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Post tags: daft punk, final fantasy x, harry potter, henry cavill, john williams, juno, lord of the rings, mars, mtv, soundtracks, steve jablonsky, superman, the ring, transformers, tron, tron legacy, water

I’m not sure many people understood what the original “Tron” offered. On the surface, people think it’s about a guy who gets sucked into the computer and has to play videogames to get out. Ok, I suppose that works on a very basic level, but there was more to the original movie than that. The second film extrapolates on what people seem to have missed in the first film.

Imagine, if you will, a digital world that you can get placed into and your body stays in perfect suspended animation until a cure is found for a terminal disease you have, or surgery can be done without the issue of time ticking away. This is the world that Kevin Flynn was trying to create, and he did, until his creation turned on him and kept him trapped in the digital world he created. Over time, his creation CLU (named after CLU from the first film) learned that he can step outside the digital realm and wreak havoc in our world with an army of programs. It’s a little far fetched, I completely agree. However, this is science fiction, and so long as the idea is plausible in the context of the world you’re watching the movie take place in, you can believe it for them. The plot works perfectly as an extension of the original story and the genius of Kevin Flynn’s character.

There’s another aspect to the plot which I won’t divulge since I’m trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but all I can say is that “Tron Legacy” pulls from other science fiction stories about what’s perfect. It’s the driving force of the story and how it links the digital world to ours. In fact, I see this as the possible genesis of The Borg from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and how that race could have come into being.

There aren’t Oscar-winning performances in this movie, but they’re not wooden, either. Kevin Flynn still has the same charm in him, but he’s tired. Being trapped in a computer system you created will do that to a person. I think more could have come out of Sam Flynn’s character a bit. It’s almost as if the writers weren’t sure what to do with him. Is he used truly as Flynn’s son, or is he just a plot device to have someone young at the wheel? I loved Olivia Wilde as Quorra. She’s cute and quirky, and a damn good fighter. The most interesting character has to be CLU because he doesn’t really exist. We’ve seen computers generate characters before, including Marlon Brando for “Superman Returns”, but this time the artists created a fully realized head of Jeff Bridges at 35 years old for CLU. There were some spots in the film where lip movements and facial expressions didn’t quite feel real, but for the most part, they did exactly what they set out to do and it worked very well.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I can finally comment on how the music fit into it. Daft Punk did a great job at making a mood for this film. Everything from the opening of the film to the End of Line club to the ride on the Solar Sailer and the dogfight at the end were scored very well. I have to give those guys and their team serious props for doing such a great job.

The movie works well because the creators of the film don’t take the audience for granted. They didn’t just make a special effects ride, they added enough of a good story that you’re not watching 2 hours and 7 minutes of eye candy. The computer world is beautiful, but the effects don’t overshadow what’s happening inside it.

End of line

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clu, flynn, mcp, quorra, tron, tron legacy

When the first trailer hit and had Daft Punk’s music playing in the background, it was a relief to hear that the movie was going to have a serious tone to it. Daft Punk, as I found out, wrote the score to be orchestrated and not have it all played on keyboards and synth loops. They hired a 90-piece orchestra to play the music which had been translated by orchestrator Joseph Trapanese. It’s not Daft Punk as you may know them but there’s a little DF flair in it.

The album’s opening track, “Overture”, begins with what will be the theme of the film, a beautiful motif that works both in soft and driving parts of the soundtrack. It’s here where you’ll realize that this isn’t the experimental, robotic Daft Punk. “The Grid” is a synth variation of the theme with a dark string section playing against it while Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn explains what “The Grid” actually is. This track is a little redundant since the main theme plays out in a lot of the album, but it’s a good alternative to the pure orchestral track of “Overture”.

“The Son of Flynn” is an odd track. Sam Flynn is supposed to be well known for extreme sports in the real world, I’m not sure how this track which starts off with a MIDI-sounding sequence fits his character. Perhaps seeing it in the context of the film will make more sense, but it seems out of place here.

From there, the soundtrack takes to what can be considered dark, almost nightmarish turn. Tracks like “Recognizer”, “The Game Has Changed”, “Outlands”, and “Disc Wars” convey a sense of urgency about them, being trapped in a dangerous world that you can’t get out of. One track, “Outlands”, struck me as being an homage to Danny Elfman’s 1989 score for Batman. In both films, the passenger is driven to a secret hideout, and this track seems to mirror what Elfman wrote. I don’t know if it was intentional, but there are definite similarities. The percussion in “Disc Wars”, in sync with the strings and synths, make this a rather powerful piece and I’m sure is going to be used at a point in the film that’s crucial to the story.

“Adagio for TRON” is a haunting piece which, as stated in the interview below, is used in the beginning of the film to explain the events which led up to where we are now. “Notcurne” is another short, beautiful piece, but I don’t know where it fits in the film. I have my guesses but I won’t spoil it here. Another slow, beautiful track is “Solar Sailer”. While I don’t know what’s happening at that point in the film, I’ve seen stills of Sam and Quorra riding the Sailer to some unknown location on The Grid.

“End of Line” and “Derezzed”, and the “End Titles” are pure synth pieces that Daft Punk fans are sure to love. “Drezzed” has been already released as a single on iTunes and Facebook, but people shouldn’t use this track as a representative of what the rest of the album’s sound is. Chances are this will be used as music in the “End of Line” club.

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the soundtrack. After listening to it a few times you do get a sense of repeated motifs withing the songs and there’s not nearly as much depth as you’d expect from someone like John Williams, but it’s a great soundtrack in the context of the film that it’s being made for.

In doing research on the soundtrack, I came across an interview tht KCRW’s Jason Bently did with with Joseph Kosinski, the director of Tron Legacy. There’s a lot of great information in there about the music and the sound of the film, along with clips to listen to. Well worth the read and listen. Click here to go to the interview.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: daft punk, soundtrack, tron, tron legacy, wendy carlos

Words cannot describe how stoked I am to see this movie.

Possible spoilers after the trailer.

Speculation:

Somehow, Kevin Flynn got trapped in his own system. CLU is still there, even though we saw him derez in the first film (maybe there was a backup, or it’s a different incarnation?).

I’m guessing that Flynn’s been trying to get out for 20 years. His only way to communicate with the real world was to send a page out of the system. It looks like the system’s not hooked up to any kind of network. There were internet connections 20 years ago, but I’d bet Flynn would want to keep his world self-contained and offline.

His son Sam finds the old equipment, and gets pulled into the system his father’s in. He has to fight his way to his father, and more than likely battle CLU at the end.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bruce boxleitner, clu, garret hedlund, jeff bridges, olivia wilde, quorra, tron, tron legacy

As arcades gave way to home consoles, they started to close up shop, but the nostalgia of playing those games lived on in emulators for the PC, Mac, Playstation, and Dreamcast. Today, you can find most popular arcade games on the Playstation 3 or Xbox Live. However, nothing compares to the feel of the original controls in your hand. Oh, sure, you can play Tron on your PC using MAME, but having the stick and the knob can’t be matched by a keyboard and mouse no matter how hard you try.

A few years back, I decided to get an arcade machine for the house. It took a long time to determine which one I wanted because the premise of an arcade machine had one major flaw: you could never really beat the game no matter what you bought. It would be purely for entertainment and nostalgia. Picking the right game took time for me to think about what games I was good at, and which I’d enjoy over time.

There were games that were my favorite but I sucked horribly at. Sinistar was one of them. I loved that game to pieces (no pun intended), but I never got past wave two. Tempest was good but I wasn’t very good at that either. Gyruss was one of my favorite games, and I think the best I did was get to Mars, but I found that game to be too repetitious. Once you knew the patterns, it was easy. Marble Madness was an awesome game, but way too short. I think it was six levels, and then you’re done. I beat the game before so I didn’t think I’d get much fun out of a game I could win. The list went on and on: Centipede, Star Wars (my #1 choice, but very expensive), Donkey Kong, Star Trek, Space War, Dig Dug, Mr. Do!, Space Invaders, the list goes on and on.

I eventually decided on Tron because of its unique gameplay, design, and cabinet. I found a guy in Keansburg who was selling one for $400 and I jumped on getting a friend with a truck to go down there and get it. We agreed on a price, and set a date to pick it up. After getting there, the guy jacked the price up to $700, claiming that other people were interested in it. The machine wasn’t even in that good of shape. The speaker was shot, the screen had burn-in, and the stickers on the cabinet were peeling. The game itself played fine, but this wasn’t a $700 machine.

So I went home instead, putting the money back in the bank and thought that having an arcade machine may not be the best idea. They need maintenance, and some work on it may be beyond the scope of something I could handle such as replacing the screen.

Today, you can build a cabinet or buy one premade, and run the MAME emulator on a low-end PC. I may do that myself since maintenance on it is trivial, and the screen today can simply be an LCD monitor.

So what would be your desert island arcade machine?

A Tron arcade machine

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aracde, delomni, desert island, donkey kon, emulator, gyruss, marble madness, non-traditional geek, sinistar, space invaders, tron