The Disney reboot that absolutely “no one asked for” is officially a box office bomb after less than two weeks on theater screens, with rapidly declining ticket sales of just $103 million on a $180 million production budget — and probably half again as much on marketing.
How bad an opening was it, really? The Hollywood Reporter quoted biz insiders wondering whether Jared Leto’s days as a “boundary-pushing A-lister” are over after failing “to carry a franchise vehicle to the bank.”
But the biggest reveal from that HP report was right up top in the headline: “No One Asked for This Reboot.”
Indeed.
My question is, why did Disney bother?
The original Tron wasn’t bad, exactly. I went in with high hopes way back in 1982, but after the thrill of the lightcycle chase had worn off, that was about it for Tron and me. Well, except for the killer arcade game, of course.
It’s easy to forget now just how groundbreaking Tron was at the time. It was the first movie to make such extensive use of CGI, and perhaps the first to combine CGI and live-action elements — even if not always convincingly.
And I was its target audience — 13 years old, male, obsessed with sci-fi, technology, and videogames. If Tron couldn’t get me to go back for a second viewing, not even on VHS, then it was clearly lacking that popcorn sci-fi flick magic. I don’t mean to brag, but I saw The Empire Strikes Back three times in the first six days it was open.
That’s how Hollywood makes the big bucks: repeat business, usually mostly from young males.
And Another Thing: The arcade game remains a classic, and nobody seemed to care that the grid bugs game level is from a scene that was mostly cut from the original movie. Tron was probably the first movie that had the arcade game tie-in built in from the start of production, but in the last 40-plus years, Hollywood seems not to have learned one vital lesson. While a good movie idea can make a solid video game, a good video game idea only rarely translates well to movies or TV.
I’m reminded of another early Disney effort at live-action science fiction, The Black Hole from 1979.
The movie’s visual design remains striking, from its sleek killer robots to the flying skyscraper/chandelier look of the spaceship Palomino. Then there’s the all-star cast, headed up by Maximilian Schell, and featuring Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and even Ernest Borgnine.
But something about the whole production — starting with the script — felt like a throwback to an MGM Panavision epic from the 1950s. It was a bad fit for our post-Star Wars expectations, and the film fell flat at the box office.
Still, there’s an interesting premise deep inside The Black Hole, and it seems a miracle that Disney hasn’t tried to make it into a rebooted franchise property, too.
Or maybe some ambitious screenwriter is busy right now on Black Hole: The Other Side, and we should just be thankful that perhaps the failure of TRON: Ares will prevent it from ever being filmed.
So allow me to ask again: Why is — or perhaps I should ask was — this even a franchise to begin with?
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