By Jason Apuzzo. Tomorrow brings Tron: Legacy, Disney’s $320 million attempt (including marketing costs) to ‘reboot’ a sci-fi franchise that never was. Naturally we will be reviewing it here at Libertas.
In the meantime, I’m wondering whether Tron will even be as good as this relatively quiet little sci-fi short above, called “Modern Times,” that was apparently made by some UK filmmakers for peanuts. It just arrived on Vimeo about a week ago.
And below, incidentally, I’ve put the Tron-ified Modern Times from Charlie Chaplin that filmmaker Nick Tierce did recently for the AintItCoolNews contest.
Posted on December 16th, 2010 at 12:04pm.
Nice short (the “Modern Times” one), and those are some pretty great special effects. I would have really liked this short except for two things: I was turned off the minute the slacker dude/projectionist showed up. And I was annoyed by the fact there were almost no women in this.
Why does the lead guy have to be another of those knit-cap wearing, unshaven slacker dudes that we see absolutely everywhere? They’re completely unappealing. And the apple hanging out of his mouth just made him look like a stuck pig. Also, he seemed to have some kind of lame peace sign on his cap, which I’m also sick and tired of seeing everywhere.
And there was only one woman in the entire short, including in the audience watching the film. Are there no women in the future?
Actually, had this film been more realistic, it probably would’ve shown the guy projecting The Home Shopping Network on the moon.
Beyond that, yes, your criticisms are certainly valid.
I watched both of these clips and the special effects are good, but I don’t like what I see. I wouldn’t waste my time watching anything like this. I like good sci-fi films, and this is not my cup of tea.
I like both shorts. They are just experiments.
It’s funny, but I know a young mechanical engineer and a mathematician only a few years out of GaTech that would not have to dress up to play the “slacker” projectionist. Both are hard working, conservative about all the stuff that matters, married or just about to be married, both under the age of 23, and they could care less about how they look. They dress like the projectionist just because the clothes were cheap, comfortable and they meet a functional need. Both individuals have this least entropy approach to minor things that confuses and even angers some older people. Most would call them nerds, slackers or worse, but they are two of only a handful of young people I know who are “awake.” I don’t think you could pull off their characters on film, but they are the types who would make a space station orbiting the moon work.