When I first went on Wikipedia to look up the movie and saw that reviews were "mixed", I just thought that one or two people couldn't make up their minds about it. When I went to search individual reviews on Google, I saw a very clear divide between two camps, one trashing the movie with 20-30% and the other praising it with 70-80%. Depending on who you asked, the plot was either decent enough or non-existent; Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde and Micheal Sheen either portrayed their roles convincingly or horribly; the faithfully adhered-to neon-lines-on-black design style is either mesmerising and beautiful or repetitive and dull. It's no wonder the average rating for this movie is around 50%. I've never seen such a divided opinion on a single movie before.
Personally speaking, I thought it was great. People who complain that Tron's visual style is dull compared to Avatar's lush tropical landscape have got it all wrong - while Pandora boasted vibrant colours which emphasised its inherent chaos, The Grid was created to be a digital, logical world ruled by an iron fist, hence the sleek glossy neon lines and the dark background with gloomy skies. And while I'm no Oscar judge, I have to say that personally I found the acting to be good enough. Finally, I enjoyed the plot quite a bit, to be honest. Of course there weren't any amazing game-changing plot twists, but for an action movie it serves its role pretty well. And when you walk out of the cinema and think back, you realise that there are actually some questions to ponder over, even if the movie didn't have time to elaborate on them amidst all the amazing CGI parading.
Also, the music is all from Daft Punk, and who can hate on them? One universal fact agreed upon by all the reviewers (and myself) is that the music played an integral role in enhancing the movie. The techno elements blend in so well with the orchestra that you'd think that this was classical music from The Grid, which of course is the whole point of it. This is one of the extremely rare times when a movie's soundtrack is so greatly lauded (discounting musicals of course). And now, I can't stop listening to this song:
Here's a couple of pictures too, to make this post even more multimedia:
Look at them, they were practically made for The Grid.
Yeah, cos she looks amazing in the movie.
The iconic light cycle. I love how the rider's body fits seamlessly with the bike.
The light jet looks simply amazing.
As a sort of closing statement, the original Tron was also frequently criticised for having amazing graphics but a weak plot, and went on to become a cult classic, so who knows what will happen to its sequel?
