My Two Cents on Tron: The Clone Wars
…sorry, Uprising.
Seriously. I don’t know how to feel about this show, and it’s not even out yet.
I mean, on the one hand, yay, more Tron! On the other hand…augh. Tron: The Clone Wars. (Now if it were actually written by Genndy Tartakovsky like the original, amazing Clone Wars animated shorts…can you imagine, guys?)
First of all, I am not looking forward to dealing with yet another case of Tron Continuity Plague and having to sort out whether I want to call it canon or keep some bits and leave the rest or just scrap the whole fucking thing while saying “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU DISNEY”. I mean, obviously I’m reserving most of my judgment until I actually see it, but ergh, I can feel the headache coming on already.
Second of all, and this is really the big one for me: the entire concept behind the show’s storyline is giving me hives. I am…really really not cool with the whole “Tron somehow escaped after being de-faced by Clu and is now secretly training up a replacement” thing. I find it really hard to swallow. If it had been something to the effect of “Tron had been suspicious of/bothered by Clu’s bullshit for some time (fits with Betrayal) and had already been in the process of training up Beck and forming Tronbledore’s Army, but then the Betrayal happened and he got ganked by Clu so now Beck has to step up to the plate”, see, I would be all over that shit. Double extra bonus points if every few episodes we got to see nasty little glimpses of Rinzler’s creation while Beck and his Uprising are out fighting the good fight. Buuuuuut I’m pretty 100% sure that’s not what we’re getting. Sigh.
Thirdly, I think I’d be a much happier camper if Beck-as-rebel-leader were more of his own character, rather than being picked out and groomed to be “the next Tron” to the point that he’s wearing Tron’s insignia. Though maybe they’re pulling a Samurai Sentai Shinkenger and Beck’s acting as a literal body double/distraction…IDK. I just don’t like the idea of someone straight-up replacing Tron, OK? :( Dude gets a shit deal as it is.
Finally, it all boils down to the Clone Wars thing. No matter what, we know how this story’s gonna end. It’s gonna be Evolution all over again…which means the writers are going to have to really work to make the characters compelling and get us invested in this story, even though we know rocks are gonna fall and everyone’s going to die. Will they succeed? Guess we’ll find out in April (provided it doesn’t get pushed back again…)
Anyway, now that I’ve written a novel skewering a show that doesn’t even exist yet…thoughts, Tron fandom?
