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How TRON Makes me Feel (or… That’s a really big door!)

Anyone not seen TRON: Legacy yet? You should. I don't even know how to describe the feeling that this film gave me, but it was a good one. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It thrilled me. It scared me. There were plenty of cheesy oh-my-god moments, like “did they really do that?” and “Holy cow, I saw that coming was it that obvious?” in it. There's a scene, when Daddy Flynn shows up to take the place apart and you are like - holy crap this is awesome! From the very first opening moments, as soon as I could see The Grid again, I did what I like to think of as the perfect moment in a science fiction fantasy film. For a moment, the dude, who made his career in a similar path as Flynn oddly enough, who's got a family, house, payments, all that stuff that regular old life brings your way, for a moment (and I don't know how long it actually was, maybe the whole movie?) I was eight.

I lump a lot of things together in my life. For some reason, everything that happened when I was growing up happened when I was either eight or twelve, or the years surrounding those years, I mix them up sometimes. For me eight years old is the kind of age when you are full of wonder, and play. It's when you don't even have any troubles to put aside. It's when you can just be like God intended, free of worry or anything else.

When I walk through the gates at the Magic Kingdom, I'm eight. When I watch Star Wars (In any way shape or form, and yes even Episode I) I'm eight. When I see TRON, or any other Disney movies from around the same time, (The Black Hole?) I'm eight.

When I went to see TRON: Legacy, I was eight again. I thought it might just be a movie, a cheesy kind of a throwback to the kind of fun that I had with TRON as a kid (And who didn't want to own Flynn's Arcade right??) I liked that some of the original characters were involved, that it was a continuation (much like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) where the sequel comes years later, but they allow for the passage of time and allow the actors to get older rather than replace them and try to explain why their nose looks different (or worse ignoring it) and I really liked the ways they paid homage to the original film. I was thinking about all of that, about ways it might fit with the original story, and then it started, and I was eight. The film critic in me was silenced by reckless gnomes made of evil jelly pudding that captured it and stuffed it into a mayonnaise jar until I could successfully see and enjoy the movie, and have time to go to the bathroom afterwards. (Man those drinks got big at the movies!)

Now I can kind of pick it apart and see where I would have done something different, or ask why they might include this or that, and then there they are again, the gnomes arrive and beat my inner critic into submission, because as I think, and daydream about the environment in the film, and the story, regardless of how old I've gotten, or how old Jeff Bridges is now, suddenly I'm eight again, and everything is forgotten.

Thank you Disney, for Tron Legacy.

Now it's time to blow out the Tomorrowland Speedway at Magic Kingdom and put in some light cycles!