Will ‘TRON 3’ Be Able to Avoid Disney Sci-Fi Mistakes?
By George Robbins
There is a lot going on these days in the movie industry, whether it be due to the state of affairs with movie theaters, movies being delayed which affects theaters, and movie productions resuming or being announced. Of those three things, the only normal one that we would see regardless of this pandemic is the resuming of productions and the announcements of new ones. Numerous new announcements have been made as of late which give us a great deal to look forward to over the next couple of years. A couple of announcements were made which pertained to the continued production of films people are looking forward to. Namely, one that has been trying very hard to get back on track, ‘Mission: Impossible 7,’ which will be resuming in September and they will be getting right back to work with no additional delay.
The company with the most amount of development happening, it seems, would be Disney which owns many other intellectual properties at this point. One of the biggest productions that is currently in the middle of being worked on is one that has been in development for 11 years at this point and that is ‘Avatar 2.’ James Cameron wanted to resume working as soon as he possibly could so that the movie could still make its 2021 release date. In order to succeed in doing this, Cameron took the opportunity given by New Zealand being the first country to completely rid itself of the virus and got his cast and crew there immediately. Although they had to be put into a 2-week quarantine, as per the standard for all who are traveling between countries, they still managed to get back to work only a couple of months after the pandemic was announced.
Another set of properties that Disney has under production are the upcoming Marvel Studios films for their upcoming Phase 4 and beyond releases. Somewhat recently it was announced that ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ would be allowed to resume production and this would allow them the opportunity to move forward with the filming from the end of July onward. This isn’t the only Marvel film to be discussed recently as ‘Ant-Man 3’ was announced to be starting development some time next June. Although the movie is in no way connected to the Phase 4 releases, it was revealed that they would be starting development for it next year. Another very recent announcement was the one that stated that after a decade, the development for another ‘TRON’ was in the works.
The idea for the creation of another ‘TRON’ movie was one that was discussed a number of times after the release of ‘Tron: Legacy’ in 2010. The following few years were tenuous and the idea was eventually scrapped in 2015 after the critical and box office failures of one of Disney’s films ‘Tomorrowland.’ There are plenty of issues they have to sort out before we can truly be excited about the new film with lead star Jared Leto. The stories of many Disney live-action Sci-Fi movies are something that don’t make a lot of sense most of the time and expect audiences to understand what is going on just from what is happening on screen. They often times lack the world-building necessary to get people invested in what is going on throughout the movie. If there is anything they should work on in the upcoming film it should be how they can naturally integrate more exposition into conversations without blatantly saying anything. This is an issue many Sci-Fi movies face, but if done correctly, we could end up with a film unlike anything ever seen before.