I am Unafraid of Rotten Tomatoes

I plan to see Tron: Legacy in the theater. I know it’s getting bad reviews. One of the President / Also-a-Customer founder-members of this blog has a position on the use of CG “salt” in a movie. His position is that the Star Wars prequels are a creation of pure salt. I disagree. The Star Wars prequels are a bouillabaisse gone bad: over salted as hell to hide the flavor of contaminated shellfish. The first Tron was a creation of pure salt: a beautiful inorganic structure, as perfect as a crystalline crystal. I loved Tron.

There is also a sniffling, douchebaggy position that likes to hold spectacle/popcorn/explode-a-ganza movies to some kind of Dan Day Lewis acting standard. This is like complaining that they changed the recipe for steak tips at the The 99. If you are getting steak for $5.99, there is something you need to know: you are eating a steak that cost $5.99. Some people complained that the plot was paper-thin in Jurassic Park II* (49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). And it was. But to be fair, I’m not sure there was a plot in Jurassic Park II so much as an arbitrary sequence of semi-logic, contrived to run a boat filled with kickass FX into Port of San Diego.  (I think it was the also only time Vince Vaughn tried to play a character that gave a shit about anything other than Vince Vaughn.) But the reason I went to see Jurassic Park II – the only reason – was to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex rex run ripshit through downtown San Diego. It took a long time too long for that ship to finally hit the docks, but it was worth the wait.

David Edelstein – who’s opinion I very often agree with – said that Tron: Legacy was an extraordinarily bad film, and that I should send people that I loathe to see it. And that it reminded him of “Disco Night at the High Life Ran Tan.” (You understand what he means even though you have no idea what he’s saying?) And that he thinks it has given him a brain tumor.

If Tron was an inert polyhedron, then Tron: Legacy looks to be a silicon-based life form. I’m prepared for the tumor.

* Roger Ebert said this of Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, “It can be said that the creatures in this film transcend any visible signs of special effects and seem to walk the earth, but the same realism isn’t brought to the human characters, who are bound by plot conventions and action formulas.” Since we’re working a theme.