Chris sort-of reviews TRON: LEGACY 5-Disc Blu-ray Collector's Set (which also includes original TRON on Blu-ray!)

Tron: Legacy came out on DVD and Blu-ray yesterday. I've been eager to own this ever since catching the movie this past New Year's Eve (click here for my initial review of the movie), not only 'cuz I thought it was a great film and worthy follow-up to the 1982 original Tron, but because I was seriously giddy to see how this flick would look on my high-def home entertainment rig. Tron: Legacy was the prettiest pushing of pixels that I've seen in the history of anything: say what one might of some of the film's weaknesses (I've read some say that it could have been a bit leaner, but we'll get to that), visually it was gorgeous.

And oh yeah: Disney announced a few months ago that the original Tron would be released on Blu-ray along with Tron: Legacy. Another reason to look forward to this release!

Well folks, I got Tron: Legacy 5-Disc Blu-ray Collector's Set yesterday and I've spun both of these movies twice in my player, along with the extras. And in spite of being unable to turn in a complete review of this package, I must heartily suggest it for your own personal library.

So why can't I review it all?

Simple enough reason: Disc 1 is Tron: Legacy on 3-D Blu-ray... and I don't have a 3-D Blu-ray player! And you ain't likely to see me own one anytime soon either. At least, not until 3-D high-def sets come out that don't require those funky glasses. And if there's any merit to what some are saying about glassless 3-D right now, that might be awhile longer yet. So for now Disc 1 of this collection is gonna remain a virgin.

Disc 2 however is positivalutely stunning, I can happily report! In fact, this might be the best picture quality of any Blu-ray that's currently in my collection. The details are crisp and sharp as a razor, and the colors of the digital realm - even the pitch black parts of it - pop out magnificently. The Blu-ray of Tron: Legacy maintains the aspect ratios of the IMAX 3-D release, so sometimes it fills up the entire 16:9 screen and others it doesn't. The sound quality is also superb: I don't have a Surround Sound setup, but despite that I was consumed by the audio, especially during the lightcycle sequences.

Disc 2 also contains the extras, including "The Next Day", a mini-feature about the underground "Flynn Lives" movement that has quite a few surprises for fans of the original movie (and is said to dovetail into the third Tron movie allegedly in pre-production). Incidentally, when you get to the end of it, feel free to play around with the arcade game screen that pops up. Especially with that high score (that's all I'm gonna say). Disc 2 also includes other stuff like the "De-Rezzed" Daft Punk music video, and a vignette featuring Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski and how he implemented a crowd cheering at Comic-Con into the arena fight scene. All in all, the bonus features that come with Tron: Legacy are pretty solid stuff.

Disc 3 is Tron: Legacy on standard DVD. Which I also played for a bit out of curiosity about its image quality. It's great DVD, but hey if you got a Blu-ray player you know what disc you're gonna reach for. Still, since I don't have a Blu-ray drive in my computer just yet, I'll no doubt be using this disc to rip Tron: Legacy for my iPod and iPad.

Disc 4 is the digital copy. Which every major DVD/Blu-ray release is including these days and I haven't used a single one. 'Cuz I make my own digital copies (only for personal use 'course) from the primary discs. 'Cuz that's just how I roll :-)

Awright, now we come to Disc 5: the original 1982 movie Tron, finally on Blu-ray! Not only that but beautifully cleaned-up and digitally remastered.

Okay, I gotta say this: it's the best that I've ever seen Tron (which was the first movie that I ever watched on a VCR, all the way back in 1983). Tron on Blu-ray looks like it was filmed just yesterday. However the Blu-ray presentation and restoration also makes obvious some things that have probably gone unnoticed for the most part of the past thirty years. Especially the matted elements, like when Sark's carrier is about to chase after the solar sailer (you can see the carrier right through the hangar building!). But rather than deflect from enjoying Tron on Blu-ray, I actually found it added a charming quality to the movie: artifacts of its time, when the use of computers in filmmaking was just then becoming a reality. So nothing really to get in a tiff about there. What I did want more out of this disc however were some more additional features. There are the original DVD features from the 2002 release, and some photos... but not much more than that (although there is a very welcome audio commentary with Tron director Steven Lisberger and others involved in making the film). Perhaps someday Disney will give the original Tron some more respect and laud it with the Blu-ray release it deserves (you can also buy Tron alone as a Blu-ray disc, something I've already had words about its lousy cover art). But until then, I'll be happy to have Tron itself looking the best it's looked since the summer of 1982.

Tron: Legacy 5-Disc Blu-ray Collector's Set is available in a regular box, or in a special "identity disc" package. Unless you wanna fork over some extra coin for what looks like a glorified coaster, you'll probably just want to get the standard box like I bought. It's quite a nice set, and I'm looking forward to watching it again this weekend (my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed asked me to bring it when I go to his place for ActionFest in Asheville). Highly recommended!

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Third TRON movie gearing up already!

And before anyone asks, lifelong best friend Chad Austin and I are already planning our trip to the cinema to see this.

But first, if you haven't already bought Daft Punk's electrifying soundtrack to Tron Legacy...

...then you really oughtta go to iTunes (where I bought it from) or buy it old-school physical media from a retailer and add it to your collection. In all seriousness, I'm finding it increasingly harder to find any friends who haven't got this album yet. Lately I'm listening to this, well... just about any time that I need music. Just gotta be careful when listening to "Son of Flynn" and "The Game Has Changed" while driving 'cuz like "Duel of the Fates" did from the Star Wars Episode I soundtrack, it's too easy to find myself with the pedal to the metal :-P

I didn't know until today that it was Cillian Murphy playing Edward Dillinger Jr. in the board room scene early in Tron Legacy. Had I caught that when we saw the movie a few weeks ago (read my review of Tron Legacy here) that would have been a huge flashing red hint that there were perhaps larger plans afoot for the Tron franchise.

Now comes word from Ain't It Cool News that the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of Tron Legacy will feature three "teaser" scenes for... wait for it... the THIRD Tron movie. What are these scenes? The first one is reportedly Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) confronting the creator of RAM (the program that Flynn befriended in 1982's Tron, and again played by Dan Shor). RAM's human user, it is revealed, is the person behind the "Flynn Lives" campaign.

The second scene has Quorra (Olivia Wilde's character from Tron Legacy) still out of the Grid in human form, telling some reporters that she had just spoken with Kevin Flynn.

And the third teaser scene? Just some text messages... but oh boy, what they portend! It's an exchange between Edward Dillinger and his father (Ed Dillinger, who was played by David Warner in the original) about how "everything is going as planned".

Does this mean that Warner will be coming back not only as Dillinger but also as Sark or... be still my geeky heart... the Master Control Program?!

Looks like we'll be finding out soon enough. More Tron is always a good thing :-)

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TRON Blu-ray: Worst. Disney. Cover. Art. Ever.

This is just plum lousy...

Hey, I'll buy it. I just pray that I won't need a Mattel Intellivision to watch it on.

If that winds up being the final cover for the Blu-ray release of Tron, I swear that I'll compose one of my own design in Photoshop and use that when I put this movie into my personal library.

Could anyone blame me? Just compare that Blu-ray cover "art" to the original theatrical poster for Tron from 1982...

I suspect that Disney's failure to stand strongly behind the original Tron during the marketing of sequel Tron Legacy will become known as one of the worst commercial tactics in entertainment history. Disney was sitting on a wazoo-load of potential earnings if it had given the original movie some decent respect and linked it to the follow-up. Instead the suits at Disney are acting as if they should be ashamed and embarrassed by Tron.

Hey, Disney execs: you won't look as well in another thirty years or so either, most likely!

But there is some good news: Disney is coming close to announcing a sequel to Tron Legacy, 'cuz the new movie has done well enough at the box office. I might see it again this weekend (taking a friend along who hasn't caught it yet). In the meantime, I'm listening to Daft Punk's score for Tron Legacy: easily one of the best purchases that I've made from iTunes!

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Chris declares that TRON LEGACY was worth waiting 27 years for!

I'd been planning to see Tron Legacy a year ago. This was a movie that I'd had greater anticipation for than - believe it or not - the first Star Wars prequel. And it's all because of a friendship that goes back more than a quarter century.

I first saw the original Tron at the house of my life-long best friend Chad Austin, the first time that we had a sleepover at his parents' house. We were nine years old in the summer of 1983. Tron came out in theaters the summer before but I hadn't seen it yet.

Well, Chad's family had a VCR. I'd never watched a movie from a VCR until that night. His dad rented Tron from Cobb TV and Stereo Barn (for the longest time the only place to rent movies from in Rockingham County).

And that was how I first saw Tron, more than 27 years ago. With Chad. And we were up all that night wondering if there might really be a whole 'nother world on the other side of the computer monitors. Later that summer my family got its first computer: a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. I messed around with writing simple programs in BASIC. Each time, my pre-adolescent mind envisioning a digital doppleganger of myself being created in that other realm, the "World of Tron".

On the playground the kids already played at Star Wars. We soon began playing Tron too. It sure made games of dodge-ball more fun: envisioning that big rubber ball as being the ball in the ring game from the movie. Pretending to be Tron and Sark fighting each other.

And, Chad and I talked about what a sequel to Tron would be like. We talked about it a lot. I bet we came up with a zillion ideas for what a follow-up to Tron should have in it.

This has always been one of the movies that was most at the center of our friendship. And it was Chad who first suggested that when Tron Legacy came out, we should see it together.

That was supposed to have been last Sunday. And we would have caught it, were it not for the Christmas snowstorm that marooned both him in Raleigh and me in Reidsville with 6 inches of snow. We decided to take a raincheck (or a "snowcheck" as Chad put it). "Well we waited twenty-seven years to see this movie, we can wait a few more days I guess," I said.

We saw it yesterday, on New Years Eve, in 3-D on this new IMAX screen in Cary. During lunch Chad and I speculated on what it was we were about to behold. Would it be anything like the wild and heady notions we concocted for this movie in our youth? Would it hold up to the original? Would we be as delighted with seeing Tron Legacy as we had when we watched Tron together all those years ago?

Yes. Yes. And absolutely YES!!!

Sitting in that IMAX theater with the funky 3-D glasses, Chad and I were like a pair of nine-year olds all over again, oohing and ahhing and having our eyeballs assaulted with even crazier psychedelics than our kiddie minds ever envisioned. Quietly giggling over moments like when Sam (Garrett Hedlund) breaks into ENCOM through the very same "big door" that his father Flynn (Jeff Bridges) cracked open in 1982. Moments like that, when we turned to each other and smiled about the many sly nods to the original Tron...

...that made seeing Tron Legacy a cinematic experience that I already cherish as one of my all-time most wonderful.

Tron Legacy is a plenty strong movie on its own, and you don't have to have seen the original to enjoy it. But it does help to appreciate some of the nuances of Tron Legacy if you've seen the 1982 original.

(Speaking of which, where is that Blu-ray release of Tron, huh Disney? Did you forget that your company had a holiday tentpole movie that builds on a cult classic? Did somebody break into the Disney Vault and steal Tron?!)

The film begins in 1989, and Kevin Flynn telling his young son Sam about his adventures in the computer realm. We discover that Flynn returned to the Grid and built a new world, together with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner, who along with Bridges also returns from the original movie) and a recreated version of Flynn's original Clu program (also Bridges, in a dual role). Flynn cryptically mentions a "miracle" that he's discovered, but before he can tell Sam about it Flynn takes off into the night... and is never seen again.

The business world is rocked by Flynn's disappearance. A montage of news reports reveals that Flynn's behavior had grown increasingly bizarre since taking over at ENCOM: striking a messianic pose as he promised a "new world" within the computers.

In the present day, Sam Flynn is reluctant to take charge of his father's company (though that doesn't stop him from pulling pranks every year on ENCOM, including turning the company's latest operating system into a freeware download). Flynn's old friend Alan Bradley (Boxleitner) soon comes to Sam with the news that his pager got a call from Flynn's old arcade: a place that had been closed for twenty years. Alan tells Sam that just before he disappeared, Flynn confided that he about to "change everything".

Sam comes to Flynn's Arcade (faithfully recreated from the original film). Behind a Tron video game (the very same model that a bunch of us poured gallons of quarters into back in the day) he discovers a secret office. And as Sam tries to trace his father's last activity from more than twenty years before, a laser quietly powers up behind him...

So it is that Sam, at last, finds himself in the computer world that his father was zapped into almost thirty years before.

Tron Legacy is a dazzling, smart and beautiful update of the original movie's concept. But, I also found that it intelligently built upon something that a number of people have noted over the years: that Tron had quite a lot of religious metaphor in it, particularly some elements that were analogous to the Christian faith. The programs' belief in the users, Flynn's self-sacrifice for the computer world, even how Sark became an Anti-Christ figure in first film's final battle... it's funny because before we saw Tron Legacy, Chad brought up the religious angle during our lunch.

Tron Legacy is the natural progression from that as a religious film (and I do consider it and the original to be plenty religious in nature). Tron had Flynn come into the computer world and then acting to save it, knowing that he would probably die. In Tron Legacy Flynn - "the Creator" as he is known to the programs - is back in the computer realm as its god incarnate.

And then, as happens all too often in our real world, we see what religion is capable of doing in the name of its god: for the sake of perfection, for the sake of being faithful to God.

No more spoilers about the movie, but... let's just say that I was immensely satisfied and surprised at how well Tron Legacy builds upon the original film in every way possible: from design, to modern technology and its associated economics, to fodder for theological rumination. And, it is a gorgeous feast for the eyes and ears (the soundtrack by Daft Punk is already on my iPod).

And when the credits began rolling, and Chad and I took off our 3-D specs, we looked at each other and grinned. "Yes," we both agreed. It was a movie well worth waiting the better part of thirty years for.

I'm planning on catching Tron Legacy again at least one more time in theaters. I can't imagine how the regular 2-D version is going to disappoint, but if at all possible you owe it to yourself to see it in 3-D, either on a standard screen or on an IMAX one. Perhaps even more than Avatar a year ago, I wound up feeling sucked in and enveloped by the splendor and danger of Tron City by this film's use of 3-D.

Can't recommend this nearly enough, folks. Go see Tron Legacy. Even if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing the original, you're in for one heckuva ride!

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It's that new trailer for TRON LEGACY!

As of last night there's a bunch of us that are plotting to make it to Comic-Con next year in San Diego. None of us have been to one so we figured we'd make an epic cross-country road trip out of it.

I just wish I could have been at Comic-Con this year, 'cuz this afternoon that's where Disney unloaded this intense trailer for Tron Legacy!

If you can't watch the YouTube embed, don't fret 'cuz this thing is pretty much everywhere tonight.

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The first TRON LEGACY trailer has arrived!

Yowza!!!

Zap here to see the first trailer for Tron Legacy.

And December 17th can not get here fast enough. This is already looking like it's gonna be one of the greatest sequels ever.

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TRON LEGACY has a new poster!

"The game has changed"...

Tron Legacy takes us back the game grid on December 17th, 2010.

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Concept footage/semi-teaser thingy for TRON LEGACY

This afternoon Disney finally made an official release of that concept footage for Tron Legacy, next year's sequel to the 1982 movie about a parallel reality that exists within the realm of computers. This is the same footage that Disney showed at Comic-Con last year, but with the new Tron Legacy logo...

Click here to zap back down onto the game grid.

And you might wanna also take a looksee at Flynn Lives, a Tron Legacy teaser website about what has happened to Kevin Flynn (the character that Jeff Bridges played in Tron and will reprise again in the sequel). It hints that in the years since Flynn took over ENCOM he has become a "Bill Gates meets Howard Hughes"-type of person.

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