I’m a big fan of the original Tron film.  I love it, warts and all.  I have since I was a little kid.

I think it’s important to get that out of the way before I attempt in any meaningful fashion to review the film.  And I don’t think that using nostalgia to prop up your enjoyment of this film is a bad thing.

Tron: Legacy is a film that takes place years past the events of the original film.  Kevin Flynn, Jeff Bridges who reprises his role from the original, has vanished from the face of the Earth, leaving his corporate empire in the hands of his essentially orphaned son, Sam (Garret Hedlund).  Circumstances lead Sam back to his father’s old arcade and he gets sucked into the grid, the world of Tron.

A war has been brewing on the grid between Kevin Flynn and his younger doppleganger Clu and Sam has been brought into the grid to turn the scales of the war.

There’s a whole bunch more added to the mythos of Tron that made varying degrees of sense.  Like the new ISO life forms that were created spontaneously inside the grid.  So what if it doesn’t make sense?  It’s called a Macguffin.

There are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-you’s revolving around the plot in the film, and it makes a kind of sense, but that’s really not why we’re here to watch this movie.  We’re here for fun performances, beautiful women in Tron gear, kick-ass action, and a 3D landscape to blow our mind.  Sure, this film is some form of masturbation.  But masturbation is fun, so what’s wrong with that?

There is far more to like about this movie than to worry too much about it’s problems, though I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t have some measure of nostalgia for the original enjoying this film.

I have to address one thing, though.  I heard some people leaving the theatre complaining that Jeff Bridges was just playing “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski, but obviously they hadn’t watched the original Tron film.  He was very much playing Kevin Flynn.  And that’s what I loved most about the movie.  It’s a lot of the same reasons I loved Superman Returns.  Both of those films were love letters to the originals and gave the fans something they wanted.  Sure, there are bigger fans out there than I am, but I enjoyed this immensely.

I’d also like to point out that the women in this film are all incredibly attractive and fun.  Olivia Wilde is worth the price of admission alone.

My biggest complaint?  I wanted to see Tron.  They did a young doppleganger of Tron (Bruce Boxleitner’s character in the grid in the first film) and he was the main enforcer of Clu’s.  There were a couple of great scenes he was in, but it simply wasn’t enough.  One could get the idea that they just didn’t want to take his mask off because it would be as expensive to render him as it would be the film’s villain, but it would have made for a much better and more complete experience.

Bottom line: This film has its faults, many of them, but if you can overlook them with equal parts nostalgia and suspension of disbelief, then you’re going to have one hell of a great time.