I’ll be honest: I did not actually see the original Tron until a few years ago. Even though it had aged a bit, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. It had spirit and style and originality that must have been startling in 1982. Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges are two of my favorite actors.

I just watched Legacy on streaming. I’m sure it was dazzling in the theater in 3-D but it looked pretty damned good on my iPad. The effects are not only dazzling, they are imaginative. The world had a clarity, a style and sense about it that is missing from the usual “see how much fiddly shit we can CGI” style that results in all film spaceships, robots and cities looking like CGI junk piles. The pulsating minimalistic score is fantastic and Jeff Bridges is, as always, wonderful.

Problems? Well, Garrett Hedlund isn’t very good in the lead role and his character is not written very well. Olivia Wilde has startling eyes and can act but her character is criminally underwritten. And there was way too little Bruce Boxleitner for my tastes. His single line as Tron: “I fight for the users”, sent a thrill through me that most of the movie lacked. It also dragged on a bit, especially at the end. (Spoiler warning). We all know Flynn doesn’t die; so the emotional impact was nil (and Hedlund’s acting didn’t convince me). CLU was a good villain, but also underwritten. It’s only Bridges’ performance that makes him in any ways memorable. A real motive — the inability to attain perfection or feeling abandoned by his creator — could have been introduced early and made him a much more, er, three-dimensional villain.

And that really gets to my main point. When I defended the Star Wars prequels, I said that the frustrating and angering thing about them was they were good movies that could have been great. Some more polish, some better acting, some better directing and they would stand tall next to the original trilogy. Tron: Legacy is cut from the same cloth. This should have been an astonishing movie. Instead it was merely good. A better actor in the lead and some better writing and characterization would have made this a must-see movie that blew Avatar out of the water and set a new high mark for 3-D movies. Instead, it’s merely good.

7/10. And I’m a fan so normal people should knock a point off that.