TRON LEGACY trailer is our last, best hope for retro sci-fi

TRON LEGACY trailer is our last, best hope for retro sci-fi

Mar 26

If you get the reference in the title of this post (maybe we can be friends!), you, like me, may have been incredibly distracted for the first sixty seconds of the Tron: Legacy trailer because of the voice you were hearing. At first I thought “Well, that sounds a lot like Bruce Boxleitner,” but after a while I became certain — it was Bruce Boxleitner. And then finally, after an excruciating minute of not knowing, there was a close-up of the guy, and I knew it was him. Golly, who’d a thunk he’d still be kicking it after all these years of not commanding space stations or presidenting the universe? Did you know Bruce Boxleitner was originally on the shortlist of actors set to play Luke Skywalker, but he recommended his mate Mark Hamill to audition for the role and Hamill ended up snatching it? There is a very interesting parrallel universe out there in which Bruce Boxleitner whines “Uncle Owen! Aunt Beru!” instead of Mark Hamill, which would probably be even more unpleasant, seeing as Bruce Boxleitner sounds like he was born with gravel in his vocal folds.

Anyway this is supposed to be about Tron: Legacy. I don’t know anything about the original, having never watched it, but I understand it was an important early step in the history of computer-animated graphics, and it made some neat predictions about the future of technology and computers. It had Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, funky neon art design and a wicked 80s synth soundtrack. Legacy is a pretty cool concept in that it represents a direct continuity with the original: Jeff Bridges’ character goes missing, and his son goes into the Tron-verse / program / whatever to look for him, and the film takes place nearly thirty years after the events of the original (which is fortuitous, as it’s been nearly thirty years since the original Tron hit screens in 1982).

You know the basic plot already on instinct alone. It’s a bit like Alice In Wonderland or Avatar or The Matrix in that we start in a real, relatively static world, then fall through a rabbit-hole of some kind and end up in a lush, bizarre landscape populated with larger-than-life characters and life-and-death situations. Sure there’s some father / son dynamics thrown in, but otherwise, it looks set to fall into this pattern pretty comfortably. Legacy will, of course, be released in 3D (like there was any doubt in your mind), and Imax 3D at that.

What sets Tron: Legacy apart from its competitors is its aesthetic deisgn. We’re currently undergoing a retro fashion renaissance (in case you hadn’t noticed) with everything from synth-driven music, primary-coloured clothing, and grindhouse-revival film projects permeating our culture on many levels. Tron: Legacy looks set to take that all a step further. From what I can tell judging by the trailer, it not only nails the clean, sharp neon aesthetic of 80s sci-fi, but it pushes it into a new realm of gorgeousness. It’s slick and surreal, and should make for a visual treat in Imax. Likewise the score — the song in the trailer gave me goosebumps because it is perfect 80s sci-fi synth nonsense. And there’s also Olivia Wilde! My goodness, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and Olivia Wilde in a retro neon synth-driven 80s style sci-fi action flick — I think I might be in heaven.

Official synopsis: Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce Programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidante (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

Tron: Legacy doesn’t hit screens till December 2010