The WhimWham

I saw Tron: Legacy yesterday, and while I’m going to wait ’til I see the IMAX version before I write a proper review, I want to get the word out early as to how good this film really is. Ignore the critics: this film operates on levels that are both higher than they can grasp and lower than they’re willing to stoop. It will baffle anyone who is wedded to the idea that science and art are polar opposites, which is basically the bulk of the film critic community, including many online writers.

If you’re an average moviegoer who doesn’t mind the odd bit of technobabble to accompany very slick action sequences that leave you wanting more, this film is for you. If you’re involved in computer science and have great affection for the original Tron—if you feel like you’re creating new life with each piece of code you write—this film is for you.

If, like me, you were inspired by the first film to move into computer science, and now you’re doing research on genetic algorithms—where nature and silicon collide—oh man, is this film for you.

Now there are plenty of films that I love that aren’t particularly good: Flash Gordon, for instance, or Bride of the Monster. I can admit that—there’s no shame in liking a bad movie. But I’ll defend Tron: Legacy against any claims that it’s “dumb” or “silly”. It’s the greatest piece of big-budget computer science fantasy since its predecessor, 28 years ago. Sure, that’s not a large set of films, but it’s the antithesis of the Matrix trilogy, for example, letting us know instead that humanity can be discovered in the most unlikely of places. Man and machine aren’t so different after all.

Tron: Legacy is about the spontaneity of life, the magic spark that appears from within our brains when we reach consciousness. It’s about perfection and imperfection and the arrogance of youth. It’s about accepting who you are and rediscovering who you always were. It’s a continuation of the DIY hacker manifesto that was the original film.

It’s about computer science, not products on a shelf. It’s about transforming the world by experimenting on technology’s frontiers.

When I started doing my honours, I was immediately drawn to machine learning and evolutionary computation. Ever since I was eight and programming a TRS-80 (right on the heels of seeing Tron), I was fascinated by watching a creation come to life—something that only existed in your head until you translated it into programming code. You’d type RUN and then… voila! That concept in your head was suddenly flickering before your very eyes. I imagine animators feel the same way.

Once you throw a kind of natural selection into the process and point it at real knowledge discovery, you’ve got a living, breathing system that learns and evolves, adapting to the terrain of its search space. It’s a heady, fascinating mix. Where does consciousness fit into all this?

That’s the philosophy behind Tron: Legacy. The soul is both mystical and natural; it can emerge from circuitry just as much as from neurons in the brain. But it’s that stochastic element that allows life to flourish. The universe is a giant random number generator, and we’re all just programs on the Grid, products of paradox. Imperfection is perfection—that’s the beauty of life.

Most people know I’m a big Star Wars fan—it was something that imprinted itself on my psyche as a child, and I still haven’t been able to shake it.

What people don’t know is that the Superman movies were almost as important. Sure, they became increasingly bad as the series progressed, but the first film generated enough goodwill that, up to and including Superman III, I was willing to go along for the ride. I mean, I chose to see Superman III over Return of the Jedi when both were playing (though I doubt anything in Jedi would have freaked me out as much as some of Superman III‘s scenes).

But there’s no getting around the sharp decline in quality between 1978′s Superman: The Movie and 1987′s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. So what went wrong?

The short answer is that Richard Donner, the director of the first film, was fired before the second film was completed. Much of what Donner had filmed for Superman II was then reshot by Richard Lester, who completed the film and went on to make Superman III (a.k.a. Richard Pryor in a film featuring a cameo by Superman).

In 2006, a reconstructed version of Donner’s Superman II was released, 25 years after Lester’s cut. (Notably, Donner’s version is available on Blu-ray, while Lester’s is MIA.) Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut restores Marlon Brando’s scenes (which were dropped from Lester’s cut for budgetary reasons), reuses John William’s score (whereas Lester’s cut uses a score by Ken Thorne) and generally shifts the tone to be more in keeping with the first film. This is essentially a new movie, and the true spiritual successor to Superman: The Movie.

Enter Superman Returns, also from 2006. This is not a “reboot”, “re-imagining” or any other kind of contemporary take on the universe, but neither is it a sequel to Superman IV, the last in the series at that point. Instead, it’s a sequel to Donner’s Superman II—a film that had not even been released when Superman Returns hit cinemas.

Made by Bryan Singer with the blessing of Richard Donner, Superman Returns is like Superman III as it might have been, had Donner been allowed to stay with the series. Brandon Routh plays Christopher Reeve playing Superman/Clark Kent; Kevin Spacey seems perfect as a replacement for Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Sets recall the original 1978 film, and the opening credits alone are enough to make a fan of the original gasp in recognition, complete with a rendition of Williams’ Superman theme. Marlon Brando even returns, albeit based on his scenes from the first two films. (Indeed, securing the rights to Brando’s scenes for use in Superman Returns is what subsequently made the Donner cut of Superman II possible.) And the glimpse of Krypton we see in the first few moments gives me goosebumps every time.

Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) watches Jor-El (Marlon Brando) in the Fortress of Solitude

I’d put off seeing this film for four years due to bad word of mouth. What a mistake. I can’t rave about this movie enough.

What’s most surprising about Superman Returns is how much it feels like a film from the late ’70s/early ’80s, despite impressive CGI effects and modern camera technology. One scene in particular, featuring a car careening out of control, is totally believable as a lost scene from Superman: The Movie. Incredible.

Finally, we have a trilogy of great Superman movies that all seem to exist in the same universe. In Superman Returns, photos of Glenn Ford still adorn Martha Kent’s home, for goodness sake! This has to be the most gloriously insane big-budget sequel to ever hit screens. Who else would have the audacity to make a completely faithful sequel to the incomplete, alternate cut to a 25 year old film, totally ignoring continuity from later sequels and hardly aging the characters at all?

A photo featuring Glenn Ford as Jonathan Kent, as well as (apparently) Aaron Smolinski, the baby Clark Kent from Superman, in a deleted scene

Even better, the film feels like a natural thematic progression from the two Donner Superman films, focusing on the relationship between father and son and the tension between humanity and divinity. The trilogy is like the comic book movie adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ.

So why don’t people like Superman Returns? Is it because it’s a film that arrived twenty years too late, feeling anachronistic and out-of-step with modern films? Is it because Reeve’s tragic demise is still too fresh in our minds? Or did the plot just not resonate?

I don’t care. I just know I love this film. It’s like stumbling upon a Beatles album recorded in their heyday that was never released. It’s the anachronism, the naivety, the innocence, the purity that makes this film a winner for me. It’s not an action film, nor should it be. It’s the heart that carries this film.

Brandon Routh as Superman

Warners won’t be letting Singer make a sequel, instead looking to Christopher Nolan to start afresh. I trust Nolan, but nothing will match the magic that Singer wove and would’ve continued to weave. X2 proved that Singer knows how to make a great sequel to his own good superhero film. In a way, Singer’s fate mirrors Donner’s.

But at least we’ve now got a trilogy. It’s not perfect—we’ll never see Richard Donner’s seamless, complete vision for the first two films, for example—but it’s 1000 times better than the series we had a mere four years ago. A project, begun in 1977, has reached fulfillment.

This is brilliant. As a fan of both Star Wars and the material Lucas was inspired by, I cannot praise this fan’s work highly enough:

Being born in 1978, I’m pretty much a child of the ’80s. I grew up with the radio playing at every opportunity, loved going to the movies and couldn’t get enough of Star Wars, He-Man and The Muppet Show. (Yes, there was bleed-through from the ’70s, as you’ll soon discover.)

Each week, I’m going to make an effort to present the pop-culture events of a very specific period of time in the ’80s. Today, it’s summer ’79/’80, as seen Down Under.

This was the period when Bon Scott, the lead singer for AC/DC, died of alcohol poisoning; it was also the period when Kingswood Country debuted on Australian TV…

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Yesterday I finally saw Inception, the new non-Batman film by Christopher Nolan.

And it was phenomenal.

I wouldn’t even dream of writing a proper review of this film until I’d seen it at least once more, though twice more would be better. It’s dense and complex and soulful and eye-popping, all in glorious 2D. It’s a heist movie set in a labyrinthine series of dreamscapes.

It’s certainly not The Matrix—in my opinion, it’s about ten times better than that film and about 1000 times better than its sequels. The cast is uniformly excellent, the ideas are fresh and original and it’s happier to trust its audience to figure things out rather than delivering exposition by the spoonful. It truly is a unique cinematic experience.

The best way to describe it is an Escher print come to life.

Here’s the trailer:

Allow me a moment of geekiness. (I have a lot of those, however…)

I grew up with Tron. I’ve been mesmerised by that film ever since I saw the trailer in 1982, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that, in no small part, it’s one of the reasons I’m in the computer science field now, 28 years later.

The original Tron was strange, otherworldly, spiritual, quirky, funny, scary, surreal and futuristic; like Star Wars before it, it was a joyously goofy adventure film at times, yet it wasn’t afraid to play it totally straight. It was a myth for the Information Age. And now it’s back in the form of (what appears to be) a very faithful sequel, and I can’t be happier.

Here’s the latest trailer:

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