(Update: my comment, below, led to me being banned from io9.com sooo. fuck.)
Just wrote my angry retort to all the haters of the world. Focusing on Charlie Jane Anders at io9, who I actually dig as a contributor.
looks like my account there may not post my retort (they’ve disabled facebook logins, and looks like my direct login was disabled/deleted?).
anywho. In response to this rather lame review, here are some more ranting thoughts on the movie:
Charlie Jane Anders Review is Colossal Failure of Movie-Criticism.
I wish I could find a site where people love scifi, and maybe a wise critic could dig beneath the easy-to-digest surface of Tron Legacy’s minimal dialogue to offer up a broad dissection of all the works this movie is referencing, from Asimov to Verne. OH WAIT io9 is supposed to be that site! SHIT! where did this horrible popcorn dismissal review come from?
to be more specific:
– Not sure what you mean by mumbo jumbo. I assume this is the standard popcorn “I didn’t understand the philosophical points, so I’ll just point at them and laugh until they go away” bullshit. Which seems to be what american snobs throw at whatever challenges them to think these days.
Maybe you meant lines like “If the Users can no longer help us, we’re lost.” or “All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible.” or “If I didn’t have a User, then who wrote me?”
oh wait, you were saying the original movie DIDN’T have mumbo jumbo?
A movie about how we’re all slaves the system, forgotten by the gods that created us? But our faith could be the only thing to inspire us to stop playing games and rebel? Not to mention the crazy hippie idea that even our slavish work in computers is imbued with bits of our souls?
You must have been making that mumbo jumbo crack because you have no grounds for your argument that this is a dumb film?
– The action sequences are stunning explorations of 3D space. Sigh. Just like his commercials, Kosinski has a fascinating sense of how to move the camera. critical error.
– Clearly you just want to hate this movie. But the criticism you should be leveling is: “So much of the movie was cut short before it got to the point. It is left swamped with ambiguities.”
These voids of ambiguities, interspersed with too-brief ruminations and quips, leaves plenty of space for you to turn your brain off and ignore all the goods that are actually waiting there in the story. But they also leave space to rewatch (rematch?) the movie and wonder at the other explanations which are possible.
As a critic, you fail when you say there’s nothing there to dig into. If you didn’t want to dig, maybe take a nap and try again before you write your review?
this wasn’t a fun-but-dumb movie. it was a excessively deep movie, which strives to focus on action and father-child issues instead of holding your hand through all the philosophy. I could accept the criticism that it tried to do too much, but not the criticism that it didn’t try anything.
– it is also a major failure, as a critic, to say you wanted this other movie, over here (about the internet, as you say. or just a fun goofy romp). This is like walking into a japanese restaurant and complaining that you really wanted to eat italian food. That’s not a valid criticism. You can’t criticize a movie by ignoring what you were given. You make no mention of fathers, sons, daughters, and how these familial relationships relate to societal systems of control. Or even how a family is kind of like it’s own separate isolated system, waiting to be unleashed into a greater world.
Why is there no mention of the themes of : controlling your creation? methods of fighting the system? enjoying the unexpected fruits of your labors? The notion that one’s definition of “perfection” should allow for chaos? and choosing whether you prefer your life’s work or your philosophies to be the legacy you leave to your children?
– You also don’t seem to pick up on all the ways in which this movie exists in an alternate reality where the 80s concept of a rockstar Hacker still exists. This movie has a very cool strange love affair going on with 80s cinema, from it’s pacing to it’s music (Journey’ Separate Ways and Eurythmics Sweet Dreams being so heavily featured, when sam explores the arcade, seemed like a master stroke. So good I wonder if some other director suggested it), to it’s technology (no internet, but pagers and touch tablets and an abundance of shiny perfect skyscrapers). it quietly carves out it’s own alternate universe for the franchise to thrive in.
– In the end, I feel you are just another CLU, rejecting something you didn’t understand and don’t wish to continue. ugh. I hope your reality collapses in on itself soon. … Go hug your dad?
Man I Hated that i09 post, seems like they are becoming more and more cynical everyday – they blocked my comments as well. I’m thinking about giving them up for good.
I feel kinda bad for posting this comment/rant though. I worry that it’s too personal an attack and the reviewer might have been all crazy insulted. wasn’t my plan really, just wanted to rail at all the negative reviews I’ve spotted, and thought io9 would be the best place to try and write a real response. I thought it was clever to rant about hoping they hug their father and it ends their reality, like a nod to the film. but hell, maybe this reviewers dad just died. stupid of me.
Was also kinda cracking out on love for the film. maybe a little too zealous in demanding people take the film more seriously.
Anywho. kinda fucked up my whole day, worrying over this. sigh.
So, yeah, I’m definitely planning to give up on io9. Despite my clumsy bullshit way of writing it, i’m seriously pissed that my lengthy attempt at an intelligent comment led to me being banned.
if you spot a comparable scifi website/community out there somewhere (someday?), please do come back and post about it! I have no ideas.
I do agree that the review angered me because of many of the points you mentioned. In particular, saying that “most of the action sequences are dull, and filmed in a way that drains a lot of the excitement out of them,” then talking about how he’d gladly watch, “Vin Diesel make a sandwich.” I thought the action sequences were vibrant and exciting. How can he not? But the real thing that gets my goat is his revelation that he wanted a different movie from the get-go. I find it a cool plot device that the world is a self-contained server that’s been running (festering? simmering?) all this time in a secret location. It’s not Sam going into the crazy internet cyberspace that Charlie wants to see visual allegories for, it’s Sam going into a secret world, a hidden world, a lost world. One that we and he discover together as it unfolds. Regardless of if I thought that was cool or not, that’s what the movie is and rereading the beginning of the review it’s clear that the reviewer was pissed from the outset that this was not Tron vs. The Internet. It’s not the movie you thought it would be. SO BE IT. State that, but then move on to discuss the movie on it’s own terms for what it IS. THAT type of stuff really bothers me. Can you tell/ AAAAARRGGGH!!! 🙂