attempt at computer animation, made back when Asteroids was still a hot video game in arcades, has to be accepted for the ambitious breakthrough that it was. My complaints aren’t technical – they’re logical. The movie is filled with dated, convoluted jargon, and to say that its premise is stupid is to say that using wallpaper paste for shampoo is stupid. It’s so obviously boneheaded that it’s not worth mentioning.

Apparently, all of our computer programs have complex, emotionally satisfying lives within the confines of our hard disks. They have genders; they fall in love; they get high drinking virtual water; they have religions; they have bad fashion sense and a wide variety of driving skills, and they look like the people who program them. Groovy, no?

No.

See, back in 1982, when Tron came out, I was actually writing computer programs in BASIC on my Atari 400 that I’d purchased with hard-earned paper route money. They involved statistical comparisons to determine which girls were the hottest and roughly pixilated explosions to simulate nuclear war. I had to save them on cassette tapes that took about half an hour to load while making horribly twisted screeching sounds. They were all about a hundred lines or so, and I guarantee you that none of them were catching any nookie in their virtual downtime.

Even now, the idea that programs are complex enough to simulate human life is silly, but in 1982, when the Commodore 64 was state-of-the-art, it’s like saying a piece of dog chow could compose Handel’s Messiah. And then to put a real human in the mix, as Tron does with Jeff Bridges’ Flynn character, you have to hurl your brain out the window to begin to take the thing seriously.

Trust me, I can do stupid if it’s fun. This is not fun. It’s the polar opposite of fun. The dialogue is so joyless and wooden that you keep waiting for Anakin Skywalker to show up to explain how love is blind and sand is not smooth. George Lucas writes better than this, and that’s saying something. (Hint: What it’s saying is not good.)

We’re continually trying to find new and innovative ways to punish our children when they’re unruly. Sometimes we make them do wall sits or put a drop of Tabasco on their tongues if they say something nasty. But now, we’ve determined that threatening to make them watch Tron all the way through is a surefire bad behavior deterrent.

So don’t look for me waiting in line to catch the opening of TR2N. I’ll be at home, scrubbing the wallpaper paste out of my hair.

P.S. Tron does have David Warner in it, though, so that’s something. David Warner is the consummate bad guy. He was great in every piece of crap he’s ever been in, including Tron. You don’t see him much anymore, though. I hope he’s not dead.