We've seen the 23 minutes of footage of Tron: Legacy that's being screened in cinemas this very day. And here's what we thought...
I am a geek in LA. I have endured in-flight curries, tiny tubes of toothpaste, a dreadful pan-and-scan version of Clash Of The Titans, and almost 5,000 miles of travel to attend a special Tron: Legacy press day at Digital Domain in Southern California.
Along with around two dozen other writers, bloggers and hacks, I've been flown in to view approximately 20 minutes' footage from Joseph Kosinski's forthcoming Tron: Legacy, and the sense of anticipation, as we arrive, is electrifying.
It's the material that's just been screened as part of the Tron: Legacy preview screenings around the globe. And now I'm allowed to talk about it.
Still pink-eyed with jet lag, we're bundled into a colossal van and driven to Digital Domain's unassuming headquarters in Venice. For those unfamiliar with the name, Digital Domain originally began as a special effects house for James Cameron, working on box office smash True Lies before bringing its talents to bear on such movies as Transformers, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and 2012.
For fans of the original Tron, the groundbreaking 1982 movie directed by Steven Lisberger, Tron: Legacy, whose 1500 effects shots are the work of Digital Domain, will serve as a love letter to a long-gone 80s childhood. At the very least, it updates a property whose themes of cyberspace and videogames are more relevant than ever, breathing new life into the Tron premise with cutting edge 3D graphics and cool, videogame-influenced design.
Indeed, at least three of Tron: Legacy's personnel have a solid education in one discipline of design or another. Director Joseph Kosinski was initially an architect, concept designer David Levy started out in videogames, while vehicle designer Daniel Simon provided on real-world car designs for Volkswagen.
This schooled design sensibility is evident in everything we've seen of Tron: Legacy so far, from Simon's svelte, sympathetic updating of Syd Mead's classic light cycle designs, to the sexy blue hues of the film's armada of promo posters so far released.
Startling visuals would mean nothing without an exemplary script, of course, and the news that Lost's Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis have had a hand in writing Legacy's screenplay affords the possibility that Legacy could have a back story as absorbing as its computer effects.
As we're ushered into Digital Domain's screening area, the temperature outside reaches the level of a kiln. Inside, the air of expectation is equally high.
We don our 3D glasses and view a trailer that most of us have seen several times already. But seen on a big screen, with big sound, and with stereo specs, Tron: Legacy's trailer takes on a new, weightier tone.
It's only when it's seen in this kind of environment that the drama of Legacy's sound and visuals become truly apparent. And as spectacular as its 3D effects are, the shining beacon is surely Daft Punk's extraordinarily evocative score, which marries 80s electronica with an especially memorable orchestral arrangement that rivals the summer's Inception for sheer bombastic aggression.
The trailer also establishes, in a few brief vignettes, Legacy's premise. Following the events of the first movie, Kevin Flynn's experiences inside the Grid have been converted into a hugely popular videogame, Tron. But at the height of his powers as a game developer, Flynn abruptly disappeared in the late 80s, leaving his son Sam to grow up alone.
The trailer over, Kosinski steps forward to introduce over 20 minutes of Legacy footage. "There's a lot of work to do before December," Kosinksi tells us, and explains that what we're about to see is rough cut footage, and hasn't yet been rendered into 3D.
It had been by the time I saw the footage again in London this week, however.
The preview opens with 27-year-old Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) retiring to his dockside apartment on his motorcycle. Waiting for him is Alan (Bruce Boxleitner), who tells Sam that, after several years of silence, Kevin has sent him an unexpected message on his pager.
While Sam is initially unimpressed, Alan persists, and presses a key to Kevin's forgotten amusement arcade into Sam's palm. Intrigued, Sam heads off to the forgotten arcade, a venue whose neon-clad facade will be immediately familiar to fans of the 1982 original.
There, Sam discovers, in a scene with vague echoes of David Fincher's Seven, a secret chamber hidden behind an old Tron arcade machine. Venturing in, Sam tampers with a dusty computer mainframe, scarcely noticing the laser equipment behind him, which fans of the original Tron will recognise as a digitising laser.
Zapped into the virtual world of the Grid, a terrified Sam is captured by an evolved Recogniser, the Space Invader-like craft from the original film, and is given a suit and his own disc (the virtual world's embodiment of the human soul, which also doubles as a deadly weapon).
Thereafter, he's forced to participate in a Discs Of Tron game, which is now a vastly popular form of gladiatorial combat watched by thousands.
We see Sam participate in a deadly game of Discs, which he survives by the skin of his teeth. The action here is spectacular, and we're provided with a glimpse of Tron: Legacy's new, updated take on the original's derezzing. Where the first Tron saw its unlucky protagonists disintegrate in a flash of hand-drawn colour, Legacy's characters collapse into an awe-inspiring puddle of multi-coloured cubes.
We're then shown a later scene, which echoes the earlier Tron's light cycle escape sequence, as Sam and warrior computer program Quorra (Olivia Wilde) flee from the Grid in a rugged off-road vehicle.
In the weird hinterland outside the gleaming city of the Grid, Sam meets his estranged father, the ageing Kevin, who lives a zen-like existence in a hideaway apparently designed by a 60s-era Stanley Kubrick. It's a poignant moment. Kevin's custom-built light cycle sits apparently unused ("It doesn't get out as much as it used to," Quorra ruefully laments), while his safehouse is a refuge from the computer-powered brutality of the Grid outside.
It's implied, meanwhile, that Clu 2.0, the computer manifestation of Kevin Flynn, has spun malevolently out of control, and there are suggestions (though it's by no means made certain), that he may be the movie's ultimate villain.
As the preview draws to a close, we see actor Michael Sheen in camp character as a New Romantic nightclub owner, and brief cameos of Daft Punk themselves, complete with trademark sci-fi headgear, as a pair of superstar DJs.
The footage is evocative, but also tantalisingly non-committal. It gives nothing away of Legacy's plot other than the details we'd already gleaned from its trailers. Indeed, there are certain aspects from the first film that remain conspicuous by their absence.
Sure, Bruce Boxleitner is present and correct as Alan, but what is his broader role in the film? And more pertinently, where is his Grid-based alter-ego, the titular Tron? My later questions regarding this to Joseph Kosinski were met with enigmatic smiles, which perhaps suggests that, in one capacity or another, Tron will play a significant part in the latter stages of Legacy's plot.
As a protracted advertisement for the finished Tron: Legacy, the preview has done nothing to dampen my initial enthusiasm. Its plot cleverly expands upon the world Steven Lisberger originally unleashed back in the 80s, and there are signs everywhere that, while its dazzling computer effects will be the big draw (Clu 2.0, a digitally recreated 30-something Bridges, is particularly impressive), Legacy's writers haven't forgotten to work in a vital human element too.
The finished Tron: Legacy is set to appear in UK cinemas on 17 December, and I genuinely can't wait.