I sometimes wish I was the type of person that loved every movie they watch. I know some people like that. But sadly that's not me. That doesn't mean I don't like bad movies. There are plenty of movies that most people find awful that I love. But generally I know the movie is bad, I'm just getting something else out of it. Sometimes it's that the movie was meant to be bad like anything from Troma. Other times it might be the genre. For example ridiculous corny dialog might be perfect for an action movie but not for a drama. Another is probably how serious the movie takes it self. An action movie like Death Race doesn't take itself seriously where as an action movie like Terminator 4 does and therefore gets a judged in a different light.

I don't know what the point of that last paragraph was. Ultimately I guess it is meant to say that while I like movies all over the spectrum (i.e, I'm not a movie snob) I'm still pretty picky about what movies I like.

I didn't like Tron:Legacy at all. Here's why

Tron:Legacy was bad on so many levels. Even though I love the original I realize it's not the greatest movie. Sure the visuals are awesome and there are great parts but it falls a little flat at the end. Still it beats Tron:Legacy by miles.

What's wrong with Tron:Legacy? How about?

Writing: The writing is atrocious. For example:

We are told ISOs will save the human world? Why?

This entire topic is unexplained. <spoiler mode="not so much though"> It's sole point seems to be to make Quorra more special as the last ISO and yet we never learn why that matters. </spoiler>

Sam is a super hero? Why?

In the original, Kevin Flynn both created the main videos games and is clearly an expert at them. Once inside the computer he excels at the Light Cycles game which makes sense as it's less physically demanding and probably uses the same skills he had from outside the game. But that's the only game he really plays. Flynn plays one Jai alai like game where he barely survives and is playing against a very unfit unskilled opponent. He never plays the disc based games that require tons of physical skill. Only Tron does that who was arguably programmed for it.

In the sequel, Sam Flynn shows no real experience with video games but once inside he is suddenly master of the most physically demanding and skill requiring games there are. WTF?

Zeus sucked.

The whole scene with Zeus was clearly inspired by the Merovingian from the Matrix but this scene completely doesn't work. Instead of an eccentric character we get just silly overacting and that is ultimately not interesting in any way. The Merovingian at least had somethings of value. Zeus had nothing.

Hippy/New Age Dialog was out of place.

During the movie Kevin Flynn, the father, has several very hippy / new age sounding lines. As far as could tell those were put in because they reflect Jeff Bridges' look. They don't fit the character of Kevin Flynn at all though. He was a computer hacker, not a hippy.

Editing:

Compare the lightcycle battle in the original to the one in the sequel. If you can divorce yourself from the effects it should be very clear there is lots of tension and a strong feeling of speed in the original. The editing is tight. The speed is hyper. Then watch the lightcycle battle in the sequel. It's boring by comparison. No tension, no sense of speed. That doesn't even take into account that one of the things that made the original interesting is the 90 degree turns, something that can happen in a computer but not in the real world. That's the whole point of Tron, that inside the computer things are different. The rules of the outside world do not apply.

This same editing style is brought to the lightplane battle at the end which looks more like a sky ballet than a battle in cyberspace. They way the lightplanes fly they might has well been real world bi−planes. It's slow and boring instead of tense and exciting. Such a huge opportunity was missed here to do something as creative as the original was with lightcycles.

Continuity:

This one they just got plain wrong. You don't escape the computer world by standing in a beam of light and holding the disc above your head. That's how you communicate with your user. Did no one bring this up during production? Was the entire staff asleep or just not paying attention?

Style:

The sequel benefits from the advances in computer graphics but sadly it was all wasted. The style and designs in the original were far more interesting than the styles in the sequel. Of course that's subjective so lets try something a little less subjective. In the original everything in the computer is different from the outside world. In the sequel there's a nearly real world looking night club. In the sequel we have living rooms full of real world stuff. Real world looking food on a real world looking table with real world looking utensils. All of these distract from what made Tron special. Sure you can come up with various reasons why those things might exist inside the computer. That's not the point. The point is, the whole premise is about how inside the computer is DIFFERENT. Everything that makes it more like the real world makes it less interesting.

Conclusion:

The sad part of it is Tron was a great premise and with the power of today's computer graphics in the hand of an inspired team could have been one of the most amazing movies experiences since the Matrix. Instead it's a pretty tame forgettable movie which has not only failed to live up to the original but spoiled the franchise forever.

Here's hoping someone, someday will come out with a cyberspace movie that really lives up to the potential of the topic.