TRON NIGHT REACTIONS: 23+ MINUTE SNEAK PEAK

Last night, in the middle of The World Series game I attended a 23+ minute sneak preview of TRON: LEGACY. Director Joseph Kosinski was in attendance because he’s been at Skywalker Ranch working on the soundtrack. Quick thoughts are below.

NEGATIVE

• People ask dumb questions at Q & A’s (i.e “Are you going to do interviews about the film after the film comes out?”, “What’s the difference between this TRON and the original?”)
• Garrett Hedlund - HOLY HELL this guy is not a good actor. I actually think the dude is charismatic off screen and seems like a cool dude but geez once the 3D cameras start rolling this guy is flat. The dude just cannot act. Like he’s horrible. I don’t know why they showed us this huge dialog scene between him and Alan Bradley, the tongue and cheek script got bad coming from Garett’s mouth. 
• “I smell like jail” - worst line as Garrett takes a sip of Coors in the ‘real world’. 
• 3D - shots looked blurry. In the non ‘Grid’ scenes I’d just take off my glasses because I was getting a headache. There would be one thing in focus and the rest blurred out or doubling up. Need to fix. 
• Garett cries - He’s mugging the camera and a drop of water slides down his face. ZERO EMOTION. 

POSITIVE

• ‘The Grid’ - HOLY SHIT, once we enter ‘the Grid’ everything goes up hill. The 3D really is fantastic, everything looks so wonderful, polished and clean. This is the first world in which I want to explore it in FULL 3D and in IMAX. I don’t get carried away with visuals much but this is truly something to see. This is the first time I’ve actively wanted to see a movie in 3D. I want to explore this world so much more then I ever wanted to explore Pandora in 3D.
• Olivia Wilde - WOW. On top of her being a babe she destroys as Quorra. The quick scenes I saw with her she completely embodied this hybrid of quirky and bad ass. Halloween 2011 will have plenty of Qurra’s running around. 
• Action /CG - The action scenes I saw were nuts. Stuff flying everywhere but with so much precision and depth. The battles were fun, the world is fun, the racing and the escaping. I went in not expecting much and got a lot out of it. Get ready for a real ride in theaters this December. 
• Garrett Hedlund - he seemed 100% better when he got to ‘The Grid’. He was solid in his fighting scenes. His dialog also dropped 80%. Let’s see how it plays out for him. 
• Jeff Bridges - dude. I mean ‘DUDE’ he rocks. He’s the good guy and a bad guy? So epic. He seems to be having a fun time with this film, which is awesome.
• Daft Punk - ‘rocks’.

Conclusion - I am 100% seeing this film. I’m just skeptical if it’s going to reach ‘that’ level of blockbuster the studio is hoping for. It’s a film that Disney has been marketing for over three years, it had Pixar re-writes and re-shoots. If anything it will be a fun ride, on par with a Disneyland attraction.