Tron Legacy: now with extra ranting

I've been looking forward to seeing Tron: Legacy for a while. I saw the original on VHS when I was a kid, and thought it was pretty awesome then, so I could only imagine what 3D and modern special effects could have done. And I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. While my partner had some trouble with the 3D and effects (for some reason it all seemed flat and kind of blurry and washed out to him, apparently), I spent the entire movie mesmerised. It was true to the original, the back story was really well-handled, and the effects! Oh my, the effects! There was only one thing that ruined the experience, and that was the cinema advertising that came before it. It doesn't help me enjoy the movie when I already have a bad taste in my mouth and a rising urge to yell at things before it has even started.

It would seem that only boys go to watch movies like Tron. At least, that is the lesson that I learned from Dendy tonight.

It started out innocuously enough, with a Subway commercial, promoting their latest competition, and featuring a bloke with an improbable-looking bread roll ogling girls on a beach. Same old crap we see every day, and have learned to largely ignore. I can't embed the video, because the only version I could find was on the Subway website. You can see it here.

Then came a commercial about Pat Rafter who, apparently, "can do it all. Of course he can, because ..." (wait for it) ... "he's a man". It's a Dove commercial.



Yes, the same people behind the campaign for real beauty have also seem to forgotten how many amazing female tennis players we have here in Australia. All of whom can also "do it all", despite the fact that they are not men. Thanks for that message, Dove.

So at this point, I was feeling mildly disgruntled. So when the next commercial came on (which I can't find online anywhere. If someone finds it, please do let me know) I was pleasantly surprised ... at first.

It opens with a group of young attractive women, apparently getting ready to go out. One says something about another getting Foxtel connected, and she proudly mentions that it's through her Xbox, over the internet. Wow, I think. A woman, in a group of women, who not only owns an Xbox, but is able to describe how it works. Nice!

And then came the clanger ... "Hold on, when did you get an Xbox?" another friend asks. Slow pan out to the hunky topless guy walking into the room. "New 'flatmate'" comes the comment, with the inverted commas around "flatmate" painfully obvious in her tone. le sigh. So women can't own a gaming unit. They're only allowed to own boyfriends (ahem, sorry, male "flatmates"), who own game units.

Will it never end? I was the one who wanted to see Tron, I was the one who dragged my poor long-suffering, non-geek partner along, I was the one who re-watched the original last weekend in a fit of fangirlism, I want to see ads that don't make me feel like I don't belong there.

Several years ago I decreed that I would not go to a cinema unless it was Dendy. With the recent price hike on tickets, the suspicious lack of foreign films, and now this case study in broad generalisations, though, Dendy is fast losing its gloss.