Like most malevolent forces, Disney had quite a good 2010. After scorching the fur of fun from the corpse of Alice in Wonderland with retrospectively applied 3D it fuelled kidiocy like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in the summer, leaving Pixar to clean up the mess with Toy Story 3. Although by association this triumph became the dainty silk handkerchief which Mickey Mouse used to wipe the blood of non-Aryan children from his gore-steeped snout, before pushing aside his paunch to eye up Minnie as she wept silently at the foot of his Goofy-skin throne. Which is a shame.

At the end of the year the House of Heir Mouse chose to reboot Tron, giving it the suitably techy subtitle ‘Legacy’ which conveniently links in with the other themes of the film in a faintly clever way. A bit like when a pet shop owner promotes a bird seed sale by describing discount produce as ‘Cheep’. Or ‘Sale- This “beak” only’. Or ‘A “bird” off on every-“wing” in store’.  LOL*.

Tron Legacy starts with software CEO Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) telling his young son Sam a bedtime story in the late 1980s, essentially delivering a sketchy outline of the original film’s plot. He leaves his all-American spawn hanging on his words as he heads out on his motorbike, never to be seen again. His disappearance has a marked effect on young Sam’s upbringing and although he retains control of his father’s firm, ENCOM, as majority share holder, he wants to subvert the corporate stiffs who hold sway over its software output by giving away their products for free as a kind of open source, base jumping Robin Hood. It ends up making him look like an undercover apologist for software pirates and the culture of copying that has evolved since the original film was launched. This is a message that sits uneasily in a big-budget studio film, but it is only the start of Tron Legacy’s problems.

After sabotaging his company’s latest software launch, grown-up Sam (Garret Hedlund) returns to his father’s old office in an amusement arcade when it emerges that a page has been sent out from that derelict location. After finding a back room and fiddling irresponsibly with some knobs he is sucked into a digital world known as The Grid which his father created as a digital utopia and the 3D portion of the film can being in earnest.

Things look up for the movie at first as Sam is thrust straight into gladiatorial battles with flying discs with no explanation, which acts as an effective way of keeping the audience as confused as their main point of sympathy. After pixelating a few faceless opponents he is brought befores Clu, a sort of clone that is supposed to look like the horribly uncanny Jeff Bridges from the 80s but is about as convincing as a muppet. In fact a Jim Henson-style character would have been less out of place than the slightly wrong-looking facial animation used here. Clu quickly emerges as the antagonist who is seeking perfection in his own world and ultimately looking for a way of emerging from The Grid to take over the real one. But before all that he feels like testing Sam with some Light Cycle racing. Annoyingly the cycle fights have been drained of tension as, unlike in the original movie, they now move freely, leaving curved trails rather than the 90 degree snaps to the left or right that were necessitated by 1982’s CGI. At least we get something to look at.

Sam fights gamely (he rides a bike in real life and does a bit of parkour to establish his physical prowess before he ends up inside the machine) but is rescued by wonk-fringed outsider Quorra. She takes him beyond the main city of The Grid into the wasteland where his real father has been meditating/farting around for the last two decades since Clu went Light Mental**. Thus begins the films extended, boring second act which lasts too long and pulls the fun out of the movie like the brain through the nose of a dead Egyptian monarch.

What irks me most about Tron Legacy is the staggering lack of imagination which has been applied to the world of The Grid. The programs which inhabit it exhibit the same emotions as humans and aside from their glowing suits may as well be people from a real city. This renders pointless the whole concept of building a different, digital society that can approach perfection. Why not make the programs behave in an unexpected way? Why give them fears, why make them angry? Why give The Grid a night club run by Michael Sheen, apparently playing an insufferable imagining of David Bowie’s digital ghost? These normalising, human factors neutralise the inherent intrigue of virtual reality in the same way that the Matrix sequels managed after a promising first outing.

Oh, and a colour pallet which is based around about three hues might in theory create an oppressive atmosphere of a nightmarish neon purgatory but in reality make things look dull after a two hour slog. I never thought I’d want to go back to the forests of Pandora but even James Cameron’s “stick a few more limbs on a monkey/horse/dragon and paint it blue” approach to imagining another world in Avatar was more inventive than Tron Legacy’s bland attempt at creativity.

I’ve not even got into the plot holes, minor annoyances and incongruous hippyness of the ageing Jeff Bridges. And I don’t plan to. Tron Legacy is one of the few films I have ever seen that is actively lifted by its score. Assembled by Daft Punk, the soundtrack is stunning throughout, rarely relying on the traditional string hits and classical themes when a good dose of stomach rumbling electronica can get the job done more effectively. Although the deep bass blasts occasionally mirror Inception’s trumpet punch moments and it can feel a bit like you’re living in Moby’s wet dream it is almost worth going to see Tron Legacy just to hear the music which drives it as it was intended. Sadly ‘almost’ is the operative word, as those with little interest in an insubstantial burp of CGI or a concept album by French DJs will not find much to rouse them here.

*What sort of bastard uses LOL as punctuation? Answer: My entire generation.

**If you prefix any normal object/noun with ‘Light’ it becomes the Tron equivalent. Except Light Sabre. That would enrage the Lucassaurus.