Trivia / TRON: Legacy

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• Acting for Two: As in the previous film, Bruce Boxleitner plays Alan Bradley and Tron, and Jeff Bridges plays both Kevin Flynn and Clu. In both cases, as well as a flashback scene with Flynn, CGI is used to de-age the actors for their computer counterparts.
• Actor Allusion: Some of Flynn's casual jargon and meditative nature recalls a certain other Jeff Bridges character.
  Flynn: ...You're really... (Beat) You're messing with my Zen thing, man...
• Creator Backlash: Not towards the film itself, but Jeff Bridges expressed dissatisfaction with the look of Clu's Digital De-Aging:
  "I had to see myself as a young guy or as another character, but the same guy, but it was gonna be digitally created. I think it was [de-aging], but I didn’t like the way I looked in it; I felt like I looked more like Bill Maher than myself; it was kind of bizarre."
• Cut Song: "Computerized" was made with Daft Punk's backing and Jay-Z's rapping. The duo wasn't satisfied with the end result and the song never made the soundtrack, though the backing part was recycled into Sam's Leitmotif
• Defictionalization: If you are one of five lucky people, you can own your very own street-legal Light Cycle.
  • As a Viral Marketing tie-in at San Diego Comic Con in 2009 and 2010, a full arcade was constructed, with all games on free play (including an actual Space Paranoids game), culminating with a reveal of a new Light Cycle in 2009, the reveal of a full recreation of the End of Line club in 2010.
• Licensed Pinball Table: The TRON: Legacy pinball.
• The Merch: Classier and more expensive than usual, and in a Hollywood Meido cafe to boot (limited time only)!
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The audience cheering in the disk wars scene was recorded using attendees of a Tron panel at ComicCon.
• Orphaned Series: Just as the sequel to Legacy would start production in 2015, Disney pulled the plug, reportedly because of Tomorrowland underperforming....until 2020 anyway, when it was revealed that the project would be brought back and Disney is definitely planning on continuing so with everyone, including newcomer Jared Leto.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the French dub, Jean-Yves Chatelais replaced Alain Dorval as Kevin Flynn.
  • In the Japanese dub, Hōchū Ōtsuka voices Alan Bradley and Tron instead of Hiroshi Tsuchida, and Tsutomu Isobe voices Kevin Flynn and Clu instead of Jurota Kosugi.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Michael Sheen was so eager to join Legacy, being a huge fan of the original, that his agents actually had to hide his fandom from Disney so the actor wouldn't get lowballed for it.
  • Daft Punk had a lot of questions for the Disney representatives who approached them about the soundtrack. The pair, unsurprisingly, turned out to be raging fanboys who wanted to know if it would be done "right". The Disney execs admitted that they felt like the musicians were interviewing them for the job, not the other way around.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The pinball game includes three soundtracks from Daft Punk.
• Recycled Script: A surprising amount of plot elements from TRON 2.0, the discredited sequel, match the movie. Son of the original leads? Check. Running through cyberspace looking for his dad? Check. Drafted to the lightcycle arena deathmatch and rescued by a mysterious female Program? Check. Flynn gone missing in both timelines and no-one knows where Tron himself vanished to? Check...
• Referenced by...:
  • TRON: Legacy appears as a level in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], called The Grid; while it's mostly unrelated to "Space Paranoids" from Kingdom Hearts II, there is a minor connection between the two worlds when playing as Sora. Rinzler also serves as a boss in the game.
  • Smosh's "unedited leaked footages" of the film. Hilarity Ensues.
• Role Reprise:
  • Jeff Bridges returning as Kevin Flynn, aged appropriately, though digitally made to look younger in flashbacks and also while portraying Clu.
  • Plus, Bruce Boxleitner returns as Alan Bradley and Tron. His digital de-aging process was not as detailed as Bridges', though. Fair enough, considering the fact that younger Alan Bradley is only seen in TV screens and Tron in flashback sequences. Also we don't see his face behind the helmet, while concealed as Rinzler.
• Saved from Development Hell: After years in development hell, the first indication that Disney was serious about creating a sequel was the showing of a "VFX Concept Test" teaser at Comic-Con 2008. The teaser showed the updated light-cycles, and revealed Jeff Bridges as Flynn and Clu. The title revealed was "TR2N", but by the time the teaser was released (officially) online several months later, the title had been changed to "TRON: Legacy".
• Sequel Gap: 28 years after the original. Given more than a decade has passed since, the proposed third part also qualifies if it ever leaves Development Hell.
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: The Legacy toys are outstandingly accurate to their on-screen depictions, with the only hiccup being the three-man Light Jet being scaled down for cost and size reasons. The Light Cycle even includes the air brakes as a feature.
• Star-Making Role: While they're not exactly huge stars, both Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde started appearing in several more high-profile movies after their roles in this film.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Many in-world examples in the Grid. The Light Cycle duels are now in multilevel, obstacle-strewn arenas (with bikes that can move omnidirectionally, slow and even stop), the Recognizers are much more detailed, the Solar Sailers have become trains, and programs have Butterfly Parachutes.
  • The Grid itself. Back in The '80s, when Flynn built it, it was a multi-millon-dollar supercomputer that he used to revolutionize all of ENCOM's software, the source of his fortune. 2011? Sam puts the entire thing on a memory card and wears it as a necklace the size of a common SD card!^note SanDisk had recently introduced 512GB full size SDXC and 128GB microSDXC cards, pricey for sure, but to store 512GB of data using 80's tech you do need a truck full of hard drives, which need a datacenter worth of servers to make them all run properly.
  • Also averted, as the Grid servers have been isolated from the world at large, so no Internet.
  • At one point, Sam casually mentions WiFi and Kevin replies "What's WiFi?" He's been stuck on the grid since before WiFi became commonplace. However, when Sam explains, he smiles and notes that he thought of it back in 1985.
    • 1985 is a Genius Bonus because that is the year the FCC released the 2.4 GHz band. Someone who followed tech news back then might very well have thought of using it for digital communications.
  • In addition to the above, improvements in computer technology in the TRON universe, just as in the real world, would make it reasonable to expect that humanoids, vehicles, water, even simulated weather would be better depicted than as seen in the original film. If nothing else, the programs no longer need to wear goofy hats and no longer look facially like something out of a 1920 silent German Expressionist film.
• Wag the Director: Olivia Wilde was very committed to her character, to the point that she influenced everything from her appearance to preventing her from being a Satellite Love Interest.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Reportedly, deadmau5 was under consideration to compose the score for the film. According to him, had he been offered the job and found out that Daft Punk was being considered, he would have given the job to them.
  • A planned 2017 sequel has been scrapped from a combination of factors, one of which being the flopping of Tomorrowland, another big-budget Disney sci-fi action film (Legacy barely turned a profit for Disney, who may not have been eager to throw another $150 million for another TRON). Also cited is a crowded studio schedule; with the current game plan being built around year-round tentpoles of Marvel, Star Wars, and live-action Disney adaptations, there might have been no room to properly schedule and market TRON in the face of heavy competition. On the other hand, the writers have said the third movie is "cryogenic frozen", but Disney has shown thoughts on rebooting the series and have Jared Leto play a role. This would come to not pass by Disney instead decided to Take a Third Option by continuing where Legacy left off, but still including Leto for the role.

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