Tron and Tron Legacy, fun movies for the family

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The movie that has captured the boys’ attention recently is Tron: Legacy. As we own the original Tron movie, they then went back to re-watch it to fill in ‘holes’ for their memory about the story line.  And, when I say captured their attention, I’m talking about their new found obsession with recreating some ‘battles’ using the Skylighter disc we reviewed.

So, I thought I’d feature them here for families that might enjoy some family friendly science fiction movies.

Tron: The Original Classic was made back in the early 1980’s and watching it now you can really see how far technology has come in the years since it’s filming.  Computers are portable and way more powerful than the ones that required entire rooms to be housed.  Special effects have come a long way, too.  But, that doesn’t mean the story is not worth watching.

The basic plot (in case you haven’t seen it or it’s been many, many moons since you watched it) is that hacker (and former ENCOM employee) Kevin Flynn wants to find who has swindled him out of video game programs he wrote.

Kevin’s attempt to hack into the system and disable Master Control from a terminal at ENCOM gets him more than he bargained for as he ends up digitized and pulled into the cyber universe where Master Control is dictator.  There he partners with Tron (a security program written by ENCOM employee Alan Bradley) to take down Master Control, restore ‘order’ to the virtual world and get Kevin back home.

 

Tron: Legacy is set about as many years in the future as we really are.  Viewers meet Sam, the son of Kevin Flynn.  He seems to be almost spinning out of control in his life while still dealing with the disappearance of his father 20 years earlier.  A mysterious page to Alan Bradley’s old pager leads him to the ‘secret lair (aka arcade)’ of Kevin Flynn’s and is quickly launched on a journey to the cyber universe where his father has been held captive for those 20 years.

The battles are fierce and the stakes are high as father and son must work together to both escape this cyber world and prevent the generated entity, Clu, from destroying all that is good in BOTH worlds.  Helping them navigate through the world is Quorra, a fierce warrior and lone survivor of a new ‘race’ of cyber beings (ISOs) that just appeared one day as a creation of the Grid and NOT man.

 

As would be expected, the special effects in Tron: Legacy are substantially better than in the original.  What I appreciated is that they made improvements where they could without hijacking things to create a film that is not family friendly.  (Some filmmakers seem to think all movies need a flurry of cursing, violence, and sex to sell.  You won’t find cursing or sex in Tron, but some of the battles could be deemed to contain violence.)

 

For the kids (or adults) that want a bit ‘more’ interaction with the universe created in these movies, Disney has a website just for Tron lovers.

 

This post has been submitted for inclusion in The Christian Home Issue 33 hosted at A Day in the Life this week.

As the featured columnist for the Movies and Music category, you can be looking forward to weekly posts on what we are watching or music we’ve enjoyed. Feel free to leave suggestions for me as well that are family friendly or uplifting for adults.  While I have movies and some music selections in mind, I’m always on the lookout for other great choices.