Hey folks, Harry here with news on the highly anticipated TRON LEGACY trailer which was selectively screened this morning around this country and beyond. From the sound of it, I really really hope it is in front of my screening of ALICE IN WONDERLAND in IMAX 3D this Monday, but that could possibly be, just my own personal idol masturbatory fantasy wish. Anyway - we had a host of spies write in with their coverage of having seen the trailer - so without further bs from me, here ya go...

Hi Harry,

I was one of the "lucky few" to get a ticket to today's Tron Legacy IMAX 3D event in London - via that viral pitcell.com site. Although you'll probably get loads of these, I thought I'd jot down some thoughts for you.

First, the rubs stuff:
- They made us wait a long, long time outside the screen. Too long.
- They only showed us "it" once.
- "It" wasn't long enough.

So what was "it".

That's where the brills stuff comes in:
- WE GOT TO SEE THE NEW TRON LEGACY TRAILER
- Due to timezone shenanigans, it turned out we were to the first audience in the world to see it.
- They gave us a "FLYNN LIVES" t-shirt.
- WE GOT TO SEE THE NEW TRON LEGACY TRAILER

Brief rundown of the trailer:
- A good deal of exposition from Bruce Boxleitner
- An introduction to the main character - Son of Flynn
- A lot of footage from the Tron-world.
- Remember the arcade from the original film? Remember the atmosphere in the arcade, with Flynn being king of his little place. That is what the Tron-world is now like.
- Son of Flynn is thrown into the world, and there is a very cool shot of the Encom laser rearing it's head behind him.

Sadly we only got to see it once which was disappointing, considering how long they made us wait.

But I think, from what I saw and remember, Tron Legacy is going to be great. At the very least, the visuals will be remarkable.

(If you use this, I'm Cosmosboy.)

All the best.

Thanks Cosmosboy, now let's see what Salvador Dalek thought:

Hiya Harry!!

Just got back from Toronto to lovely Hamilton, Ontario. I was invited on the spur of a moment to some kind of ultra secret Tron: Legacy event at the Scotiabank Imax theatre in Toronto. $20 round trip bus ticket later with my cheeks red with geeky bubbly anticipation. Cell phones or any electronic devices were strictly banned. We were even checked with metal detecting wands. Sounded pretty serious!

What could it possibly be???

Maybe a test screening! Maybe the first 20 minutes of the movie! With 3D stereo glasses mounted on my melon my party and I got nice seats middle row back.

The place was absolutely packed with nerds. Tall, lanky, wispy sideburned nerds. My beard was bristling with excitement.

The lights dimmed. It was about to start. So, what was this 1 hour bus trip and 20 minute walk through slushy Toronto for?

A couple minutes of brand new trailer!

Eh...disappointment. But COOL DISAPPOINTMENT!!

I'm getting a little bit more of a feel of the plot of the movie at this point. We all know it's revolving around Flynn's son. It starts with said son being told about his father being missing for 20 years. How Flynn was revolutionizing everything from computers to medicine. The son enters Flynn's arcade. He then goes behind the secret door behind the old Tron arcade game. Fires up a computer. A familiar laser rises behind him. Fires up.

Then we get the computer world!

It was very frantic from this point out. First thing we see is a full on Recognizer. It was badass. Lots more moving parts. The cockpit seemed to rise up the legs like an elevator. Inside we see Flynn Jr. We see a shot of Young Flynn (presumably Clu). We see a badass old Flynn with a posse of other programs behind him. It looks to me like Flynn totally owns the place. We see lots of frisbees being thrown. We see lots of light bikes smashing each other up. We see a light quad-bike getting in on the action. We see the gal from Bones laying on a pretty badass couch.

We also see some tap-dancing with a cane.

Hmmm, I should have brought a pen and paper with me to the theatre. They played the damn thing once and then it was time to leave.

GAH!

All in all the trailer was very fast paced and kinetic once we entered the computer world. Immediate thoughts are Flynn feels like an antagonist in this film. The look of the computer world feels a little different than the concept trailer that was first debuted at Comic Con...that being largely very dark. This trailer seemed the complete opposite. It was like going to The Apple Store actually. Everything was gleaming white and very bright.

Also on the way out we were given t-shirts that say 'Flynn Lives'. That didn't appease a lot of the lankier dweebs in the theatre. Most seemed pretty miffed that they were just treated to a dinky little trailer.

Dinky little trailer, but BLOODY AWESOME!!!!

Fuck yeah. TRON!

-Salvador Dalek

Ack... I really fucking want to see this now. This is torture and torment... Let's see what Sailor Mike thought:

You are probably being flooded with e-mails regarding this, but here it is:

Trailer, which is in 3-D opens with shot of Encom building.
Then Alan is talking to Flynn's son and says, "I've told you that I'd let you know if I ever had information about your missing father." He then says something about a call he got from Flynn's arcade, only the line has been dead for twenty years. There's a shot of Flynn's arcade, old and boarded up, with his son breaking in. He approaches the TRON video game and puts in a quarter. It falls out. He then finds a secret door, much like the door that opened on the "lightcycle video" a year ago. In the back is a secret room with a computer. He sits at the desk and the same lazer that "zapped" Kevin Flynn into the "GAME" Zaps Flynn Junior into the game.

The computer world is very much like what we saw in the teaser. We first get a shot of a recognizer which takes Flynn Jr, somewhere. We also get a shot of Olivia Wilde's character lounging on a chair dressed in an all black body suit. As a contrast, we see an absolutely gorgeous blonde woman walking towards the camera in a white body suit. We then see a dude with white hair who I thought was David Bowie with a guitar. I assume he's with Daft Punk. We then see Clu, Jeff Bridges' computer doppelganger, dressed in all black with yellow stripes getting off an elevator with a posse behind him. I think he's a gangster or something that runs the computer world.

The final segment shows Flynn Jr. walking down a hallway towards a lighted room (pitcell picture) as we hear something like "It's been a long time." We then see Kevin Flynn's eyes (same shot from the teaser). The trailer ends with the date the film opens and then a shot of two combatants on the light cycles bumping into eachother.

The mood of the trailer is definetly DARK. Throughout there's an electronic baseline which I assume is Daft Punk.

The trailer ran about two minutes and change; maybe less and left me wanting more. After which, the lights went on and security ushered us to the exits. All who attended were given FLYNN LIVES t-shirts, which made it worth it, I guess.

Sailor Mike

Egads - please - you're killing me.... no more... Well, here's one that's critical..

Hey Guys,

I came all the way from Jersey for Tron "Day" in NYC and all I got was this stupid fuckin T-Shirt.

the stupid fuckin T-Shirt

The only thing they showed was a new 2 minute teaser trailer, that's almost guaranteed to be attached to Alive in Wonderland in 6 days. While the footage was fantastic, the event itself was a colossal disappointment. Next time Disney should actually try and out do Cameron and Fox, not just replicate their idea as half-assed as possible.

CR

I agree. I know they had the trailer, but I really do feel like they should have put together a little behind the scenes thing to accompany this - perhaps something with the director, Lisberger and the Dude. That said, I'd be real happy to just experience the trailer right now. The good news is, everyone seems to really dig the trailer, they're just upset that they woke up early for something they didn't know what was, then just got a 2 minute trailer - that they seem sure will be in front of ALICE IN WONDERLAND - hope they're right. Here's another...

Hey Harry,

Just got back from the Tron Legacy trailer screening at the Lincoln Center IMAX 3-D here in New York City.

So I managed to score a ticket from the http://pitcell.com/ website on Thursday. Met my friend early this morning and headed over to Lincoln Center.

They checked my name off a list and then we had to be searched with metal detectors. They took everyone's cell phones, but it did mention on the ticket not to bring them so I left mine at home.

They handed out black FLYNN LIVES t-shirts.

At exactly 10 am they dimmed the lights and started the trailer. And I have to say the trailer looked amazing.

Started off with Flynn's Son talking to some man about finding his father. They presume Flynn to be dead, so the Son inherits Flynn's Arcade. They show the Son racing through the streets on a motorcycle - cutting corners sharply and jumping over curbs. The Son pulls up to Flynn's Arcade which looks like it has been shut down for years. He enters the arcade and turns on the power which lights up all the old video game cabinets. The Son walks over to the Tron machine and puts a quarter into it. The quarter falls right through the coin slot and onto the ground. When the Son bends over to pick it up he notices grooves on the floor and realizes the Tron cabinet can be moved. It opens up like a door and there is a secret computer room on the other side. The room appears to have similar Master Control Program desk console that Ed Dillinger had in his office. The Son boots up the dust covered machine and behind him the Laser from the ENCOM labatory rises up and powers on. We do not get see the Son getting digitized, but in the very next shot we are in the digital world and they show an updated look Recognizer slowly landing. The CGI looked beautiful. There were more shots of various digital world locations. I do not remember exactly what was said but we hear the Son and Flynn talking about how it was good to see each other again. During this they showed what looked like a DISC battle arena. Various characters throwing Discs at each other and one character who was wielding dual discs. They also showed a bit of Light Cycles racing around. There is a shot of (I'm assuming) Olivia Wilde's digital character lounging on a couch. Another shot of a man in Yellow (I couldn't tell if it was Flynn) walking with a group of Red Characters behind him. They also showed one shot of Flynn's face - the same blurry video shot that was used in the already released trailer. Over all of this the Daft Punk score was playing - the same score that's been floating around the internet. At the very end of the trailer we see the Son in a blue light cycle cutting off a red light cycle and it disintegrates.

And that was it. As soon as it was over they kicked everyone out of the theater. I was expecting a little more - perhaps extra footage or at the very least some kind of introduction. Considering this is the same trailer that will be shown in front of Alice in Wonderland, this event was kind of pointless except for the free t-shirt.

Thanks,
Erik Kang

See - Erik really dug it, but was disappointed that it was just a standard length trailer. And check out Supergirl below...

Hey Harry,

"That's the most excited I'll ever to be to see Bruce Boxleitner," my friend said when we left the TRON LEGACY preview this morning in Toronto. And I'd say if that's the reaction generated by your hype machine, your hype machine is broken.

Maybe AVATAR DAY spoiled us, but when I schlepp down to the IMAX screen at 9:30 on a Saturday morning to see a 3D sneak preview of a major motion picture, I expect some serious meat, not a 90-second trailer that's probably gonna be on the internet in a few days. Unfortunately, the latter is what we got.

It's actually a pretty good trailer, and if I'd seen it under normal circumstances I'd probably have loved it. As expected, Flynn's kid - who can ride motorcycles! Foreshadowing! - goes looking for his daddy. Bruce Boxleitner shows up and says he got a phone call from the old Flynn's Arcade, which has been closed for decades. Flynn Jr. goes to the arcade, sits with his back to one of those big obvious laser dealies that digitized his dad way back when, and before you can say TRON!, he's in the computer universe. Which looks largely like we remember it, except everything is up to Macintosh 2010 spec, not Atari 1982. The film looks amazing, moody and rusty in the real world, and big and badass in the computer world. That hottie from HOUSE is in it, so that's good. And there's a couple seconds of lightcycle chase right at the end of the trailer, where the effects look to have been further developed since the Comic Con preview (which already looked great).

And then it ends. Goes dead. Our crowd actually burst into disgruntled laughter. We weren't given a lot of information here - we didn't know if we were seeing the whole movie, ten minutes of the movie, or a scene from the movie... but I can guarantee that nobody in that theatre thought we were seeing just a regular old trailer. We were dispatched into the snow with free FLYNN LIVES t-shirts, and that was that.

Someone made a PR mistake here. I have no idea if TRON LEGACY will be awesome or awful or somewhere in between, but you don't generate positive buzz by pissing off your target market by blowing away a couple of hours of a Saturday morning on a 90-second trailer. And like my mama says, if you can piss of Canadians, you can piss off anybody.

If you use this, call me Supergirl.

So, the lesson? If you want to do this sort of promotion - let the audience know AHEAD of time that they are lining up for a 90 second trailer that will be screened once only. Otherwise, you risk backlash like this. When you get an audience to line up for hours for the great unknown... SPOIL THE FUCK OUT OF THE AUDIENCE. Hit them with so much more than they were expecting. Send cast members to the various locations that were doing this. Do a presentation. Have autographed merch. Otherwise - you'll get some enthusiastic trailer reviews with bitter after tastes. And that's not really what you wanted... is it?