feature: TRON: Legacy (2010)

At first glance, a follow up to 1982 sci-fi film, TRON, seems like an odd prospect. It has been a long long time and it’s very much a cult film. What seems odder is that it’s being revived as a mass-market Disney feature…

… Or perhaps it’s not that odd at all. The success of the recently revived Star Trek and, of course, of Avatar proved that audiences are still willing to go to a sci-fi adventure in their droves. Undoubtedly TRON: Legacy was already at least pre-production when both these films came out but after seeing how big those films were it surely must have made Disney feel that they would be on safer footing when it came to how to pushing it out to the mass market.

And on that they seem to have spared no expense – they’ve created numerous interesting featurettes about the making of the film and game, made country specific efforts to engage with the major social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They ran competitions on Irish websites to win tickets to a special preview screening of 23 minutes of footage. They even live-streamed the UK premiere on Ireland.com. It’s great to see so much effort being made to allow the online community around it to develop.

My biggest fear is of course that this is building it up too much. I mean you’re reading the writings of a person who looks at their feet during trailers in the cinema in an effort to go into films with no expectations. In this case though, I’ve seen the trailers. I was even lucky enough to go to the 23 minute preview. I really really hope this film is worth it. Ok, I still have reservations about how 3D can look a bit dark and murky sometimes but I did think the footage looked great, and that scared me. I don’t want to hope too much… but also… I love sci-fi so there’s no way I’m not going to be excited about this film.

So I’m not going to go on about it any more… lest I spoil it on myself. I’ll leave you with the trailer and an official remix of Daft Punk’s Derezzed from the soundtrack. There are some great unofficial remixes out there on YouTube if you’re looking for a longer version though.

TRON: Legacy comes to Irish cinemas on 17th December 2010.