Tron: Legacy: Critic Reviews

A techno-fueled visual effects extravaganza,Tron Legacy is not quite the sequel I imagined.

As long as it's engaged in light-hurling bouts of force, or motorcycle chases through a landscape so ominously enveloping it looks like Blade Runner after gentrification, TRON: Legacy is a catchy popcorn pleasure.

There's more than a touch of Zeus in Kevin's white beard and Olympian digs, but, much like Icarus, no one in Tron: Legacy gets to soar too high.

It is often beautiful to look at, and could come to represent the fashion tropes of its era as faithfully as its predecessor did. And the silliness somehow adds to the enjoyment rather than detracting from it. It's the best kind of bonkers.

For a far more thought-provoking tale about the virtual realm, try The Social Network.

"Tron: Legacy" may be nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

The "legacy'' of the title appears to be that of George Lucas. Which, of course, should be the last thing an admirer of "Tron'' wants to see: Bill Gates taking over Apple.

Given the movie's graphic pizzazz, the best hippie wisdom Bridges might offer the viewer is: Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

The only way to see "Tron: Legacy" is in IMAX 3-D, so the full visual freakiness can engulf you and be appreciated the way you used to light up at the thought of a laser show set to "Dark Side of the Moon."

It's dispiriting to see how little attention the filmmakers have paid to the dramatic -- read human -- possibilities of the original, or how much they've been overwhelmed by technology's demands.

The sheer size of the thing works against it: The effects are absolutely spectacular, but they blow the goofy-cheesy quotient straight through the roof.

This updated story sinks under the weight of its own mystical mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience gobbledygook.

TRON: Legacy proves once again that movies can be incubators for exciting technological and F/X advances... while leaving our need for narrative unsatisfied.

Aside from conceptually unimaginative, the film is also derivative... and curiously humorless

With a million times more computing power at its disposal than its 1982 predecessor, Tron: Legacy still looks like Disco Night at the jai alai fronton.

Disney may be looking for a merchandising bonanza with this long-gestating sequel to the groundbreaking 1982 film, but someone in the corporate offices forgot to add any human interest to its action-heavy script.

Both [Tron] films, made so many years apart, can fairly lay claim to being state of the art.

It's a sullen affair, dominated by a grim visual palette that intrigues for about 30 minutes.

The special effects are incredible, blah blah blah, but oddly, the most effective element here is the original movie's striking visual design.

Legacy is a two-hour light show with a lot of flash, a little style, and not one byte of narrative originality.

The package is shiny and new, but the movie is a hodgepodge of ideas lifted from science-fiction classics, fast-paced action tedium and flimsy connective tissue. It's bloatware.

Lots of sizzle, not much soul, and very little sense.

Perhaps this is an old-fashioned notion, but if you're going to see a movie that admittedly features lots of digital bells and whistles as its major draw, shouldn't you still be able to tell what's going on?

While 21st-century effects and a cutting-edge dance score make this a stunning virtual ride, the underlying concept feels as far-fetched as ever.

For all of its buggy storytelling, "Tron: Legacy" plugs into your cerebral cortex and makes it sizzle.