2013 Recap: The Bottom of the Barrel

 Folks, we've come around full circle again; 2013 has left us and 2014 began just a day ago. I'm not really sure where the year went, and there were a lot of things I meant to do that didn't happen, so hopefully the Cap'n can pick up where I left off. In the meantime, there's a year's worth of movies to recap, and as I do every year, we'll start at the bottom and work our way up.

 I lost count of how many new movies I saw in 2013 (it's somewhere north of 40, but the list I put together is eluding me, so we'll stick with that estimate), and thankfully most of them were very good to really good. Some even great, but we're not here to talk about those today. Nope. Today is about the small, but vocal minority of true garbage that assaulted my ears and eyes in 2013. Some I've already forgotten most everything about, some I regret even considering sitting down to watch. At the race to the bottom, First Place is an unenviable position, and I really struggled deciding which of the following nine films sucked the hardest. Every time I think "yeah, that's the one I hated the most," I see another one on the list and change my mind. So this year, there will be no numbering - they're all the worst.

 And I watched them So You Won't Have To.

 Movie 43 - There's an old adage that the more recognizable names you see on a movie you've never heard of, the worse the movie is. Most of the time this pertains to direct to video releases on already clogged shelves, and usually to indie dramas, but every now and again comedies. For something like Movie 43 to make it to theatres, even in the "dumping ground" time of the year, is a testament to the inexplicable star power willing to blemish their resumes with this shit.

 When either of the "haven't been funny in a decade and a half" Farrelly brothers are involved (Peter, in this case), that should set off alarm bells, but with so many talented people directing segments of this Kentucky Fried Movie wannabe, I remember that we rationalized it would at least have something worth seeing. We were clearly not paying attention to the warning signs, and nothing about the lazily titled Movie 43 was worth seeing. Not Hugh Jackman with testicles on his throat; not Chris Pratt shitting all over a taxi to impress Anna Faris; not Jason Sudekis and Justin Long as Batman and Robin at Superhero Speed Dating (spoiler - one of the women was a dude! Hilarity!). Let's not forget about the wacky game of Truth or Dare that turns Stephen Merchant into an Asian caricature with a penis tattooed on his cheek! Or Halle Berry making guacamole with her boob!

 I had to look some of these up because, to be perfectly honest with you, we'd already forgotten about most of Movie 43 by the next day. Looking at IMDB, I thought "oh yeah, that was in the movie, wasn't it?" and then I remembered that it wasn't funny and that's why I forgot about it. And before long, I'll forget about it again, and hopefully you will too. Don't let the list of names on the cover lure you into a blind rental or Netflix streaming - it's not worth it unless you desperately need to lose and hour and a half of your life. You'll remember as much of Movie 43 by not watching it as you will by enduring it, so why bother?

 Kick-Ass 2 - I'll keep this brief. I hated Kick-Ass when I saw it in 2010, and that position hasn't softened at all. I was vaguely curious about Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes based on the trailer and it seemed like expanding the world of "real life" heroes and villains might maybe be worth looking into. And it wasn't. Kick-Ass 2 is more of the same stupid swill that I didn't like at all three years ago, and apparently not even fans of the first movie could choke this one down. I already didn't care about Hit Girl, but her adventures as "Mindy the normal girl in high school" that ended up as a stupid retread of Mean Girls really made me miss Nicolas Cage's Big Daddy. Nothing about Kick-Ass 2 is worth mentioning, so I'm just going to move on...

 R.I.P.D. - Speaking of movies with nothing worth mentioning, here's a transparent remake of Men in Black that substitutes ghosts for aliens and stars Ryan Reynolds from Blade Trinity and Rooster Cogburn from the Coen brothers' True Grit. Oh sure, it's Jeff Bridges, but he's playing Rooster Cogburn without the eye-patch. Also Mary Louise Parker and Kevin Bacon is the bad guy (SPOILER for the first three minutes of the movie) blah blah blah lousy special effects blah blah blah lazy jokes blah blah blah lots of shooting and yelling end of the world etc. R.I.P.D. is neither bad enough to hate nor good enough to give much more attention to. It simply limps along, reminding you of better movies that you could be watching instead of this. In fact, I watched a MUCH better movie before this (more on that when we get to the Best of 2013) and was so excited by it that I decided to use R.I.P.D. as a kind of "palette cleanser," which may be exactly what it's good for. If mediocre is your thing, this is the movie for you.

 Bullet to the Head - I don't really have anything to add to this beyond what I said in the original review. I only bothered to review three of the nine movies on this list, and in both instances I'll just include the links. There's a much better Stallone movie that came out in 2013 (Escape Plan) that you should see instead, because Walter Hill's un-buddy cop / revenge film is somebody's cup of tea, but not mine.

 Evil Dead - I get that people like that the remake of The Evil Dead is really violent. Like non-stop, unpleasant, close-up on the gore violent for most of the movie. Got it. I 100% don't believe the continued insistence that the effects are practical and that there's "almost no digital effects" in the movie. Sorry, I've seen it twice and you can see the digital effects, even during parts of the commentary where the director claims there aren't. But that is another argument for another day. The problem with Evil Dead isn't that it exists - there can and are good remakes of horror films out there, so I'm willing to put aside my affection for the original and let this exist in its own right.

 The problem with Evil Dead is that it's extremely violent, and nothing else. If you're looking for a movie where people are slowly, painfully mutilated, with long shots of the aftermath where they're half-crying and half in shock while removing needles or nails from their skin, good news - you'll find it in spades in Evil Dead. There's no humor, no characters, not much in the way of plot (that isn't abandoned, anyway), but lots of moments designed to remind you that this is a remake of The Evil Dead. Just one that's grittier and gorier and more hardcore. Because that's all horror fans care about, right? Oh, also just throwing Bruce Campbell onscreen after the credits to say "Groovy" in silhouette., because you gotta have Bruce, right?  It's no secret why the best and worst reviews of this film said the same thing: "It's REALLY violent." That's all there is to Evil Dead, and it's not enough.

 A Good Day to Die Hard - I like the theory that Red Letter Media has that each Die Hard sequel is designed to make the previous film look better by comparison. At the same time, it terrifies me to think how bad Die Hard 6 is going to have to be to make this piece of shit look good.

 G.I. Joe: Retaliation - I originally watched this as a planned week long segment called "The Rock Report," wherein I'd see every Dwayne Johnson movie released in 2013 and cover them for you. After G.I. Joe: Retaliation and another movie on this list, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to track down Snitch and Empire State. Going back to Movie 43, it's probably worth pointing out that I should have known better than to be interested in a movie with Dwayne Johnson, Ray Stevenson, Jonathan Pryce, Walton Goggins, RZA, and Channing Tatum (SPOILER briefly). Somehow (see above), it's only the second worst Bruce Willis movie I saw this year.

 True, I'd never seen the first movie and I don't plan on ever seeing it. True, it had gone extensive reshoots that delayed the film for half a year. True, it was the sequel to a G.I. Joe movie. But dammit, it had Dwayne Johnson and he made the Fast and Furious series better for two movies in a row (more on that in a later post). I now understand why Joseph Gordon Levitt and Christopher Eccleston didn't bother to come back for this (and it had nothing to do with Don Jon or Thor: The Dark World). It's a thoroughly average and mostly boring "action" movie that makes me glad I didn't watch the first one and pleased to know I don't need to see any more of them.

 Machete Kills - I'd love to believe that some day, Robert Rodriguez will start making real movies again. But with Sin City: A Dame to Kill for around the corner and the promise / threat of Machete Kills Again in Space looming, somehow that doesn't seem likely. That's too bad, but at least I know that this downward trajectory is something I can avoid from here on out, rather than risk being disappointed again.

 Pain & Gain - If there has to be a "worst of the worst," the absolute skidmark on the underpants of cinema for 2013 (that I was willing to watch), this is probably it. Machete Kills really sucks. A Good Day to Die Hard isn't even a Die Hard movie by the shaky standards of the fourth film Movie 43 barely deserves to be called a movie. But Pain & Gain not only reminded me why I stopped watching Michael Bay movies after The Island, it made me angry.

 I've been following a lot of the "controversy" surrounding Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street from people who are boycotting the movie in principle because it "glorifies" Jordan Belfort. Having not seen The Wolf of Wall Street but having seen Goodfellas and Casino, both of which are also based on real people who did horrible things and benefited in some way from the films based on their story, I have a hard time with the "outrage." This is what Scorsese does. With the exception of Hugo and Kundun, almost all of his protagonists are morally compromised to varying degrees, and some are downright unlikeable. As a storyteller, he gets you invested in them, even if you don't like them, and yes, to some degree that helps people like Henry Hill and "Whitey" Bulger (who Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed is loosely based on).

 Why people weren't comparably outraged by the glorification of the pieces of human garbage in Michael Bay's Pain & Gain boggles my mind, because when you see pictures of the real criminals who kidnapped and killed people, it's abundantly clear that turning them into Anthony Mackie, Dwayne Johnson, and Mark Wahlberg is only making them look like a million bucks for the movie version. Bay also makes the film a comedy, specifically styled after the Coen brothers, even though it's abundantly clear that Michael Bay does not understand what makes a Coen brothers movie funny. He got the "dumb criminals" part and stopped there, content to include his usual bag of tricks: hot chicks, fancy cars, oiled muscles, and rampant homophobia.

 The worst part is that, in spite of all of this, Pain & Gain is still sometimes sporadically funny, in spite of itself. Most of that comes from the very talented cast, trying hard to sell what is inherently unfunny but so unbelievable it becomes ridiculous (when Bay has to include a title card to remind you that "This is STILL a True Story" when Johnson is burning severed hands on a grill, you should get some idea how crazy it gets). But then, at the very end, when they finally do get caught, the closing credits cuts to photos of the actual perpetrators who did the things we're seeing played for laughs, and it's hard to see Pain & Gain as anything other than a glamor shots version of their lives. Michael Bay wants us to enjoy these assholes for the things they did, and laugh because of how silly it sounds. So I think I'm good going back to not watching his movies again. We seem to get along better that way, and the rest of you can wonder why I haven't and won't see a Transformers movie.

 The good news is that from here on out, things only go uphill. The next section(s) will deal with the middle ground - movies I liked but didn't love, but would recommend nonetheless. Thanks for wallowing through the worst of it with the Cap'n.

Meanwhile...

 

 

  

 

 

 

  

  

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

Retro Review: The Big Lebowski

 It's true, gang - the Cap'n has never reviewed The Big Lebowski in any incarnation of the Blogorium. I mention it all of the time, and have talked about seeing the film and its impact on teenage Cap'n (seven years of trouble!), but it's never had a proper review here. Since the film arrives on Blu-Ray today, it seems only fair that I finally assess the movie that went from being the Coen brother's follow-up to Fargo into a genuine cult phenomenon in its own right.

 Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is better known as The Dude, a free spirit bumming around in Los Angeles circa 1991. The Dude likes to smoke a little pot, drink White Russians, and bowl with league partners Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi). Their only concern is advancing during round robin tournaments until two thugs (Phillip Moon and Mark Pellegrino) break into The Dude's apartment and pee on his rug. They work for Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), and Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) owes Treehorn money. The only problem for The Dude is that he's not married. Bunny is married to Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) - the "Big Lebowski" from the title - and when The Dude tries to replace his rug, he's drawn into a kidnapping plot involving nihilists (Peter Stormare, Flea, Torsten Voges, and Aimee Mann), rival private detectives (Jon Polito), Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore) and missing toes. Can The Dude abide all of this?

 Die-hard Lebowski fans already know I left two key components out of the film: The Stranger (Sam Elliot), and Jesus (John Turturro). I also didn't mention Saddam Hussein, the Busby Berkeley-inspired dream sequences, Lebowski's butler Brandt (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Smokey (Jimmie Dale Gilmore), Walter's show dog, Maude's friend Knox Harrington (David Thewlis), Autobahn, Logjammin', Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan), The Dude's landlord Marty (Jack Kehler) or his performance art. Or half a dozen other memorable moments from The Big Lebowski.

 I also haven't covered how imminently quotable The Big Lebowski is, from "8 year olds, Dude" to "that, and a pair of testicles" to "shut the fuck up, Donny" or  "this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" or "you are entering a world of pain" to "you don't fuck with the Jesus man!" I'm sure I left out your favorite quote, but that's okay. The Big Lebowski has something for everyone - it's a distillation of Raymond Chandler concepts dropped into a laid back comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen. The funny thing is that The Big Lebowski wasn't always The Big Lebowski.

 The first time I saw The Big Lebowski, it was nearly as an afterthought - I had seen the trailer, which gives you no idea whatsoever the movie was about:



 See what I mean? The spots running on television didn't exactly inspire confidence, either:



 Critical responses were mixed, from the amiable but slightly dismissive Roger Ebert to conflicted pans from Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Todd McCarthy. The general impression I had as The Big Lebowski made it to theatres was "well, it's no 'Fargo'" and foolishly I waited. It took a good friend of mine to talk me into seeing The Big Lebowski ("you MUST see this movie") as it was winding down a run at the $1.50 theatre. In 1998, it wasn't the movie it is now; The Big Lebowski was a film seem by a small audience of devoted fans who went gaga for the off-kilter tone and loopy characters. The Dude was a hero to many, and over the next ten years, the cult grew.

 So too did the film's reputation - on VHS and DVD, The Big Lebowski became the film to share with friends, the great part movie. Before long there were Lebowski Fests, and eventually it wasn't odd to see t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters devoted to The Dude. Hell, I have a "The Dude Abides" bumper magnet that's slowly fading from legibility on my car, and if you've seen any of the "photo" posts I do from time to time, you know I love to use that picture of Jeff Bridges dressed as The Dude while wearing his Tron helmet. I am unabashedly a fan of The Big Lebowski, but have never felt like a part of the Lebowski "cult" - I just loved the movie and so did everybody I knew. It never occurred to me to think of Lebowski like people regard The Rocky Horror Picture show, but that is kind of what happened. It's almost inconceivable now that people didn't want to see The Big Lebowski, so I'm glad that's flipped almost all the way around.

Follow-up Part Two: True Grit, the Coen Brothers, and the Rhetoric of Racism

(repeat of preamble: Today I thought I'd follow up on some reaction I've been getting about recent reviews / articles. Two threads have been met consistently with strong reactions - one of which I'd hoped to have closed the book one, and the other that continues to bother people I mention it to, so much so that it stopped a conversation dead the other night. )

Okay, I have been getting some serious grief for the suggestion in my True Grit review that the film - and by proxy, the Coen brothers - is "racist" towards Native Americans. Explaining what I saw and the reaction it had with a packed auditorium stopped a conversation dead in its tracks the other night. Fans of the Coen brothers - of which I consider myself and most of the people I know - are bristling at the mere mention of "racism" and the Coens in the same zip code.

I understand why, and why people are oversimplifying and thereby misinterpreting what the actual point I'm making is. I am not accusing Joel and Ethan Coen of being racist by constructing two scenes where Native Americans are clearly the butt of the joke; my problem is that they've taken their fondness for ironic detachment too far in True Grit, and it was totally lost on the crowd I saw it with. I don't make my point blindly or out of ignorance - I spent the better part of 2010 studying their films in depth and writing about the themes and undertones within, so I do feel that I have a case here, just as I feel the point is being wildly misread because of how loaded the term "racism" is.

The Coen brothers have a long history of including instances of casual racism on the part of their characters, particularly in "period" films. They consistently point out cultural norms that are outdated, often while mocking them - the KKK in O Brother Where Art Thou, the casual homophobia in The Man Who Wasn't There and Miller's Crossing (not to mention the ethnic stereotyping of "wops" and "micks"), or the "Uncle Remus" of The Hudsucker Proxy. They don't always use the prevailing attitudes of the time for comic purposes; at times, like the anti-Semitic neighbor in A Serious Man who only stands up for Larry when a Korean appears to be threatening him, is used to highlight overlooked forms of outdated racism.

And yes, I'm going to continue to use the term racism, which is where the bulk of this harsh reaction comes from, because it is a wholly adequate descriptor for much of what the Coen brothers like to highlight in an ironic fashion. "Oh, look how backwards we were then, isn't that funny?" I'm sorry if the terminology makes you uncomfortable, but this is a consistent, if under-represented, thematic device used in their films. It doesn't always work for them - in fact, it fails miserably in The Ladykillers, which presents two extremes in the spectrum of "caricatures of Black America" without any clear purpose, and I truly feel that True Grit represents a massive disconnect between their devoted fans and the casual audiences that flock their films every few years.

There are casual Coen fans, the kind of audiences who appear when the brothers tap into the cultural zeitgeist (or, to be honest, tend to briefly create it) - Raising Arizona, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, and No Country for Old Men are examples of films that seem to inexplicably catch on with a wide audience, allowing the kind of success that permits films like A Serious Man, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, and The Man Who Wasn't There to fill in the gaps for devoted Coen fans. True Grit is the latest example, and it is being met with a fairly robust audience turnout, for whatever it is Joel and Ethan tapped into this time.

True Grit is also a film that takes place in post-Civil War Arkansas, where two of the three main protagonists served for the Confederacy. Rooster Cogburn has a heated discussion with LeBoeuf about whether Cogburn's service as one of Quantrill's Raiders counts as true service to the South, but the cultural framework the Coens are presenting (coming from Charles Portis' novel) is one where casual racism abounds. They choose to direct this racism towards Native Americans in the film, in what can only be read as another example of their pointed critique of outdated norms. And that would be fine, but I sincerely feel they overestimated their audience.

As I pointed out in my earlier review, both instances are structured for comedic effect. The first is a classic set-up of two long speeches followed by an abruptly shortened one from a character no one likes. The second is an over-compensation gag where the hero reacts to someone doing something bad by punishing them, allowing the punishee to reset, and then punishing them again. If there are technical terms for these, I'd be happy to hear them, but you can find both examples in most comedies, and the second example in nearly every Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton film. They are designed and executed on film for a laugh, period. Both scenes in True Grit are constructed for laughs, period.

My discomfort came from the audience I saw the film with that howled with laughter at both "gags," completely missing that the Coen brothers were commenting on racist attitudes towards Native Americans in the film's setting. The Coens have that track record, so I must take them at precedent rather than assume they thought this was funny at face value. The audience, on the other hand, people that honestly don't have the same exposure to this thematic trend, are laughing AT the joke, and not the commentary behind the joke. The commentary behind the joke isn't funny - it's sobering.

I can't bring myself to laugh at the audience that doesn't understand what they're seeing, and are becoming complicit in racial stereotyping for reasons contrary to its inclusion in the film. Instead, I became very uneasy. The fact that the actual "joke" is lost on audiences actually implies that there is a divide between the culturally backwards masses and the witty, erudite Coen brothers "cineaste," which made me feel more self conscious. I should have been laughing at the audience for playing out culturally scripted stereotypes, but I couldn't, and that troubles me on a number of levels.

For that, I must reiterate that while I enjoy True Grit as a film, I have difficulty reconciling the intention of the filmmakers with the experience of seeing it with an audience. The Coens were presenting yet another example of racism; the audience was responding to a joke set-up, and ne'er the twain shall meet, I fear.

Follow-up Part One: Tron and Tron Legacy

Today I thought I'd follow up on some reaction I've been getting about recent reviews / articles. Two threads have been met consistently with strong reactions - one of which I'd hoped to have closed the book one, and the other that continues to bother people I mention it to, so much so that it stopped a conversation dead the other night.

Here's your warning, folks; I'm going to talk about True Grit and (hopefully for the last time this quarter) Tron / Tron Legacy. Tune out now if you like, I'll be back tomorrow with a Retro Review of Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles. For everybody who stuck around, let's jump into the controversy, starting with the more trivial of the two:

It has been rightfully pointed out that I left out two critical components of the "world" of Tron that are undeniably difficult to justify, let alone explain. The first is that if a program is fitted with an identity disc that records everything they learn - and is expanded in Tron Legacy to be everything they knew prior to that point in the case of Quorra and Kevin Flynn - why on earth would that be the EXACT same disc used to fight in the games? Sark does say that anyone who loses their identity disc is subject to immediate de-resolution, but it seems like it would be very easy to lose your disc without dying, so much so that in Tron Legacy Quorra doesn't seem to care that Flynn replaces her disc with his. I gather that the discs are like boomerangs most of the time, but isn't it a really horrible idea to combine the most important component of your being with your weapon?

The second is a "please don't think too hard about this because it doesn't make sense" plot point: the MCP brought Kevin Flynn into the Grid, but why exactly does killing the Master Control Program automatically send him back out? If one takes a moment to consider this, it's clear that the MCP controlled the laser that brought Flynn into a virtual dystopia, and dragged him in to avoid dealing with a User on their terms. Flynn jumping into the MCP's "beam" and taking advantage of his "User powers" to help Tron destroy the program would actually work against liberating him from the Grid. After all, without the MCP, the laser isn't instinctively re-create Flynn because he helped "free" the programs. The laser isn't going to do anything, because it was only on when the MCP turned it on to incorporate Flynn. There should be no way that Flynn gets out of the Grid at the end of Tron, and they conveniently switch the laser to an input / output tower in Tron Legacy so as not to have to deal with a plot point I cannot defend.

By the way, I would like to correct the assumption that I leapt to Tron's defense in order to further discredit Tron Legacy - mostly by people who hate Tron Legacy, to be fair - but that's not actually the case. I disagreed with the false equivalency that it was okay that Tron Legacy was an awfully silly movie in many ways because Tron was also silly and I was conveniently forgetting that. Not only is that not true, but it assumes that Tron, Tron Legacy, and movies like them are given carte blanche to be "not good" because they're simply meant to be "dumb, roller-coaster ride" films, like Transformers or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

There is an asinine assumption that because a film has a large budget and is marketed relentlessly that is must also be "stupid." It's as though the blockbuster releases are now not intended to be anything more than "mindless entertainment" to be consumed like cotton candy at the fair and forgotten immediately after. I don't know exactly where or when this started, although I'm inclined to jump back to 1996's Independence Day or 1999's The Mummy as key examples of what people mean when they describe "that type of movie." It likely goes back much further, but it assumes that most movies can't be clever and appeal to mass audiences at the same time.

To this I call shenanigans. Stepping aside the fact that Inception and The Dark Knight totally disprove that model, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars - which are the basis for the "blockbuster" movement - are all entertaining without being mindless. Ghostbusters is both immensely watchable and chock full of smart screenwriting. Even the action film, so maligned for being ridiculous in and of itself, produced Predator, Aliens, and Die Hard, which are actually entertaining and clever.

If the argument is that times have simply changed and that all people really want are farting CGI characters, then let's take a look at some other modern exceptions to this so-called "rule": Spider-Man 2, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Up, Batman Begins, The Incredibles, Kill Bill, The Sixth Sense, hell, even though it wasn't successful, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World disproves the concept that "big" does not equate "stupid." I'll even give 2009's Star Trek and the first Men in Black a nod, because they entertain on repeat viewings. It's not all Armageddon's and Avatar's and Alice in Wonderland's (yes, I deliberately chose "A"'s) - films with plenty of eye candy that hurt your brain if you try to apply causality and basic logic to the story.

While Tron and Tron Legacy have many silly things about them, they are at times brimming with ideas. Not always good ideas, or thought out ideas, or even ideas executed in a plausible manner, but ideas nonetheless. Tron Legacy's biggest failing is relying too heavily on future Tron films to fill in plot holes, a tactic that provides audiences with a half-cooked story that razzle dazzle can't in and of itself overcome.

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The True Grit section ended up being so long that I'm going to split this article up and continue it on Thursday, after the Meet the Feebles review and Wednesday's Video Daily Double. See you then...

Retro Review: Tron

Almost all of the responses I've heard from the Tron Legacy coverage on the Blogorium took me to task for being so hard on the lack of logic or ridiculous plot machinations. Their chief argument is that 1982's Tron "isn't a very good movie either" and that I allowed the "haze of nostalgia" to conveniently ignore the original's faults while highlighting the sequels.

There's a funny assumption that goes along with this assertion: that the Cap'n has not or would not be able to watch Tron again, without the "haze of nostalgia" to obfuscate an objective reading of the film. Why funny? Not only had I seen Tron before watching Tron Legacy, but I watched Steven Lisberger's "virtual world" excursion again last night. It turns out that while it's easy to dismiss Tron as being as inconsequential as its sequel, the original film actually addresses almost every nitpick raised against it, if you're willing to pay attention.

For anyone new to the world of Tron (and Tron Legacy), here's a quick synopsis: Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) was a software developer at Encom, until Ed Dillinger (David Warner) stole his game concepts and rocketed to the top of the company. Flynn now runs an arcade, able to do nothing but watch his creations increase in popularity and revenue. Every attempt to hack into Encom's database is met with rejection by the system's Master Control Program. Dillinger, alerted by the MCP that Flynn is attempting to hack in and retrieve the original files, shuts down access to level 7 employees, including Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), a programmer developing Tron. If Tron were successfully implemented, the MCP's ability to enter other servers and appropriate their files and programs would be severely limited, so Dillinger makes no effort to put Alan back online. Alan, Flynn, and Lora (Cindy Morgan) - Flynn's ex and Alan's current love interest - break into Encom in order to hack into the system from within, recovering the incriminating evidence and activating Tron.

That's the first thirty minutes of the film, before Kevin Flynn enters the "Grid," thanks to the intervention of the MCP - using an experimental laser that breaks down matter and stores it inside of a computer for possible transport later. That's also excluding the world inside of the Grid, where the Master Control Program (Warner) and its enforcer Sark (also Warner) capture programs, appropriate them, or force the useless ones to compete in "games," many of which resemble Flynn's original designs. The above synopsis leaves out Ram (Dan Shor), Crom (Peter Jurasik), and the "program" alter egos for Flynn (Clu), Alan (Tron), Lora (Yori), and her mentor, Dr. Walter Gibbs (Barnard Hughes) (Dumont). Once inside the machine, the User (Flynn) must interact with Programs in order to overthrow the MCP.

At this point, I can understand why people find it easier just to tune out and pretend Tron is just a "dumb" movie. The plot is actually pretty simple - protagonist finds himself in a strange situation and has to help the hero fight a seemingly insurmountable enemy - so I suppose the logical step is to approach the film as though "it doesn't matter why these things happen." The catch is that Lisberger (who also wrote the film) does provide good reasons for things like "Users" and "Programs" and provides logical parallels between the "real" and "virtual" world in Tron. Unlike its sequel, which relies heavily on monologues and flashbacks, Tron integrates details about the why's and what's of its world into conversations between characters, often in seemingly insignificant moments.

Take, for example, the concept that Programs believe in Users with a religious fervor that isn't tolerated inside of the Master Control Program's Grid. Early in the film, Crom is captured and taken to the Game Grid, and during a conversation with Ram, the audience quickly learns that the MCP takes programs it needs and dumps other programs into a holding pattern of games. Programs with a "religious" devotion to Users are considered to be "nuts" that lack the individual essence of the MCP (who evolved beyond its original purpose as a chess simulation), and their presence is marginalized by Sark.

Later in the film, Gibbs sits down with Dillinger to protest Alan's lockout and the shifting direction of Encom. After Dillinger suggests that Gibbs is no longer useful to the company, he replies "you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it. And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer." Dillinger replies "Walter, it's getting late, I've got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you."

And that, my friends, is the genesis of the number one complaint about Tron: that the whole "Programs as avatars of Users" conceit doesn't make sense. There it is, in two sentences. Tron opens with a random player beginning Light Cycles at Flynn's arcade, and if you look carefully, the words "Player 1 vs Computer" are visible before the scene cuts to the Game Grid, where Sark is the opposing racer to "Player 1."

The "religious" aspect echoed inside and outside of the machine connects the worlds beyond actors playing representations of themselves on the Grid, and Flynn's off-handed joke "I shouldn't have written so many tank programs" explains the presence of Recognizers, Light Cycles, and other games. A Program with a specific purpose (and note that with the exception of one Program listed below, every one identifies what they do on the Grid) reflects their User, but is differentiated by character traits - CLU is necessarily different from Flynn if for no other reason than Bridges needs to distinguish one version of himself from the other in the Grid.

Every character, inside and out of the Grid, has motivation to do what they do: we've established Flynn and Alan's, and to some degree Gibbs', but let's look at the other main characters - CLU is designed to access Flynn's information, Sark exists to enforce the MCP's edicts, Dillinger is interested in protecting the truth about how he rose to prominence in Encom, Lora is concerned that the lock down will effect her research and is also tied into the standard "love triangle" story aspect (Yori is even less clear, other than her ability to access Dumont where Tron could not), Tron is trying to connect with Alan, the MCP is consolidating power, Ram wants out of the Game Grid and to be free of the MCP. Everything the characters do is in accordance with these motivating factors - unlike several things that happen in Tron Legacy, particularly centering around CLU and Kevin Flynn.

Let's move on to plot points that initially seem "convenient," but it turns out there's some degree of logic behind them. For example, "why is Kevin Flynn near the laser in the first place?" When Lora is sneaking Flynn through Encom, she explains he'll be unnoticed accessing the MCP from her terminal, which is in the proximity of the laser, a point brought up earlier in the film when they test its functionality. Gibbs indicates that its placement is unfortunate, but there isn't much space for a terminal elsewhere, and when the laser isn't in use (which would be most of the period leading up to testing), there's no reason not to use the space. The Master Control Program uses the laser out of desperation, telling Sark that when Flynn pushed, it "pushed back" and brought a User into the Grid.

If the problem is with the logic of the laser, again I must point out that it's given a rudimentary explanation - the laser catalogs, then disintegrates matter, saving the molecules in the beam, and transfers them into the computer. Alan jokingly asks Lora if he can use it to "send me to Hawaii," suggesting the purpose is not dissimilar to the transporter in Star Trek, so if you're going to attack Tron for introducing "bad science" into its world, the standard had better apply for other films using similar conceits. It's no sillier than the idea of water being a "power source" (I mistakenly used the pun "data stream" in last week's Four Reasons Why Tron Legacy is Silly), or why there are "Grid Bugs" (never explained, but it looks cool).

Despite others insisting that the "biodigital jazz, man!" Kevin Flynn in Tron Legacy is tonally consistent with the Kevin Flynn in Tron - an argument that the Cap'n considered in the Legacy review - revisiting the first film makes it clearer that Flynn is nowhere near as space-y. There are flashes of quirk, particularly in the way a befuddled Flynn adapts to being inside of the Grid, but it's largely manifested in physical comedy rather than behaving like "the Dude," which is more the case in Tron Legacy. Flynn is a bit of a practical joker in the real world, but he's perfectly serious upstairs in the arcade when explaining why he needs to hack into the MCP's database. The film hints strongly that Flynn is interested in splitting up both Alan / Lora and Tron / Yori, so one might argue he's a bit more "immature" than "spaced out."

David Warner's Dillinger actually has a more interesting character parallel from Tron to Tron Legacy, as Flynn essentially finds himself in the same position during the sequel. Dillinger wrote the Master Control Program, but finds himself at the mercy of a program that functioned more efficiently than he could possibly imagine. While Dillinger is clearly the "human" villain of Tron, he, like Flynn, is at the mercy of his own creation when it "goes bad" - in Tron, the MCP begins invading military and government servers to remove human influence from their operations, and in Tron Legacy CLU turns on Flynn and rejects the human imperfections on the Grid.

It's also interesting to note that Tron sets up the notion that a User can't "de-rezz" - the Grid version of dying - in two, tiny throwaway lines by Tron and Yori. The first is immediately after Flynn connects an energy stream to divert their solar sailor with his User "powers," and the second is after he disrupts the MCP's beam, both of which should have de-rezzed a Program. Tron Legacy develops the idea slightly by suggesting that a User can bleed while Programs pixellate, although with a similarly vague logic behind the action.

To be fair, Tron does have a few problems, and while comparatively nit-picky, I include them in the interest of full disclosure.

The biggest question I had was if Dillinger wrote the MCP, who is SARK? From earlier viewings, I'd simply forgotten that Dillinger claims proprietary status over his "creation," in part because when the MCP de-rezzes, the old man inside bears no resemblance to David Warner. One might argue that Dillinger is simply lying and that, like Space Paranoids, he stole the Master Control Program from someone else - hence the avatar doesn't match - but that raises a secondary question: what exactly is the program SARK designed to do?

For narrative purposes, I understand that SARK is the "henchman" and a necessary one because the MCP is mostly a voice, or periodically an early CGI attempt at a face. That does not, however, explain what purpose SARK would serve in the "world" of Tron. The MCP doesn't need anyone to enforce, and SARK is kind-of a "training" program for the Game Grid, but unlike almost every other Program, it's never clear what he was "designed" to do, or why Dillinger made SARK to assist the MCP, which is a potentially troubling flaw in the film's logic.

Additionally, and this is a perfectly valid point people have raised - if the film is operating on a proto-internet concept for 1982 computers, I'll let it slide that the MCP can hack into the Pentagon and the Kremlin, but there's no explanation how SARK could be in the Light Cycles arcade box (e.g. the Game Grid) but also be connected to the MCP's main server. There's no reason why games that couldn't connect in any way to other games or operating systems would fall under the MCP's control other than it's an easy way to open the film and convenient for story purposes.

Finally, and in keeping with the Tron Legacy critique: CLU is silly. As mentioned above, by necessity Lisberger needed to distinguish Jeff Bridges as Flynn in the Grid from Jeff Bridges as CLU earlier in the film, so a "dialogue" is created between User and Program during a scene that transitions back and forth between Flynn in "the real world" and CLU entering the Grid. CLU is stilted, high pitched, and emotionless at first, but then begins screaming when his tank crashes into a Recognizer and he is captured. When interrogated by the MCP, CLU begins behaving like Flynn, which further confuses the distinction: if CLU is supposed to resemble his maker, than why is he so devoid of personality initially? Why should audiences buy the transition from "Now Flynn is saying to look over in here" to "Forget it, mister high-and-mighty Master Control! You aren't making me talk*"? (On a separate note, it's curious how audiences are supposed to reconcile the fact that Flynn and Clu are "talking" at all).

Despite those somewhat problematic issues, I stand by my critique of Tron Legacy, and moreover hope that the Cap'n has sufficiently made my case that Tron is not a comparably "stupid" film, one that "wasn't that good in the first place." The point raised to me supposes that Tron simply does not exist, and therefore one would not be able to test the assertion by re-visiting the film. Upon further inspection, I found myself rather surprised by the ways that Steven Lisberger integrates the "ground rules" about the world of Tron into the film, often in imperceptible ways that don't hinder the story's progression. The fact that they don't appear as plot-stalling monologues (as is the case with Tron Legacy) does not, however, mean that Tron is a movie that arbitrarily or illogically introduces conceptual elements. Tron is a reasonably well thought out concept with some plot holes, a simple narrative, and dated special effects, but that doesn't automatically qualify it as a "cheesy" movie because you remembered the film differently. Whereas its sequel introduces concepts without rhyme or reason - or worse, to be explained only in a later sequel - Tron does make an effort to provide a universe with some ground rules.

Next week's Retro Review will hopefully be a less "reactionary" review - it's not that I don't like re-presenting films like Dazed and Confused or Tron, it's just that I don't want the concept of this ongoing column to simply be defending films from pervasive criticism.

*It is interesting to note that Flynn describes CLU as "I wrote you, I taught you everything I know about the system... you're the best program that's ever been written, you're dogged and relentless" foreshadowing their antagonistic relationship in Tron Legacy.

Blogorium Review: True Grit

There are so many elements that come into play when considering Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit, some of which I'm simply not certain how to address: the Cap'n has not, for instance, read Charles Portis' novel, on which the Coens claim they based their version exclusively. I have seen Henry Hathaway's 1969 adaptation of the same novel, which is the point of entry for most people who are familiar with the title and is the basis of comparison for most. It would be the basis of comparison on which I would draw, had I not written a piece about the debate surrounding "remake" and "re-adaptation" within the critical community.

As it is, I don't feel that it would be fair to simply explain the differences between Hathaway's version and the Coens' version without having the Portis novel as a point of reference in adapting. That being said, both cinematic versions of True Grit have so many overlapping similarities that I find it hard to mention parts of one without recalling its counterpart immediately. There are points of deviation, specifically dealing with the fates of certain characters, the end of the film, and most importantly, the tone, which I will address later in the review. What I can say is that I very much enjoyed 2010's True Grit, almost certainly more than 1969's. It's a very well made film, an entertaining story that mostly balances the humor with graphic violence and provides fine performances from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and (most importantly) Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross.

Very briefly, the film is about Mattie Ross (Steinfeld), the daughter of Frank Ross, who was murdered by Tom Chaney (Brolin) in a drunken fit of rage. When Chaney fled, Mattie traveled to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to seek justice for his murder. Instead, she finds indifference and hires U.S. Marshall Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn (Bridges) to track Chaney into Chocktaw territory. Accompanied by Texas Ranger LeBeouf (Damon), who is tracking Chaney in the hopes of claiming a reward for his capture, they set off to find Ned Pepper (Pepper) and his gang, where Tom is hiding out.

It seems that for every idiosyncratic film the Coen brothers make, they manage to tap into the cultural zeitgeist at least as often, typically without moving far from their own interests. Despite some critics suggestions otherwise - or their inability to remember - Raising Arizona, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, and No Country for Old Men all seeped into the "broader" audiences in varying degrees. True Grit certainly seems to be the next addition to the list, capturing the masses in a way that Burn After Reading or A Serious Man - as fascinating as both films are - did not in the mean time. I hesitate to attribute this to the presence of Steven Spielberg - whose "Executive Producer" credit caught me off-guard when it appeared at the end - because True Grit does not stray far from their fascination in playing around in someone else's genre. If No Country for Old Men is a neo-noir Western, then True Grit is their direct attempt at a Western, packed with their love of antiquated mores, attitudes, and ironic detachment.

That Joel and Ethan Coen side-step the "remake" question by claiming "re-adaptation" allows them to detach themselves further from direct comparisons. It's much easier to remake The Ladykillers - a film more people have heard of than seen - than to tread into the fandom of John Wayne, who remains a cultural icon for the generation most likely to recognize True Grit. That being said, either the Portis novel isn't terribly different from both adaptations, or Hathaway's True Grit casts such a long shadow that it's nearly impossible to see both without making mental comparisons.

The immediate change I noticed - and one of the only ones I want to mention - was that the goofy, slightly slapstick nature of the Hathaway version of True Grit is missing here. The jovial sense of camaraderie between Cogburn, LeBeouf, and Ross never develops in the Bridges / Damon / Steinfeld dynamic, partially because the precocious naivete of Mattie Ross is downplayed in favor of a determined young woman desperate to assert herself, one who refuses to admit she's in well over her head. It also helps that Steinfeld is actually 14 in True Grit, whereas Kim Darby was 22 when she played Mattie Ross, a tidbit that when coupled with her strange gender-neutral appearance kept Darby's Ross from connecting with audiences.

Jeff Bridges is less cartoonish as "Rooster" Cogburn, thanks to two major shifts: instead of being introduced bringing in prisoners as a heroic gesture (as Wayne is), Cogburn and Mattie's first conversation takes place while he's in the outhouse, in a demeaning position of strength. By never demonstrating it, Cogburn's prowess at catching criminals becomes another tall tale told by others, like the braggart LeBeouf's position on Texas Rangers. The drunken escapades of Cogburn, played for chuckles in Hathway's True Grit, are pathetic rather than clownish in the Coens' adaptation, generating uncomfortable laughter.

Speaking of uncomfortable laughter, it raises one of the serious points with which I struggle with Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit: there are moments of what can only be described as flagrant racism that are designed and executed for laughs, and at least with the audience I saw True Grit with, they got them. (It's fair to point out that they audience was fairly diverse, a testament to the Coens' ability to draw people of every background into their films).

Both jokes that drew the biggest laughs involved Native Americans as the butt of the joke: during the "hanging" scene, two criminals finish their speeches about why they're being hung and whether they deserved it or not, but when the "Injun" begins to speak, they immediately place the bag over his head and hang drop the platform. Big laughs. Later, Cogburn and Ross ride up on a trading post where two Native American children are irritating a horse. Cogburn lets the horse got, then kicks the boy off of a high porch, then looks at the girl and kicks her off two. We cut to their faces, watching Mattie while Rooster is inside, and as he comes out, he kicks the boy off of the porch again. Huge laughs. You could argue that he's abusing them because of their abuse of the horse, but considering what Cogburn does to a horse later, and the fact that no white character is the subject of the same kind of casual cruelty, that there's a deliberate choice here.

I don't quite know what to make of it yet: is it simply the Coen brothers' ironic detachment commenting to the racist attitude of whites towards natives in the South? Does that extend to the way that the "Little Blackie" scene changes when instead of telling the horse dealer that's what Mattie is naming her pony, she instead tells a stable boy who "isn't allowed" to say her name because of the color of his skin? I'm genuinely uncertain of how audiences are meant to process these moments, but the general reaction in the theatre tonight was to laugh.

Laughter didn't necessarily continue into the film's periodically graphic violence, far beyond what I expected from a PG-13 rating. The scene in the Old Cabin alone would earn most movies an R - in the span of 45 seconds, a character's fingers are cut off, he's stabbed, and then the man who stabbed him is shot in the cheek, spraying blood against the wall and on Cogburn's face. While we don't see it, the description of what happens to LeBeouf's tongue after being dragged around by Pepper's gang is also pretty harsh, and that's not mentioning the deteriorated corpses that pop up sporadically during the film. Coupled with a less goofy tone, it's surprising that True Grit snuck away with a PG-13 - unless one considers that the Hathaway version originally had a "M" rating but is now considered a G film with little altered content.

I don't mean for the comedy and the rating to dissuade you from seeing True Grit: it's a fine film that is distinctly a Coen brothers production, from the casting of the smaller characters to Roger Deakins' fantastic cinematography to Carter Burwell's score (which, while repetitive, is reminiscent of Miller's Crossing). It may not (yet) demonstrate the same dense layering of themes as 2009's A Serious Man, but that by no means situates True Grit as a "lesser" or "watered down" Coen film, as some have suggested. It's different, hard to classify, and inextricably linked to a predecessor Joel and Ethan Coen desperately wish were not the case. Also, if you're deciding between the two Jeff Bridges films this holiday season - this is a no brainer: run, don't walk, to True Grit.

Blogorium Review: Tron Legacy

editor's note: there will be no "From the Vaults" today. In order to keep up with a "year-end list" schedule, the Cap'n will be focusing in reviewing films until Friday.

Tron Legacy is not a good film. Tron Legacy is not a smart film, or a film that hides its corporate intentions. That being said, I enjoyed watching Tron Legacy; I was never bored, in part because the 3-D cinematography does a marvelous job of carrying audiences through the many ridiculous moments, including the over-reliance on exposition and insistence of hybridizing Kevin Flynn with Jeff Lebowski, but we'll get back to that. I need to set the stage a little bit.

Most - if not all - of the negative reviews of Tron Legacy I read came from critics who either hadn't seen Tron in years or simply didn't like Tron in the first place. Disney's quest for commercial prospects aside (including the borderline ridiculous overuse of Ducati motorcycles in the film), this is not the ideal position to be in going into the film. Many of the complaints centered around a story that explains ad nauseum what happened between the first and second film, but in no way addresses fundamentals like: what is the grid? how did it get there? why can Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) travel in and out of it? how does it exist once CLU (also Bridges, but digitally younger) forces Flynn into exile?

There are other concerns, like how the premise of programs looking and behaving like humans can even happen, which Tron Legacy doesn't address. Honestly, I don't believe it has to: all of this is explained in some capacity in Tron. For example, programs manifest the physical appearance of their users but behave in the manner they were programmed. They're self aware to a degree, although Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) initially doubts Kevin Flynn is a user when they team up to destroy the Master Control Program. Almost all of this backstory is jettisoned from Tron Legacy, in part because writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz felt audiences familiar with the first film wouldn't need it in order to follow Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund)'s quest to find his father inside the machine*. Whether this is wise or not, considering that Tron Legacy is a sequel that arrived 28 years after the original, is a fair subject for debate**. I don't know what I can do to help with people who already hated Tron and still went to see its sequel.

There's still plenty of problems with the story in Tron Legacy, which is at times mind-numbingly stupid and complicated, but a lot of that stems from the fact that Kitsis, Horowitz, and director Joseph Kosinski tend to grind any forward momentum generated in the film to a halt by having characters literally tell Sam (and the audience) what happened after Flynn took over Encom at the end of Tron. Nearly every character, from Alan Bradley (Boxleitner) to CLU to Kevin Flynn to Quorra (Olivia Wilde) to Castor / Zeus (Michael Sheen) to Gem (Beau Garrett) has a monologue where they explain something to Sam, who doesn't have much to do except react or say things like "that's what I'm talking about!" during action scenes.

The film is packed with flashbacks about Flynn bringing Tron and CLU to the grid, finding ISO's - some spontaneously generated form of life on the Grid - to being betrayed, or how Zeus used to monitor the games (I'm guessing when the MCP shut down) or how this character knows that one or why Flynn refuses to fight CLU or why Sam is in the Grid at all; after a while, the audience simply stops caring, because the very simple story of "Flynn disappears, his son comes to find him, they try to escape, battle ensues" is overshadowed by events we can't possibly need to know about. On top of that, Cillian Murphy appears in the beginning of the film as the son of David Warner's Ed Dillinger (the human face of evil in Tron) but never appears again, nor is his presence particularly noteworthy other than to add to the many suggestions of a third Tron film in the near future.

People have, rightfully, pointed out that Jeff Bridges seems to be playing Kevin Flynn as "The Dude" at times: he has a number of laugh-out-loud lines, not limited to "biodigital jazz, man!" or "you're harshing my zen!" Kevin Flynn was a bit of a flake in the first film - if you hadn't figured this out already, I've seen Tron many, many times - but Tron Legacy somehow feels the need to insert Flynn's idiosyncrasies into a character that is supposedly older, more jaded, and beaten down by his creation. As for Bridges CLU, I suppose there's nothing really wrong with the performance, although as I feared the digital "enhancement" to Bridges face leaves CLU looking waxy, with lips that just don't seem to work. The dead eyes do persist the "uncanny" feeling about his character, and it can be distracting to the point of frustration***.

And yet, as I said, I was never bored during Tron Legacy. I didn't regret seeing the film, as I have with other sequels this year (specifically Resident Evil: Afterlife), and while it may have had something to do with the faux-IMAX 3-D, the arresting visual style of the film is not its only strength. Olivia Wilde's wide-eyed Quorra and Michael Sheen's scenery chewing Castor pick up sections of the film that might drag otherwise, and Daft Punk's score carries the film even at its lowest points. The world of the Grid is logically updated from Steven Lisberger's 1982 Tron design, and there are many tiny callbacks to the first film that aren't intrusive (like a well placed Journey song early in the film). The story has some interesting ideas, even if they are largely bungled - Kevin Flynn assumes a sort-of "mad scientist" role, a man whose creation turned on him and left him trapped, unable to escape. At the same time, CLU can't adapt: he's limited by what Flynn programmed him with and his ambition is continually frustrated.

Will I see Tron Legacy again? Possibly, if its Blu-Ray 3D release coincides with my ability to watch it on a large screen again. I think that the bumpy, over-expository story could be improved in another film, and if Disney could scale back their obvious desire for tie-in rides, toys, video games, and welcoming of product placement (seriously, the film is a Ducati commercial!) or Garrett Hedlund could have more to do in the film, Tron Legacy might just be the "difficult second album" that sets up better things to come. Without spoiling anything, there are plenty of directions another Tron movie could go in.

Does that change the fact that this is not a good movie? Probably not. I had a similar reaction to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland earlier this year: the film was visually engaging but narratively underwhelming, and yet I had the opposite reaction leaving Tron Legacy. I would consider watching the film again, and it actually has little to do with being a Tron "fanboy": I recognize the flaws in this film, and don't excuse them. At the same time, I cannot deny that when we left the film, the two other gentlemen with me both agreed that we found the film entertaining. Reconcile that, if you can...


* Normally, when discussing source material vs. films, I tend to argue that a film should be able to stand on its own, but when the film is a direct continuation, a sequel to a film that sets up most of the rules of a world, I am not so stringent. No one held it against The Matrix Reloaded that it doesn't explain the rules again, and since both films actually deal with the "can a program enter the real world" without really addressing the logistics of it, I stand by my point (although The Matrix Reloaded, like Tron Legacy, is not a great or even good movie).
** Also fair is discontent about not being able to re-watch Tron because Disney pulled the DVD from shelves earlier this year.
*** For those that argue he should look fake, consider that every other program in the grid is clearly played by a flesh and blood actor with minimal to no digital enhancement.

Troncanny

This may feel like an insubstantial post, for which I offer no real defense, but after seeing a trailer for Tron Legacy in front of Faster (a trailer that, strangely, followed True Grit), I was overcome with an uncanny feeling from staring at the digitally young-ified Jeff Bridges as CLU. Before I go any further, it might be best to show you what I'm talking about:


It's Jeff Bridges... but it isn't. Something is "off": his skin is a little too smooth, his features seem to be painted on. Which they are. Jeff Bridges - as he appears in Tron Legacy (as Flynn) - has roughly the same features from the nose upward, but graying hair and a beard, better defined wrinkles on his forehead, accurately replicating what Bridges looks like now. This is what he looked like in Tron:


So on a cognitive level, I understand that the effects crew on Tron Legacy couldn't make Jeff Bridges look like he did almost thirty years ago. I get that, and I understand that effects can accomplish the de-aging process (see the X-Men 3 or Wolverine), but it doesn't prevent me from having the visceral reaction of a Bridges that is simultaneously real and unreal (which is the case considering that he filmed the CLU performance). How do I reconcile this cognitive dissonance?

Okay, if you aren't interested in reading Freud's entire essay breaking down "the uncanny," the working definition that most people know is a sensation of something familiar and yet unfamiliar simultaneously, creating unease that is often difficult to describe. Following the first Tron Legacy trailer to show the completely de-aged Flynn, I had such a sensation and failed to articulate it in a way that registered beyond "weird."

I had a similar reaction to Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but for no particular reasons I never connected the waxy, slightly unrealistic yet hyper-realistic digital versions of actors with the uncanny situation I studied (and, in fact, lectured on during a class about German literature). Other than feeling a bit embarrassed to let a bit of scholarly knowledge fall by the wayside, my reaction is to feel a bit more comfortable in reacting to faux-Bridges and reconciling what I know and my visceral response to seeing something so familiar and yet so alien on TV and projected in theatres.

Whether this affects my ability to watch Tron Legacy remains to be seen, because knowing the root cause of this uncanny reaction doesn't necessarily diminish its impact. I'm working on that, but it's tricky.