10 Movies Released Way Too Late To Make Sense

Tron has a lot in common with Blade Runner: both are cult classic sci-fi movies released in 1982, and both exploited their cult status to receive belated sequels a few years ago despite never having made anyone any money.

Boasting a similar budget to Blade Runner: 2049, Tron: Legacy did a little better at the global box office, managing a respectable (if not exactly earth-shattering) $400 million and somewhat justifying Disney’s decision to greenlight it.

Unfortunately, the style-over-substance issue is another thing the two flicks have in common. Created to capitalise on the burgeoning video games phenomenon in the early eighties, Tron was a landmark movie for its use of digital effects, which is pretty much all anyone remembers of it.

Tron: Legacy’s production design and effects are an effective, imaginative update of the original movie, managing to retain some of the iconic look of the cult classic while updating it for a 21st century cinema audience. However, 28 years is a long, long time: this isn’t 1982 anymore.

Tron: Legacy doesn’t take account of any of the seismic upheavals in technology or digital culture over the last three decades. It also exists in a post-Matrix cinematic landscape: its light cycles and Gladiators-style games appear twee by comparison with gun-toting superhero messiahs and unstoppable AIs.

Fundamentally, this is one sequel that needed to be made in the eighties to capitalise on its peculiarly eighties aesthetic. 2010, though? Not a prayer.