Notes on a Legacy

I saw Tron: Legacy as God intended: in the earth-shaking confines of the IMAX Theater at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum ("The Best IMAX Theater in the World"). Opened in 1999 at a cost of $80 million, the Museum stands tribute to the late veteran politician, an eminently practical good-ol'-boy who, as Wikipedia notes, "had a total of five marriages, although some of them were repeats. He stopped drinking in 1981 and remained active with Alcoholics Anonymous for the remainder of his life." Bullock was actually a well-regarded politician even by liberals—he enacted water conservation and equal employment laws—but definitely a "character" who could only survive in Texas politics. His "colorful stories" include yelling "Show some leadership, you black motherfucker" at a senator, showing a reporter a gun to demonstrate precisely how much he disliked him, et al. Three posters hang from the building's side, summing up "The Story of Texas" (which has shown all day daily since opening) in three surprisingly honest words: land, opportunity, identity.

Surely few of the advocates for memorializing Bullock could have imagined how profitable that 400-seat IMAX theater could be; with many, many more IMAX 3D blockbusters to come, as a profitable attraction the IMAX theater may yet supplant the "Story of Texas" presentation that the theater really lives to show (everyday, non-stop). The screening was technically immaculate, free of children screening and patrolled by the law enforcement authorities of the state (who own the museum, natch), marred only by a seemingly endless, cutesy introduction from a staffer running his voice through a filter to sound like a computer ("Greetings programs," etc.) and ending directions about proceeding to the exits (overriding, temporarily, Daft Punk), the screening was calmly managed, quietly attended by a sell-out crowd and a total blast. Seeing the sky-high film in all its deafening glory was surely the only way to go about it (as a staggering 24% of people who paid to see it in the US this past weekend decided).

Director Joseph Kosinski is the first David Fincher protégé to make a feature, and the initial 20 minutes of Tron: Legacy look like Zodiac's nighttime, or the perpetual darkness of the first half of The Social Network. (Fincher will be following Kosinski to Disney to make 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, which places all the Jules Verne shout-outs here in a whole new light.) Even revving up relatively quickly for the main attraction, it's a plastic pleasure to watch. Especially cool is Garrett Hedlund's moody motorcycle ride across the city ("Center City," though a bus ad with a ".ca" URL reveals the Vancouver root; when your movie's getting expensive, best to cut corners in Canada).

Style aside, the Fincher reference is at least somewhat apposite because Tron: Legacy has at least some ideas about what the internet might mean culturally, making it a surprisingly appropriate companion to The Social Network. The original film only had Jungian symbolism to work with and shit to say about the technology it was built on. Like Avatar, Tron: Legacy is a paranoidly luddite, power-to-the-people spectacle simultaneously built on corporate money and a deep unawareness of its fundamental internal contradictions, but at least it touches on some issues. This isn't a coherent allegory, but it does at least somewhat mention what you could call "the Linux issue" (whether the internet should run on open-source and knowledge-sharing or already be 100% for-profit—the movie has no idea, really), the ethics of piracy and, oddly, net neutrality. (Who should pay for what on the internet? We know where the FCC currently stands...)

It's not necessary to hyperbolically pretend that the brief talking points passed over in the film render it a startlingly acute view of Web Society 2K10 or some such. Despite the opening, briefly glanced-over notions, it's precisely satisfying as a tribute to the power of bludgeoning colors and brute spectacle to soothe and distract, featuring a mere four momentum-killing dramatic scenes. This is almost pure spectacle; this is not Kosinki's Pandora, and we don't have to learn about the environment. Promising and delivering two hours of shamelessly hollow spectacle is about as much as you could ask of $170 million.

Despite near-universal complaints that there's too much dismal exposition and dialogue, this is infinitely swifter than Inception, the year's other F/X-heavy technology-enables-worlds-within-world. There's a convoluted mythology that was created for a bridging graphic novel (Tron: Betrayal) and video game (Tron: Evolution). If you read up on all that, it seems mainly what virgin viewers might be missing is sleek, sexy co-star Olivia Wilde's explanation of who "Zuse" (not Zeus!) is. But probably few bothered to put that much work into the film beforehand, and anyway the most important thing is the sense of play Michael "Tony Blair" Sheen brings to the role, delivering straight '70s Bowie camp. (Between Sheen and Jeff Bridges' Zen master act, the movie has more room than you'd expect for actors, or at least outsize comedians who are game.) It's adorable how, despite all the talkiness, some things can't be explained (what are the Outlands?) and have to be taken on faith. Most of this legend is inexplicable or accessible only to true believers; rather, the movie has the good taste to skip over more of it.

It seems de rigeur for negative reviews to complain about the oft-clunky dialogue, and indeed the scene where Hedlund describes the sun ("It's warm, radiant and beautiful") to Wilde is a particular groaner. Yet complaining about his lackluster lead turn misses the point—he's a warm, flexible body, and little more need be asked of him—as does complaining about the, like, 15 pages of dialogue. Similarly, some critics seem to find the overwhelming noise and imagery inherently beneath them. Dana Stevens misses the point when snarking over the film's "very, very loud and unrelenting ambient noise" and confessing she "may have snoozed through one or two climactic battles only to be started awake by an incoming neon Frisbee." She seems to mean that as an adult, she wants subtlety and restraint and finds bombast for its own sake boring. Sure, it's a mature position, but not a reasonable or helpful one when a film's very reason to exist is fundamentally frivolous.

Much as Wendy Carlos represented the aesthetic of the original Tron perfectly, Daft Punk—who, in cameo form, co-exist happily with the old/new design they're scoring—released an initially underwhelming score. Listened to with repetition before the film, it gives an intuitive rhythm for how each action scene (often confusing and/or overwhelming on the ultra-big screen) will progress. At deafening volume, this is highly rewarding. As a light-show with roaring accompaniment, quickly forgotten but dazzling in the moment, the film proposes that a certain kind of forceful disposability takes you way beyond the simple pleasures of a rudimentary narrative, and that with the right kind of attitude, noise and chaos can be as soothing as discipline and quiet. Pulverizing isn't a corollary of (or antithetical to) entertainment, but it's a kind of entertainment, one of the only ones mainstream film can offer right now, and hoping it goes way won't help anything. Let the wall of noise wash over you.

Posted by ahillis at December 21, 2010 1:32 PM