Altogether too rare, but definitely fascinating. As linked by Boing Boing….I will have to read this through a couple more times to truly get the gist but again, fascinating…..
The Paris Review – William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211
I especially like the Blade Runner comment….
candybowl
it’s that time of year again – The 4th NW Pinball and Gameroom Show is upon us, bigger and badder than ever!
link here. Hope to see you there!
candybowl
new promo video for the show. Also, the site has been updated – the excitement begins!!!!!
http://nwpinballshow.com/
candybowl
Well, the day finally arrived, and we saw TRON: Legacy tonight. Given that there’s already quite a few reviews out there (here, here, here, here and here for starters), I will add my two cents as well.
First, the good:
1) Music and effects are great. The look and feel of ‘the grid’ is as unique as ever (just like it was the first time around in 1982) and Daft Punk provide a great soundtrack. They apparently even got a cameo as the DJ’s in the nightclub where Sam Flynn and Quorra go to meet the mysterious ‘Zeus’ (who turns out to be a semi-albino Willy Wonka sans top hat, but I still liked him anyway). The light-cycle scenes are very cool, again, just like last time, and it was great to see the Recognizers get their moments in the sun again too (although they aren’t really as ‘malevolent’ as in the last film).
2) Jeff Bridges generally is good, although they don’t really give him enough to do IMHO. Yes, he’s the central character (in more ways than one) but barring the opening narration, we don’t see near enough inside his head – and that’s a real missed opportunity. And Bruce Boxleitner is even more in the same boat, given that he’s a sideman as before, despite being the namesake of the two movies (Tron).
On to what didn’t work as well:
1) On the one hand, I give them props for not making the movie into one action scene after another (a la the second and third Matrix movies) at the expense of storyline and character development. Despite what some of the reviewers above may think – the original TRON really tried – if you are paying attention while watching it, and had the benefit of growing up back then – to really imagine what it would be like to ‘live inside a computer’, and came up with a unique vision of that, which has influenced a LOT of movies since, the most obvious being The Matrix but there are plenty others.
But in attempting to get inside the characters more, you have give the audience more to go on. There is a scene where Sam talks to Quorra about Flynn’s book collection – but they don’t explain why she likes the books or thinks they are important? By the same token, yes, Clu (Flynn’s self-created perfectionist computer doppelganger) is Flynn’s opposite number (in misdirected megalomania) but even so, he’s never ‘evil’ the way the MCP and Dillinger were in the original. In that movie the MCP ultimately is calling the shots in BOTH the digital and human worlds at one point? The villains here just don’t compare in that respect.
2) Flynn’s hideout brings back a lot of Blade Runner (an original TRON contemporary, it was two years later, flopped about as badly at the time and since has influenced everyone else to an equal if not greater degree) in its look and feel to me. And the scene where Flynn, Quorra and Sam are eating dinner is reminiscent of near the end of 2001 where Discovery astronaut Dave Bowman is eating dinner/rapidly aging in the Louis XIV dining room – all that white on white.
3) As discussed with fellow moviegoers after seeing it, the big ‘Clu rally’ scene where he reveals his plans is right out of Lord of the Rings, with Christopher Lee rallying the Orcs and monsters to attack as they stamp their weapons and yell (not like this type of scene doesn’t happen at least once or twice in each LOTR movie, for that matter :)).
And this brings up my continual point about supervillains – why? When General Zod and his buddies kicked everyone’s ass in short order in Superman II, they were then seen lounging around the White House with nothing to do? They had already beaten all the lame humans, taken over the US (and of course by implication the world – helps when you make the movies in Hollywood that you can imply that) and are bored out of their gourds until Superman shows up to give them something to do?
So what was Clu going to do if he managed to pull an ‘Agent Smith’ and get back to the ‘real world’? Smith was similar – what was he planning on doing? After killing Neo and turning everyone in The Matrix into duplicates of himself, then what? Here there is lip service paid to Clu/Flynn’s vision of ‘perfecting the system’ – but they don’t really explain what that means or why it ultimately ‘twisted’ Clu in the end?
4) The scene of Flynn talking to Clu (near the end) about where things went wrong – I hate to point this out, but it really smacks of Keanu confronting Patrick Swayze at the end of Point Break, with the speech and how ‘Bodie’ can’t be caged, etc. – that movie is cornball from the word go (despite otherwise being great entertainment) – but if you agree with my point (and you may not), it makes Flynn’s self-confrontation somewhat less effective.
5) The son of the original movie’s Dillinger/bad guy is wasted here – they have but one scene with him (played by an uncredited Cillian Murphy, making the waste DOUBLE because he’s always such a great bad guy) – I was half-expecting a weird twist where it is shown that Dillinger’s son is ultimately behind Clu’s betrayal, not Flynn’s vision of perfection. And then it might have made some weird attempt by a ‘revived’ MCP worth trying in turn? In any case, it could have been very cool.
6) In an earlier post, I noted an article where apparently the Pixar guys were brought in to discuss plot and character with the director and writers. Not sure if it did any good here, or whether they actually took the suggestions and used them? To me, if someone like Brad Bird is giving you free advice on a movie – you TAKE it! It would be like being a newbie actor and having Dustin Hoffman, De Niro or similar in a bit part but on the set for a week or two – I’d be hitting them up or trying to learn by osmosis, hello? Just sayin’.
7) Yet another movie where the 3D is largely ‘meh’. I really don’t think it adds much of anything – you’re already in a huge screen, big sounds, special effects. etc. – it’s not like this is the Star Trek holodeck where you’re ‘in’ the action directly or something – I think the whole 3D thing is eventually going to go the way of the original Cinerama process, if more slowly.
8 ) It’s weird how much of the last 20 minutes or so of this movie are nearly identical to the first one. They have a big getaway on the Solar Sailor; the Recognizers and bad guys chase them; they get to the portal and have a big shootout. Here there is a bit of speeching at the expense of action (in the first one, Sark turns into a ‘giant’ (with the help of the MCP) and is about to crush Tron permanently when Flynn hacks the portal and ‘ends’ the MCP for good). If only the speech had told us more…..
Ultimately for a sequel like TRON, this is a good question to ask – how much of the original movie do you pay homage to while (trying, anyway) to craft a new story? Or do you? The recent Incredible Hulk movies (having seen none of them) were all but back to back remakes (notwithstanding the 70s TV series) within 5 years of one another?
All in all, I’m glad I saw it, but like so many movies (e.g. parts of Matrix 2 and most of Matrix 3, among others) – there’s a lot of missed opportunities here. It was definitely better than Avatar though, although it may have cost even more to make ($237M for Avatar vs. an est. $300M for TL)?
candybowl
Well, it’s over for another year. And it was a big success (again). Not only did we have more games on the video side – we had several more vendors on the pinball side, a great series of seminars, and seemingly lots more word of mouth (definitely more social media and related online promotion/podcasts/etc. too).
Here’s some of the results – take a gander!
Video from the show floor;
Additional video walk-thru’s during the show;
Review from the ‘Seattlest‘ blog;
The Stranger’s SLOG review;
Seattle Weekly slideshow;
Seattle Times article;
Seattle Times show video;
Online photo galleries: here and here;
Dave Okert’s SMAC photo gallery (mostly video side of show);
candybowl
The 3rd annual NW Pinball Show is next weekend, June 11-13, in the NW corner of The Seattle Center in Seattle, WA (by Key Arena). All machines and seminars are included with paid daily admission. All-weekend passes are available too.
Schedule and Seminars/Speakers;
Online Ticket sales available through Monday, June 7;
Recent Podcast about the show on The Mixtape;
Bottom Line? Come on out and PLAY.
candybowl
Picked up an old arcade game for my buddy – Wizard of Wor. This game dates back from the latter arcade classic era, 1981. It shares the same robotic speech as Gorf from the same era (both of us actually have one of those machines, although mine currently languishes in my dad’s barn in OR). Basically the game consists of either one/two people in what seem like land-going spacesuits in a maze, zapping weird creatures, some of which are invisible at times (you can see them on the radar screen below the maze, though).
Once you clear the maze, other bad guys appear you have to zap of course (e.g. Warlock) – and then the Wizard himself may or may not appear. The game also has organ-style music at the start and end of each maze-zapping session, in addition to the weird voice.
Good stuff. This is also a convenient moment to shamelessly plug the upcoming 3rd annual pinball/arcade show here in Seattle next month, weekend of June 11-13. Come one, come all!
candybowl
So a lifelong friend and I connected for some old-school gaming this weekend. And when i say ‘old school’ while not quite as old as say, Frisbee, Monopoly, or Go – these were still pretty old videogames. He has an extensive collection of old (mostly 70s-80s but a few are even older) videogame consoles – the same ones we used to play on the big ol’ 25″ tv in his basement back in the day. We actually had an Atari ‘flashback’ console for those – it has a ton of games built into it instead of plugging cartridges in and out all day – and it even has a few previously-unreleased and prototype Atari 2600 games as a bonus, which is pretty cool (and I’m sure doesn’t hurt sales :)).
So after some Atari, we hauled out the Bally Arcade, then sidetracked to a couple (real) arcade games – we both have several of these – a couple of mine are at his house) – then off for pizza. Then back for more Atari, followed by Colecovision (played through nearly all the cart’s he had, although the controllers on that system haven’t stood the test of time well – they were all but impossible to use) and then back to Atari with a brief sojourn in C64-land. We also surveyed several other systems he has around, but ultimately forgot to get around to hooking them up.
Then of course the required pilgrimage to Fry’s in Wilsonville, followed by a quick dinner and then to Ground Kontrol (an actual arcade in Oldtown Portland with 80s-90s videogames and about 20 pinballs – great stuff!).
We got done around 945 pm. And the good thing is, there are plenty more games for NEXT time 🙂 We need to get back to more C64 – and then some older PC and Amiga games we used to play for hours on end.
Ah, memories…..
candybowl