An Unexpected Sci-Fi Franchise Set The Standard For The Super-Safe Reboot

In some ways, Tron: Legacy is the perfect reboot. That is, we define narrative perfection like a mathematical equation or a strict recipe. And although the idea of remakes or reimagining of preexisting genre worlds has been around for a long, long time, the word “reboot” shot to everyday prominence after 2005, being used to describe both Batman Begins and the 2009 Star Trek film. In 2010, Tron: Legacy entered into that cultural moment, technically, as a sequel to the 1982 film, Tron, but because 28 years had passed, Legacy was basically a reboot, too: a sequel that also is trying to bring back an entire franchise, without making it too hard on casual viewers.

And, 15 years after its release on December 17, 2010, Tron: Legacy curiously holds up. Part of the reason for its watchability is the fact that, in many ways, this film firmly established the soft reboot formula, which continues, for better or worse, to this day.

If you really want to make certain types of movie buffs mad, be sure to refer to director Joseph Kosinski as the mastermind behind Tron: Legacy, and not the guy who did Top Gun: Maverick or F1: The Movie. And yet, with Tron: Legacy, Kosinski basically does exactly what he did so successfully on Top Gun: Maverick, when it was finally released in 2022. And that trick is: remake the original movie, add some younger characters, and establish your film as the new starting point for this narrative.

Tron: Legacy fully embraces the, um, legacy of the original film, but, smartly, adds a missing story to fill in the gap: At some point between Tron and this film, brilliant programmer and game designer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared, leaving his young son, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), with a ton of daddy issues. This is basically the same trick that The Force Awakens used in 2015, with the phrase “Luke Skywalker is missing.” And like Tron: Legacy, The Force Awakens threw in a new decades-long backstory, a nice father figure (Han Solo/Alan Bradley), and the search for another father figure who, last time we saw him, was a super young guy (Luke Skywalker/Kevin Flynn). Plus, like The Force Awakens, Tron: Legacy also follows the story beats of the original film, and does so unashamedly, approaching the structure with an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” level of sameness.

The thing is, Tron: Legacy is probably a better reboot than The Force Awakens, or the recently very safe Alien: Romulus, the most recent example of this particular very-safe reboot franchise formula. And the reason why Legacy is better than either of those two films is simply that there is way less at stake, culturally. With TFA, there was a ton of pressure on the film to not mess up Star Wars, because Star Wars is so big and important in the hearts and minds of millions. This is true, maybe to a lesser extent, of things like Top Gun and Alien, or Ghostbusters, but when it comes to Tron, the threat of “messing it up” was (and is) so low that it’s almost cute that Tron: Legacy tried so hard to be faithful.

To put it more simply: Tron: Legacy could have been a more radical reboot or reinvention, perhaps in the mold of the 2003 Battlestar Galactica. But because its rules and narrative are a continuation of the 1982 film — complete with explanations for what happened to the Grid, what happened to Flynn, and even what happened to Tron himself (Bruce Boxlientier) — anything audacious or new about Legacy is tempered with nostalgia for something that only really hardcore Tron heads cared about.

And yet, Legacy also created a kind of new standard not just for this franchise’s storytelling, but also for the aesthetic of Tron in the 21st century. While this year’s misunderstood Tron: Ares is, in some ways, narratively, visually, and sonically superior to Legacy, that film didn’t try to reinvent the look of the Tron world at all. Instead, the upgraded Legacy suits and tech became the foundation for what Ares did, proving, in a subtle way, that what we think of when we think of Tron today is mostly the production design of Legacy, not the original film. If someone had suggested in the 1990s that Daft Punk or Nine Inch Nails might do the score for a Tron sequel, it would have seemed exciting and transgressive, but in 2010, this kind of thing just makes sense.

If anything, the problem with Legacy today is that it oddly didn’t really open up the door for a direct sequel, at least not one that felt urgent. Again, this problem exists in other perfectly executed super-safe reboots; Ghostbusters: Afterlife was pretty solid, Frozen Empire, not as great. Star Trek in 2009, nearly universally beloved; Star Trek Into Darkness, in 2013, not so much.

But with Tron: Legacy, the problem is so much worse because again, at least with those other big franchises, the cultural stakes are higher. By being almost too polite about the source material, Tron: Legacy failed to create a sense of urgency for a hypothetical sequel, which is probably why we didn’t get one until 15 years later, and that sequel (Ares) was another kind of reboot. The lessons of Legacy today are clear: You can make a pretty solid movie based on a preexisting IP, and avoid messing it up.

But for whatever reason, the idea that you’re relaunching a franchise at the same time is tenous. Only hardcore Tron fans were clamoring for Tron: Legacy 2, and today, the box office performance of Ares makes one wonder if this trip to the Grid could have been a little bit riskier.

Tron: Legacy streams on Disney+.