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Directed by – Joseph Kosinski

Written by – Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (characters created by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie Macbird)

Starring – Jeff Bridges (Kevin Flynn / Clu), Garrett Hedlund (Sam Flynn), Olivia Wilde (Quorra), Bruce Boxleitner (Alan Bradley / Tron), Beau Garrett (Gem), Michael Sheen (Castor), James Frain (Jarvis), Rinzler (Anis Cheurfa)

Length – 125 minutes

Cert – PG

Parents beware, for after taking your children to see this, they’ll be begging you for a flashing neon lit Frisbee this Christmas. They’ll also probably try to cut someone’s head off with it. Lord knows I would.

After a rapturous reception to concept test footage at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, created by director and fellow fan Joseph Kosinski, Disney has since shown an unprecedented amount of support for Tron: Legacy. They’ve pumped an estimated $200 million into a sequel to a film that didn’t really take off when originally released 28 years ago, and it’s being helmed by a first time director who previously worked on commercials. Could this really be as risky as Tom Cruise with his pants down?

Unless you’ve been sleeping with Osama Bin Laden, you should have already noticed the buzz, with the trailers, magazine covers, bus posters, toys in the shops, and maybe even the odd few people walking around with neon lit clothes. Were it not for Kosinski and Comic-Con then we wouldn’t have a sequel, let alone all the hoopla surrounding it. The film even credits the “fans in Hall H,” under special thanks.

Legacy opens with Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, digitally enhanced to look 20 years younger, telling his son Sam (and out of the loop audiences) a story about his virtual creation, The Grid. He smiles and leaves his son’s bedroom for the last time, never to be seen again. If you found out that your father had a CG face, then you may argue this to be no bad thing.

Fast-forward to present day and Sam (Hedlund) isn’t interested in working at Encom, the software company his father led to success, even though he has the brains to run it. After his mysterious disappearance back in 1989, Sam believes his father might be dead. A visit from long time Encom worker Alan Bradley (Boxleitner) suggests otherwise, as he tells Sam that he received a page (he’s still “rocking the pager”), and the number came from Flynn’s Arcade… a number that’s been disconnected for 20 years.

Realistically, Flynn’s Arcade should’ve been torn down after being abandoned for decades. Nevertheless, Sam makes a visit and discovers that his father has been doing a Bruce Wayne, with a secret underground lab hidden behind a Tron arcade cabinet. After a little tinkering on his father’s computer, it’s not long before he finds himself zapped into the world of Tron and arrives at The Grid.

Clu, a control program that runs The Grid, just so happens to look like Sam’s father. Turns out Kevin had created Clu as a digital copy of himself to watch over things when he wasn’t inside. However, this copy has gone bad, and the creator has lost control to his creation. Clu watches as Sam is sentenced to play a life and death game of Disc Wars at a futuristic gladiatorial arena. He survives after the mysterious Quorra (Wilde) breaks in and rescues him. It’s soon a race against time as Sam tries to find his father and escape with him, before a portal back to the real world closes for good.

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