Despite gushing coverage of the trailers and imagery, there’s little doubt that when they actually saw the film, critics weren’t as kind as Disney had obviously hoped they’d be, while muted word of mouth failed to turn the movie into the mega-hit the studio had hoped (although it still did okay).
One of the big problems was the confusing story, which perhaps assumed that audiences knew more about the 1980s movie than they actually did, while it wasn’t always clear what had been going on between then and the new movie, other than that Kevin Flynn has gone very zen and that the Tron world had massively better special effects.
Now a new short film has shown up online, which helps bridge the gap between the two movies and somewhat explains the history of come of the characters we saw in Legacy. Indeed it wouldn’t have been a bad idea for most of this to have been released before the movie hit cinemas, or some of it included in the film, as it would certainly have made things clearer. The short has certain spoilers, but nothing that vital, and definitely helps clear a few things up about what happened between the movies.
There is apparently another similar short that will appear as an easter egg on the Tron Legacy DVD, but click below to watch Tron: The Next Day.