In Hollywood, "re-shoots" is a bad word. If a film is going through said dastardly process, it generally means that either the film got some bad feedback or that something in it really didn't work. So when it came out that Tron: Legacy would be undergoing reshoots, nerds around the world began to get ants in their pants.
Collider recently got to speak with director Joseph Kosinski about the process, which he prefers to call "additional photography." According to Kosinski, the main goal was to solidify the characters of Sam and Kevin Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund and Jeff Bridges and simply amounted to adding six minutes of footage within the first twenty minutes.
"Most of the shooting was done to set up Sam a little bit better and to give him a little more context. A couple scenes were done to bring to the surface some of the themes of the movie and to show the relationship of Sam and his father a little more clearly. Some of it was just picking up visual effects plates and inserts that we just were never able to get when we first shot. All in all, it just amounts to a couple of minutes over a two-hour film, but it’s those little details. Being able to go in surgically and touch little things just helped bring the movie to the next level."
The director's comments collaborate with a story we reported back in July, where Pixar writers Brad Bird and Michael Arndt were brought on to take a look at the script prior to re-shoots to focus on "character, emotion, and theme."
Breathe free, my nerdy friends - this is great news. It would be one thing if they had to completely redo a scene in the third act, but this really isn't a problem. So long as they were careful not to make any conflicting mistakes in the story (which you can be sure they didn't), this should only make Tron: Legacy a stronger film with better characters. December 17th cannot get here soon enough.
