Tron Legacy preview….

Tron Legacy Trailer Report

You’re probably aware that there is a sequel being made to the 1982 classic Disney film Tron, due out December 2010, but did you know that the viral marketing campaign has already begun? After a protracted sequence of events, tickets became available online to a mysterious ‘event’ at locations across the world, and I was lucky enough to bag a couple of tickets.

Note to Disney – if you want to raise expectations to your film ten months before it’s released… give the fans something to get excited about. We queued patiently for nearly 40 minutes at London’s IMAX, then we were herded into the screen, had a complimentary “Flynn Lives” Tee thrust into our hands and sat down waiting for the lights to dim.

We were then ‘treated’ to the new 2-minute Tron trailer comprising of new unseen footage, which I’ve found out, is due to be shown before Alice In Wonderland when it is released in five days time. So all this fuss and effort to get is there, and all we see is a 120 second trailer. When it finished, there was no applause, no cheering, nothing, just an overwhelming sense of disappointment. There were shouts for them to play it again, but no response.

And what of the trailer? It starts with Flynn’s son on the roof of a building meeting a private eye, who informs him that he has had contact from his missing dad (the hero of the original). Flynn Jr then visits his father’s dusty video game arcade before we get plunged into Tron world. The trailer is OK, but I felt a tangible sense of disappointment and not just from the mishandling of a ‘hype’ event, but from the fact that Tron 2 will look nothing like the original. Part of the joy of the original was the wholly unique grainy visual style inherent with the rotoscoping techniques used couple with the early pioneering computer graphics. Tron now looks like a Matrix-style universe where people where glowing clothes.

I still have high hopes for the film, but I have lowered my expectations accordingly. The trailer will be available to view online sometime this week, so we’ll post a link when it does and you can have a look for yourselves.