I just saw the new Bruce Boxleitner film. You know the one…TRON without TRON. It’s in the theater under the name of TRON Legacy.
You remember the original TRON right? You don’t? Well, sadly Disney recently removed it from distribution until late next year so you can’t tell how good it was in comparison to its latest incarnation. So here is the story as I recall it: It’s 1982. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) worked in a company called ENCOM and was seeking evidence to prove that he had four video games including the company’s flagship program, Space Paranoids, stolen by his colleague Ed Dillinger. Dillinger was promoted to senior executive of the software corporation and Flynn was forced out (fired). Kevin’s friends Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and Flynn’s future wife, Lora, help him break into the ENCOM’s computers using Lora’s terminal (because she and Alan still work at the company and know Kevin was wronged). Alan has written a security program called TRON to shut down the company’s system protection called Master Control Program (MCP). So (stay with me here), TRON is Alan’s computer program (personified by Boxleitner, pictured above)) designed to shut down ENCOM’s file protection system so that an outsider can access secret company documents. However, the MCP detects the intrusion and digitizes Flynn to bring him into its world so it can kill him. In the end, TRON wins, the MCP is shut down and Flynn rightfully gains control of the company.
We flash forward to 2010 to find that Kevin Flynn who owned and ran ENCOM, disappeared 20 years ago. His wife, Lora, died shortly after their son, Sam, was born. Sam is now 27 and the principal stockholder in his Dad’s company. Sam learns his father is in “the grid” and must enter the world of TRON to find his father and his destiny. 
And that is the problem with this movie, despite Disney’s great special effects and attempts to convince us otherwise, TRON was never really about Kevin Flynn. It was about the computer program TRON and his devotion to his programming directive and his user. For me, this movie fails at this point because we don’t see enough of TRON and don’t have an opportunity to develop any empathy with the father who abandoned his son 20 years earlier. The failure is further complicated by an attempt to make Boxleitner and Bridges younger by the use of CGI. It doesn’t work well for Bridges because he is on screen too often with more bright close ups. The CGI does work very well for Boxleitner for the same reasons it doesn’t work for Bridges. In short, TRON Legacy needed more TRON on screen and less legacy. Don’t bother with 3D or D-Box. It’s not worth the additional expense. See the movie at matinee prices and then rent the original when Disney lets it out of the vault next year.