Disney premiered a concept trailer for TRON Legacy at the San Diego Comicon (click the link for high-def version). Further evidence of the destructive effect techno-realism has had on the design of fantasy:
I found the little bit of dialog telling: The fallen player yells out, "You won, okay? This is just a game!" To which Quinn (TRON's hero) replies, "Not anymore." Indeed, the game within the movie has started to look more like quotidian reality rather than the beautiful design of the original fantasy.
First, compare the new light cycle crash:
to the old one:
And look how boring a dangling guy is now:
compared to back then:
Note how the cityscape of TRON Legacy:
looks more like the realworld city of TRON:
rather than a digitally enhanced improvement on something like this:
But, then again, the original movie ended on a false note of optimism, where Quinn returned from the authoritarian fantasy world of TRON into a reality that was increasingly becoming that fantasy. Maybe the more mordern-realistic design of TRON Legacy is way of showing how the fantasy and reality are merging. The fantasy becomes duller, more concrete, as reality becomes more of an image, simulation or spectacle.
I found the little bit of dialog telling: The fallen player yells out, "You won, okay? This is just a game!" To which Quinn (TRON's hero) replies, "Not anymore." Indeed, the game within the movie has started to look more like quotidian reality rather than the beautiful design of the original fantasy.
First, compare the new light cycle crash:
to the old one:
And look how boring a dangling guy is now:
compared to back then:
Note how the cityscape of TRON Legacy:
looks more like the realworld city of TRON:
rather than a digitally enhanced improvement on something like this:
But, then again, the original movie ended on a false note of optimism, where Quinn returned from the authoritarian fantasy world of TRON into a reality that was increasingly becoming that fantasy. Maybe the more mordern-realistic design of TRON Legacy is way of showing how the fantasy and reality are merging. The fantasy becomes duller, more concrete, as reality becomes more of an image, simulation or spectacle.
When I saw all the comments from the fanboys on youtube, I shouldn't have been (but was) surprised by the seeming concensus that the new Tron looks like an improvement on the old. Yes, it looks more realistic but it apparently has no design, no direction, no aesthetic and no purpose except to appear more realistic, which seems oddly missing the point of a film about living in a video game.