A crowd of about 200 people entered the TRON-iverse last Thursday night at the AMC theater at Universal Citywalk to partake in a worldwide promotional event: “TRON Night.” Disney Studios kicked off their 10-week countdown to the release of the highly anticipated sequel by offering fans a free 23-minute sneak peek of footage in IMAX 3D. The footage was seen in 50 countries including South Africa, Japan, Finland and Russia.
Before kicking off the showing, special guest and TRON creator Steven Lisberger gave a quick introduction and said that the reason it took so long to make the sequel was because “all the 10-year-olds who saw the original had to grow up and move into positions in the industry that would allow a film like this to be made.”
The bulk of the footage centered around Garrett Hedlund’s Sam Flynn. The first scene involved a conversation between Sam and Bruce Boxleitner’s Alan Bradley. Apparently, Bradley has received a page (yes, he still carries a pager), from Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn saying that “he’s cracked it.” What “it” is we don’t know. In the following scene, Sam rides his gray Ducati motorcycle to the dilapidated Flynn’s Arcade. After walking around, he sees the vintage TRON arcade game and drops a quarter into the slot. The quarter drops out of the machine and into some mysterious grooves carved in the wooden floor. Sam pushes the video game to the side to reveal his dad’s secret hideaway.
From there, we dive into some truly amazing 3D footage. Everything, yes, EVERYTHING inside the grid is shot in 3D that easily rivals Avatar in quality. A majority of the footage inside the grid contains battle sequences as Sam tries to survive the “Games” program. Olivia Wilde manages to break him out of the program and together the two go “off the grid” and arrive at Kevin Flynn’s peaceful sanctuary far, far away from the grid.
When we first see Kevin, we see the back of his head as he is meditating, his shaggy salt-and –pepper beard and hair indicating how much time has passed. When Wilde’s Quorra tells Kevin that he has a visitor, he responds with, “Quorra, you know we don’t have visitors.” As he turns and sees his son, he rises up, a flood of emotions etched across his face, and the two eventually embrace before Kevin says, “We’ll catch up,” and then awkwardly walks off into another room. Quorra explains that he never expected to see his son again.
The rest of the footage contained a montage of various battle and race sequences including a 3D motorcycle disc battle, a neon 3D car chase complete with 3D grenade explosions, and random shots from the movie of people yelling dialogue.
The overwhelming response from the preview night was highly positive. Word of mouth from the event should only help TRON: Legacy be one of our holiday season’s more massive hits. Find out more info about TRON:Legacy on our Fanboy Fix Guide including exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges and our exclusive cast interview.
How about you? Are you ready for another ride on the TRON machine? Did you attend TRON Night?
