Touching a cult movie is a burden I never wish to bear nor would I wish it on anyone else. Cult movies are enshrined in a collective memory, carved in imagination that they become a reference against which all else is measured. The older the cult movie, the stronger its carving. The older the cult movie, the more fanatical its followers are. Cult movies are passion embodied and even more so when they are born out of an existing subculture. Big Fish, Willow and Legend are fantasy examples. Hackers, War Games and Tron tinker with cyberpunk, the sci-fi offshoot that drove the cultural background of hacker underground.
While the former can be revisited and remade while keeping their integrity, the latter doesn’t have this possibility. If fantasy worlds are craved for, are inspirational but remain untouchable, the sci-fi worlds are always just one step away and in some cases that step can be taken. Once we take the step, the mystery is dispelled and with it, part of the charm. What remains is that touch of melancholy we get when revisiting a childhood playground.
This best describes the feeling I got when watching Disney’s Tron Legacy, the remake of the cult movie of cyberpunk descent Tron. I am not going to pass judgement on the movie, others have done that (for better – our trusted Roger Ebert, of course and for worse, some others).
What I do want to say is that there is no way to remake a cult movie. On one hand, you could try to reinvented and get panned by the fanatical followers of the original. This might work if you invest enough time in it, ignore the source material and build a new story while rewording old concepts but in this case you might as well make a new movie altogether and break the link with the past entirely (and save yourself the cultist grief).
On the other hand, if you stay too true to an old source material, like the original Tron, you will find another reaction. The concepts that Tron brought have become all too familiar part of daily lives. The matrix behind technology has become metaphysical debate and is no longer the fantastic world of our imagination in Arthur C Clarke’s time of glory. The Programs and the Users have become us, in an almost symbiotic relationship where only the tech savvy survive. Even the least teach savvy of today find the conceptual rendition of Tron’s world both superfluous and pretentious.
And you know what? It’s natural. The step that separated Tron from today was made. On some level, the story can be used but it needs to be rendered in different concepts. From this point of view even The Matrix was late. In fact, one could say The Matrix was saved entirely by going the distance of finding its own terminology. But Tron Legacy needed to keep it in order to save the bridge to the past and it became its downfall. Visually, it is more than enjoyable – it is a real treat that revives vividly childhood dreams of that wondrous world beyond the chips and the boards. But dig deeper and you will find you don’t need to suspend your disbelief but the very knowledge you have become familair with in daily life.
