Tron - the old one

You've probably seen the posters and the adverts. There's a new Tron film out - Tron Legacy. Quite a few people I know are very excited by this and were off to the cinema last night to watch it. I didn't go as I had something miles less cool to do, but to keep in the spirit I watched the original Tron on Monday. Now I'd never seen Tron before, but even I was aware of the light bike racing sequence. It's a scene that has carved itself out a niche in science fiction film lore. Other than that I was aware that it was about computers, basically I was coming to this fresh.

The 'plot' in Tron is that some kind of big bad computer program written by a big bad corporation is slowly taking over the world - pretty imaginative eh? No one is aware of this until our hero Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is somehow digitised and sucked into the computer world in a scene that defies numerous physical laws. The computer world is one in which errant programs are sent to 'the games' by the big evil program and have to fight to the death. So clearly Flynn is sent to fight (hence the light bikes); but his superior skills as a 'user' see him through all his challenges and help him to throw the chains of oppression off the programs yearning to breathe free.

It's obviously utter tosh - tosh probably dreamed up by early computer fanboys sitting around smoking weed and chatting about what it would be like to be inside a computer. The plot is linear, full of convenient devices and the acting just about passable. The one saving grace is that the 3D computer imagery in the film - though genuinely laughable by any modern standard - was ground-breaking at the time. So in that sense the film is a slice of movie history. But that is literally the only saving grace. Seriously though, the film's so cliché that the only female character has to wear glasses when she's being all geeky (cos that's how female scientists are defined - by wearing glasses) and takes them off as soon as she's out of the lab so she can look hotter. Oh dear.

By all means watch Tron if you're into this kind of thing or remember it fondly as a kid; but it's properly bad, count me out of the new one thanks.