After mulling it over for a few hours, I was able to figure out exactly what was bothering me about the design execution.

In the original, the look and feel of “the grid” was largely B&W with an explosion of artificial color and light. It also appeared that a lot of that footage may have been shot on grainy stock, giving it an old film noir look. The original Tron definitely had a hard-boiled edge to it in both story and style. Like film-noir, but futuristic. Also, there were elements of Casablanca, Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon in the story.

This was very similar in concept to Blade Runner, which came out the same year (a week earlier), but completely different in execution. Blade Runner gets most of the credit for creating “Cyber Noir,” but Tron’s contribution can’t be underestimated.

The new grid looks as though they put very little thought into it. Just make it look cool. I think that’s what I was missing. The thought. The purpose. The meaning beyond what I’m seeing on the screen.

Nowadays computer graphics – improved over the intervening decades – are the norm, rather than a unique selling point. If you’re planning a modern sequel to an old film whose principal selling point was its pioneering use of computerised animation, then, at a time when computerised animation is no longer considered avant-garde, you need to have some other reason for people to watch your film.

I think the producers of ‘Legacy’ might have missed a trick by going for ‘perfect’ graphics rather than staying with the retro-tackiness of the original, which gave it so much of its character.