“TRON: ARES.” - New Tron flick in the works

[tthurman]

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/tron-movie-garth-davis-director-jared-leto-1234730540/

 

Not a direct sequel to the first two.  Maybe it's just me, but Jared Leto doesn't jump out at me as necessarily a good thing.  Seems everything I've seen him in that he his in is obscure and odd.  Joker, Blade Runner.....

[tthurman]

I loved Tron as a kid and thought Legacy was a fantastic sequel.  I really wish the follow up to it had been finished/released while it was current, as the cast seem to really gel to me.  Instead they blew it off and any momentum it had is long gone and lets face it, without Jeff Bridges, it isn't Tron!

This fellow has a pretty harsh take on it, but it's sort of hard to argue with him.  As much as I wanted to love Solo, it was just okay.  John Carter was decent, but not great, and the same could be said about Blade Runner 2047.  That movie had so much unrealized potential it's just not even funny, but I think Harrison Ford has lost his mojo or something, all of his characters are just "there" anymore.  Pacific Rim was great, but I didn't bother with the sequel as it just screamed "Bomb", so as I read this guys take on things, I tend to think he's right.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/08/11/box-office-tron-legacy-sequel-will-bomb-like-terminator-dark-fate-pacific-rim-uprising-x-men-dark-phoenix-and-huntsman-winters-war/#65f001756c84

 

I'm convinced that Disney can screw up just about anything!

[Draco1962]

I loved both Tron and Tron: Legacy! But there was a story setup at the end ripe for a sequel. Why not give it continuity and finish the story begging on its hands and knees to be completed!

[RIP-Felix]

I'd give Tron: Legacy a firm 5/10.

I thought it was just okay. Your run of the mill, capitalize on a popular IP, Disney movie. I'd liken it to Ready Player One, but unlike ready player one, I had no expectations. I hadn't seen any previous entries or read any books. I just knew the game. That and I had an Asian friend named Tron. I know of the first Tron movie, but still to this day I've not seen it. I didn't even know that Jeff Bridges was in it until reading that article...lol.

I had no qualms with legacy. It wasn't disappointing to me.  I agree that Jeff Bridges made it palatable. I'd have forgotten about it otherwise. But I wouldn't say it was unforgettable. I'm about as indifferent to a sequel as I am about it having never been made. It's a way to pass a few hours once in every few years, but it's not one of my go too's I can watch repeatedly without getting bored. Maybe, I need to see the first film? Or would that destroy my 5/10 for Legacy?

[tthurman]

The original Tron would seem real campy by today's standards, but it was quite the eye candy for the day.  Even years later inspirations of it appeared n several movies, perhaps some of Lawnmower man had the most striking resemblance, IMO. 

[hansolo77]

@RIP-Felix  What?!  You've never seen the first one?!  As many times as people tell me to read the book and watch the movie (Ready Player One) I still haven't done it.  BUT... there's no excuse to having not seen the original Tron.  And to watch the "sequel" first?  Uhg, blasphemy!  Man I'd mail you my copy of it on Bluray if I didn't have doubts about our postal service.  Even if you don't have Disney+, you can probably get it at the Library, or find it online "somewhere".  You owe it to yourself as a retro gamer.  There's a lot more going on in Legacy that is a direct result of events from the first one.  And a ton of easter egg nods.  That might be why you're rating is so low, because you don't know the previous history.  I'd say hold back the tears of the campy 80's CGI/rotoscoping, legit grin and bear it, and watch the movie for the story. 

Uhg, just can't believe it.

It's like saying Empire Strikes back is a 5/10 because you've never seen A New Hope.  Ok, that's just because I'm a Star Wars fanboy geek, and totally not possible.  But still.  You should always watch a sequel after the first one and not before it lol.  It's like me when I was a kid and watching Temple of Doom before Raiders of the Lost Ark, not knowing it was an Indiana Jones movie (it doesn't say that in the title).  Or watching Two Towers before Fellowship.  I'd slap you if I could! 

[tthurman]

Yeah, take that you sequel 1st watchers!

[RIP-Felix]

21 hours ago, hansolo77 said:

...It's like saying Empire Strikes back is a 5/10 because you've never seen A New Hope.

LOL (literally!)

Okay, geez! Don't blow a gasket 3PO, I'll bow to the pressure...I actually just added Disney+ to my Hulu service because it was only $1/mo more than what I was paying for Hulu (No Ads) + Live TV, after I downgraded to Just Hulu (with ADs). The change just went into effect and I haven't noticed any difference!!! There were just as many ads before. TOTAL RIP OFF!...Back to the topic.

I just added Tron & Tron - Legacy to my watch list. Let's make a deal. I will agree to sit through both films back to back IF @hansolo77 agrees to watch Ready Player One! I'm agreeing to watch 2 films in context and post a review of both films if Han old buddy agrees to crack open RP1, watch it, and give us his impressions on the RP1 thread. You really should read the book too, but I won't stipulate it as part of the deal. I mean, come on!  "You owe it to yourself as a retro gamer."

Deal?

 

[hansolo77]

Alright alright!  My problem with watching a movie based on a book is that I'm always let down.  I'd rather read the book first, then enjoy the movie and compare scenes that were missing and be pissed about it.  But, I guess in this one case, I'll watch the movie first, then read the book, and be dazzled by all the new stuff that was added.    Gonna be a few days for me though.  The way my work schedule is coming up, I'm not going to have more than an hour after work before I have to go to bed so I can get enough sleep for the next day.  But I promise, by the end of this month, I'll watch it.

[RIP-Felix]

Fresh Off the Pixels and as Promised:

So I just finished watching both films. Long story short I now give tron Legacy a 7/10. It does make mores sense in context of the first film, especially Tron and his redemption/sacrifice, which means more when you get to know him in the first film. Speaking of which I should break these down separately. Here are my notes (yes, I took notes):

Tron (1982)

• Raindeer Floatilla: Something that jumped out to me was Kevin Flynn's password at ENCOM. I recognized it from Ready Player One, as this was part of Wade's (AKA Parzival) OASIS login Pass phrase - Reindeer Flotilla Setec Astronomy. A neat 2 part Easter egg. Setec Astronomy is reference to the 1992 film Sneakers. It's an anagram for "Too many Secrets". I haven't seen sneakers for a while, so that slipped by me. Now I need to go back and watch it again.
• The laser that demolecularizes Flynn reminds me of "Honey I shrunk the kids". I wonder if it served as inspiration?

Tron: Legacy (2010)

• Big doors open faster in the future too. In the first film the door took much longer to open giving you the sense of it's mass. In legacy it opened so quick that you don't get that sense. They didn't miss the opportunity to have Sam Flynn copy Kevin Flynn's dialog in the first film though, "That's a big door." Yeah we get it, you want us to see it's the same door and think we're too stupid to recognize it. Or maybe they thought it was funny. I thought it was cheesy and missed the suspenseful intention of the first film - That they were breaking into a highly secured building. That the property inside was important enough to lock behind nuclear blast proof door.
• This was my introduction to Sam Flynn - the protagonist. I have to tell you, after the intro, I wasn't rooting for him! He came off as an arrogant, rich young men with daddy issues, who like to ride motorcycles recklessly and endanger himself and others. "Let's ride 85mph on the highway swerving in front of every family sedan driven by tired soccer moms trying to have an uneventful drive home. It's not like their 2000Lb vehicle poses any threat to a defenseless cyclist, at night. After all, what I'm doing and where I'm going is so important it requires me to risk my life, their lives, and break the law, just to shave a few minutes off the commute." Maybe he respects cop's on motor bike? Nope! Evade the police, cause they are dumb and he's smart. So where is he going in such a hurry? ENCOM, to play illegal pranks on the company that made him rich in the first place. But it's okay, because they are run by a bunch of greedy jerks who deserve it and he's a really good motorcycle rider. That's the setup!!! Later, Sam's his motorcycle prowess comes in handy, but they could have made him a professional cyclist or stuntman. Instead he's a college dropout, a hacking prankster, who acts as if his actions are without consequence. At every stage of the movie he acts rashly and without a plan, because that always works out when your OP. There's not substance to his character, just pretentious male bravado. And this is the guy we're supposed to believe deserves to ride off into the sunset with Olivia Wilde at the end of the movie?
• Oh, and he rides off into the sunset with Olivia Wild at the end of the movie! That's how a trope is perpetuated people! Someone says, "lets end the movie with them riding off into the sunset together!" And then everyone else says, "that's a great idea!" This is the "yes sir...Whatever you say sir...Please don't fire me sir..."attitude I can't stand in the private sector. No one is allowed to question the decisions of the team, else they be fired for not being a subservient 50's housewives. And the look on Olivia Wild's face, it had me rolling my eyes. He's not worth it! You can do better than this clown!
• Speaking of Olivia Wild's character Quorra, she is portrayed with a doe like innocence. She is supposedly the last remaining ISO (Isomorphic algorithm - sentient emergent AI). All the rest are killed by Clu, the story's antagonist, who believed they were an error in the system. In order to make a perfect system they had to be eliminated. He made good on this genocide, firmly entrenching his role as antagonist (Clu has the best character development IMO). Also, we learn that time experienced in the grid (tron cycles) is slowed 50x compared to the real-world. So although about 21 years have past outside, 1050 years have past inside! Quorra and the other ISO's emerged during the preceding millennium and were all wiped out long before Sam's arrival. And yet, with all the time that's past and experience Quorra has gained she is still so innocent? I don't buy it. Her character is underdeveloped, unbelievably so. That she would sacrifice herself to save Sam is also suspect. Yes he's the son of Kevin Flynn, the user she looks up to, but she's also the last good reason for the grid to exist. Frankly her survival is more important than his and it should be him sacrificing himself to save her. Instead he is off on this naive mission to defeat Clu and save his father and himself. A thousand years of history in the grid be dammed, Sam's going to be the lucky one who wins. Man I hate this "lottery winner" attitude. In psychology, it's called confidence bias, and by god have I noticed it more as I've gotten older. The car that waits to the last second, then has to break hard to stop at a red light, "It'll turn green before I have to slow down". My god, they are everywhere. Worst offenders are movie. The protagonist always defeats insurmountable odds to miraculously survive and win. That's like 90% of fiction, so...I'm just beating a dead horse.
• This is where Zuse comes in. He's supposed to be a friend that helped the ISO's during the resistance. Sam meets up with him looking for help to defeat Clu only to get betrayed. If it wasn't for, Quorra who jumps in last minutes to Save Sam, and is severely wounded, Sam would be dead (SHOCKER)! Now Zuse himself is unoriginal. It felt like a rip off of Jim Carey's Riddler from Batman Forever. I mean it was immediately where my mind went. Jim Carey was better, which goes without saying. The whole "Joygasm" concept is annoying anyway. I get that they want you to hate the betrayer, but having him prance about with maniacal joy over the betrayal doesn't add enough to excuse the scene IMO.

I could go on, but I won't. Besides all that, it was nostalgic and there was more to enjoy about the story after watching the first film. The CGI was good, except the young jeff bridges deep fake face on Clu. Overall, it was enjoyable, but I really wish Quorra's character was more developed and that the women in this film didn't feel like they only existed at eye candy for the male audience.

7/10

 

[hansolo77]

Applauds to you my friend.  I'm glad you watched the first one now and saw it DID make an impact in your review score.  I knew it would.  Maybe it's just because I grew up with a copy of Tron on VHS and watched it all the time, and I'm just a fanboy because of it.  When I saw the proof-of-concept pitch "trailer" I was nerdgasming like crazy.  But then when Legacy finally came out, it turned out that so much of it was just advertising to the world of CGI's latest cutting edge capabilities.  Who better than Disney (of old) to usher in the new tech than with a sparkly new version of a movie way ahead of it's time.  Of course, they took that idea and ran with it by remaking a LOT of their stuff rather than make new.  Problem with Legacy though, there wasn't really anything original.  Just altered perspectives and concepts.  Should we do light cycles?  Sure!  How about the disc throwing?  Yup!  What about the tanks?  Uh-huh.  And the sailing ship at the end?  You don't get it do ya?-we're going to REMAKE the same movie.  Uhg.  Just like Force Awakens.  But I loved the eye candy.  And I did like the whole idea of the starting plot and where it needed to go, Flynn is missing, his son discovers he's been trapped on the grid by his clone and rescues him.  I liked that idea, but to bring it out they just rehashed so much of the same stuff.  I would have liked it better if they had all new games, or different vehicles at least.  But, I still loved the movie.  Oh, yeah, and that freaky Zuse didn't need to be in there.. we needed more of Gem.

[tthurman]

On 8/14/2020 at 11:23 PM, RIP-Felix said:

except the young jeff bridges deep fake face on Clu

There is rumor to be a 4k release that is so far unreleased that addresses this.

http://www.plan8.tv/201911230032/tron-legacy-remastered-to-4k-uhd-and-with-improved-de-aging-cgi/

[hansolo77]

I wish the "3D" option worked without the need for 3D tv's...

[RIP-Felix]

You may have noticed that my notes on the first film are scant. That's because I didn't have many gripes. The art style was ambitious for 1982, totally dated by today standards, but that's completely unfair to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. I would have thought it looked really cool had I seen it on VHS back in the 80s.

 

Speaking of which, this might actually be one movie that would benefit from only being watched on a CRT, as it appears they visual art style intended to be smoothed out by low resolution, scan lines, and CRT bloom. I'd actually be interested in picking this up on VHS for that reason. I do keep a VCR and CRT for the handful of movies I want to Keep in this format (Dune, Star Trek movies, and the original Star wars trilogy - the last release before the CGI "enhancements"; It's the ones with the interview with George Lucas at the beginning of each film). Some movies are more fun to watch on a CRT, at least until there is a good CRT filter and I don't think that's possible until 8K becomes standard (has to do with there being too little resolution to mimic the shadow mask properly).

I thought the story was good. Characters were all developed well and felt important. It's defiantly a niche movie (nerds), but that's totally fine by me. I'd give it an 8/10, but might boost that to 9/10 to compensate for not seeing it on CRT and 28 years too late (it might have blown my mind in the 80s). I was born mid 80s, so my revolutionary "reality could be a game" movie was the Matrix (A 10/10 in my book). Did this movie have that kind of impact on you?

[tthurman]

I've got that Star Wars VHS set too, but it's painful to watch VHS after being spoiled by even upscaled DVD's.

TRON looked great in the theater, I can see where the vibrant colors would have lent themselves to CRT type "glow".  I'll buy them both if they release 4k versions

[RIP-Felix]

14 hours ago, tthurman said:

I've got that Star Wars VHS set too, but it's painful to watch VHS after being spoiled by even upscaled DVD's.

None of the DVD or Bluray releases have felt the same on a modern TV for me. So I only watch them on VHS.

I've been holding off on the bluRay releases, because I felt that Disney or whoever did the previous "remasters" were more like "reapprentices". The death star colors were all off! I'll wait for that fan made upscale, or for Disney to finally piece together a restored 4k HDR color accurate restoration of the original film from the separation masters, interpositives and internegatives (which aparantly still exist). These are of indistinguishable quality compared to the original negatives, where were spliced to create the CGI enhanced versions and therefore no longer intact, but a perfect original can be remade from these high quality, stable copies.

[tthurman]

You will likely never see these the way you remember or long for.

Restoration previous to the 1997 theatrical re-release:

http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

NY Times story of restorations including Star Wars 2005 DVD release:

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/movies/film-600-macs-4000-lines-one-giant-leap-for-dvd-s.html

[hansolo77]

I got that VHS set too.  Hosted by Leonard Maltin, interviewing George Lucas.  It's in 4:3 though.  I have the Special Edition VHS in both 4:3 and 16:9 but I think its actually just 4:3 letterboxed.  Still, the best I had for the time.  I still like the trailer they made for the Special Edition's.  "For an entire generation, people have experienced Star Wars the only way it's been possible; on a TV screen.  But if this is the only way you've seen it, the you've never seen it before..." Queue an X-Wing blasting out the TV. 

[RIP-Felix]

3 hours ago, tthurman said:

You will likely never see these the way you remember or long for

That's what I thought, but Michael Kaminski said "You could totally restore the original films from their original negatives for a few million dollars, and the 2004 release sold $100 million in a single day, so that pricetag is meaningless." While it's true that the original Tricolor film negatives were spliced into the remastered version and thus lost in unaltered form, they did have the separations masters created off the original before alteration. Separation masters are three monochrome (black/white) copies each filtered for the R, G, or B spectrum each. The pigments used to make B/W film do not fade, once developed, like color film pigments do, so the separation masters are considered the best way to preserve film. So long as they are stored properly, they can be used to make a perfect copy. Digitizing in 4-8K should provide enough resolution to make out all the film grain, then we'd have them in an even better form. The film stock itself will eventually degrade.

So it sounds like the original film could be digitized in 4K with accurate RGB color from the original stock. And it needs to be done before the film stock (the plastic gelatin emulsion) degrades.

[tthurman]

4 hours ago, RIP-Felix said:

Separation masters are three monochrome (black/white) copies each filtered for the R, G, or B spectrum each. The pigments used to make B/W film do not fade, once developed, like color film pigments do, so the separation masters are considered the best way to preserve film. So long as they are stored properly, they can be used to make a perfect copy.

True, but it's as likely as the owner of Crazy Otto suddenly caving and doing something that has long been proclaimed that would never happen.  It's my opinion that "WHEN and IF" this ever happens, it won't be until after George has passed away.

There's too much money on the table for it not to happen at some point, and this would blow passed the 2004 DVD release sales IMO.

 

I'll not purchase another copy myself, well not until they release the theatrical versions properly anyway.

[RIP-Felix]

Well, they need to make copies quickly. The film stock of the 1970's is known to be of inferior quality to that of earlier and later stock. Whereas it's usually good for 70 ish years, the stock from the 70's is estimated at more like 50. We're coming up on that quick. With a film as historically important as Star Wars, the product managers are sure to be well aware of this. They should get new separation masters made and do a modern 8K digitization while they're at it. Then the originals should be donated to the Smithsonian, or library of congress, or something of equal esteem.

[hansolo77]

Let's go more off-topic...  I want Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Voyager on High-Def Bluray!  But we'll never get it.  Sure, the acting footage is available on film and can be scanned.  But all of the exterior shots of the ships/station/etc were recorded on VHS and then composited on VHS.  Then to make it even more miserable, the later seasons used more CGI, and the models were all rendered at low-def 480p resolutions.  So even if they upscaled the composites, they'd only be at best DVD quality with possible +4k acting.  There has been great strides in the fanbase to try and re-create all the composite shots in hi-def rendering resolutions, but CBS has already said that the cost to re-do every single scene is too great and not worth it.  I, for one, don't see why they can't; especially when they puke out new shows that people hate like Star Trek Discovery (I've not seen Picard or Below Decks yet but I heard they suck too).  If they took the money spent on Discovery/etc, they could have made good run on a DS9/Voyager remaster.

[tthurman]

16 hours ago, hansolo77 said:

Let's go more off-topic...

[RIP-Felix]

I'm burned out on star trek. Besides the original movies, I can't watch ST more then once. As a kid/teen I preferred Voyager and TNG, but DS9 bored me. I've since sat through it and Enterprise once, couldn't get into them again. I'm not going to buy into CBS all access just for the cash grab ST series, which I assume are bad. I did however enjoy John Scalzi's "Redshirts", a satire novel obviously inspired by ST. "Below Decks" is clearly ripping off the idea. Oh, and it's narrated by Will Wheton (hilarious to hear him reading a ST satire).

[tthurman]

Looks as if the previous cast could in fact return based on several articles.

 

https://collider.com/tron-3-sequel-update-disney-jared-leto-garth-davis/