“Tron: Legacy,” the highly anticipated sequel to 1982’s ground-breaking sci-fi fantasy “Tron,” will be released worldwide on December 17.

Most fans will have to wait, but yesterday a group of Japanese viewers was invited to sample scenes totaling 24 minutes. The preview was part of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), where celebrities from around the world walked across the ecological green carpet.

To prevent footage from being leaked, security was tight at Roppongi Hills’ Toho Cinema where the TIFF advanced screening was held. Mobile phones were switched off, sealed into envelopes and checked at the door along with cameras and recording devices.

Lucky fans

Around 600 fans won invitations to the event through an online lottery. Ryoichi Hasegawa, 41, attended the screening wearing a vintage T-shirt from the first Tron film.

“I saw ‘Tron’ when I was in junior high school and it totally changed my life. It made me want to work in the video game industry,” said Hasegawa, who is now a producer for a major Japanese game company.

The screening of “Tron: Legacy” marked the first time any footage from the film had been shown anywhere in the world. Co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, who attended the event, admitted it was the first time they had seen any of the scenes in 3D.

So why Tokyo?

“Tokyo is really the perfect place for us to show this footage for the first time in the world,” said Wilde, who plays Quorra in the film.

“Japanese fans will love it for many reasons, not only the martial arts, but also the technology, music and action. It is going to be released around the world simultaneously, but Tokyo will always be the place where it was first seen,” said Wilde.

Father and son reunited

The original “Tron” tells the story of hacker and game designer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who disappears into an electronic world of his own creation. The sequel, coming 28 years later, features Flynn’s adult son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) accidentally entering that technological realm and reuniting with his father.

“Tron” was revolutionary when it was released in 1982. It was the first major film to blend live-action scenes with CGI.

The computer used in the original production, highly advanced for the time, boasted 2MB of memory and 330MB of storage.

The new film is shot in Disney Digital 3D.

“’Tron Legacy’ is a movie that from the very beginning we intended to make in 3D, and was shot using the most sophisticated cameras in the world, beyond what James Cameron used in ‘Avatar,’” said Disney President of Production Sean Bailey, who also attended the event.

“The original film created a movie screen that was unlike any screen that had come before it. That was the legacy that we had inherited. We felt that in 2010 we now have the technology to do that again, to create something that has never been seen,” said Bailey.

Model endorsement

Japanese model Yu Yamada, acting as an ambassador for the film in Japan, remarked that the quality of the 3D images was better than anything she had ever seen.

Despite the high ratio of computer-generated imagery, Wilde and Hedlund had to endure grueling training to prepare for action sequences in the film.

“I trained at gym in Los Angeles called 87/11, where stunt people double as personal trainers,” said Hedlund. “I did motorcycle training, parkour, capoeira and physical training just to be able to maintain my condition throughout the duration of the film.”

Some action scenes have a Japanese flavor.

Hedlund trained with stunt coordinators who staffed the 2009 film “Ninja.” Wilde said that while working on the film she sensed it had a certain Japanese aesthetic, “because it is so futuristic, slick and cool. I also thought of Quorra as a little ninja.”

Adding to the Japan-esque futuristic feel is an original soundtrack by French electronic duo Daft Punk, who have taken inspiration from Japanese animation in the past.

“We were very fortunate to get them,” said producer Sean Bailey. “The original film was an early influence on them, and when they heard the rumor that there would be a new Tron film, they actually called us. We met them, without their helmets, and over pancakes we agreed that they would do the score.”

There has been much speculation on whether the sequel, coming nearly three decades after the first film, will spark a continuing series.

“I think whether or not there will be more Tron films is something that we will leave up to all of you when the film comes out,” said Bailey. “If you all like this movie as much as we hope you do, there will be more in store.”

For more on the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), click here.

For a gallery of celebrities on the green carpet, click here.

“Tron: Legacy” opens on the following dates across Asia with more countries to be confirmed:

Australia — 16 Dec 2010
Hong Kong — 23 Dec 2010
India — 17 Dec 2010
Japan — 17 Dec 2010
Malaysia — 16 Dec 2010
Singapore — 16 Dec 2010

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Consider this Minnesota native the new “it” boy in Hollywood.Garrett Hedlund is soon to make headlines with his co-starring role inTron: Legacy. Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, the son of computer genius Kevin Flynn, reprised by Oscar winner Jeff Bridges. We sat with the shy, incredibly humble star to talk about all things Tron—from his Capoeira training sessions to working with Bridges to his adventurous days growing up on the farm.

Fandango: Tron: Legacy is one of your biggest movies to date. How did it all happen?

Garrett Hedlund: I did the test read with Olivia [Wilde] for Disney. After a couple of weeks I went to lunch with Jeff Bridges, Joseph Kosinski and Sean Bailey, and after that lunch I had a follow up meeting where Sean and Joseph said, “Welcome.” It was like, “All right, so where do we start?” The first of January, we started with the Capoeira and motorcycle training.

Fandango: Walk us through the father and son relationship in the film.

Hedlund: My character Sam Flynn has lived a sort of reclusive life and is haunted by the disappearance of his father over 20 years ago, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. As he tries to survive life, he turns himself away from NCOM and the money. He lets go of the search for his father, or waiting for the phone to ring. The grid world is such a mythological thing to Sam. It’s a bed time story, so the thought of his father being there, it’s a “yeah, right.” But when he finds out that he exists and finds himself in this terrain of the unknown, he’s got to put the pieces together.

Fandango: What goal did you have in mind during filming? Were you looking into the future?

Hedlund: I never really did…it wasn’t about the future of it or what the role symbolizes. I’m a fan of literature and I have always admired Joseph Campbell, and so the journey of the hero was kind of the obstacle. I was always trying to perfect the journey of the hero.

Fandango: The world of Tron is so meticulously thought out, but you don’t get to see most of it when you’re filming. How did that help or affect your performance?

Hedlund: It was kind of a parachute in a windy storm that you know is going to land on a comfortable surface. When Joe showed me the video effects, it was something I had never seen before. There is this look to it, this darkness that was so appealing and unimaginable. In terms of the symmetry and the way everything looks, it’s so cool. You can’t help but go, “Man, Joe, you are such a badass.”

When you’re filming, you only have blue screens around you. When you look at a playback you can’t help but critique what your facial expressions are doing, if you’re accomplishing what you want to accomplish, what you’re seeing when you’re not really seeing anything but you’re just pretending, or are you pretending right…so that was the everyday battle. For me, it was all about the adventure. I grew up on a farm and I was always running through the woods pretending something was chasing me. I built forts, we had animals and guns, pistols, and riffles and I would crawl around pretending the birds were the enemies. It’s always about the game you’re creating, so working with blue screens was a fun adventure. I don’t think of it much as a real difficult thing.

Fandango: When you think about the project, what brings you the most joy?

Hedlund: I’m most satisfied with the genuine eagerness from people. I’ve never experienced that on other films before. I was very happy to work with Jeff Bridges on this and Olivia Wilde because we have known each other for years and years. We are now going through this big adventure together, which is very comfortable and fantastic. To be able to hang out with Olivia every day on set…it’s just such a great family. Steven Lisberger, the creator of the first—the godfather—he was a great person to have around, and creative consultant, and motivator for me. He would feed me with tidbits that would impact me to be the guy people want to take a trip with. I’m excited to sit in the theater with my fellow cast mates, with ridiculous 3D goggles on [laughs]. We all worked so hard to see this project complete.

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Garrett Hedlund has been scarcely seen onscreen the past few years, but the 26-year-old Minnesota-born actor will be impossible to miss as the star of Disney’s holiday tentpole release “Tron: Legacy.”

Hedlund, whose credits include “Troy,” the feature film version of “Friday Night Lights,” John Singleton’s “Four Brothers” and the fantasy film “Eragon,” signed on to “Tron” after seeing test footage put together by director Joseph Kosinski to convince Disney an update to the 1982 original could be done well.

“It was something that I thought was going to be incredibly new and revolutionary, especially working with 3D cameras,” Hedlund says. “It was a whole new step, a world of unknown, and I wanted to go down that road.”

Hedlund plays Sam Flynn (the son of Jeff Bridges’ character from the first film), whose search for his missing father leads him to a virtual computer gaming world. Acting in the film required a balance of injecting energy and fun into the action sequences while injecting humanity and emotion into the story’s more serious themes.

Hedlund jumped immediately from the sleek, neon look of “Tron” into Shana Feste’s “Country Strong,” playing an up-and-coming country singer who helps revive the career of a fallen star, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Hedlund put in months of preparation, immersing himself in country music, moving to Nashville and learning to play guitar and sing.

“There’s 100% focus on the work and the practice and trying to get there. No way do I want to fake it,” he explains.

He similarly threw himself into researching the role of Dean Moriarty in Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic “On the Road.” Currently shooting, Hedlund was cast in 2007 and started reading and traveling while Salles assembled a cast that includes Sam Riley, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen.

“Walter really felt strongly about only making the film that he wanted to make,” Hedlund says. “It’s such a small group, and it’s the closest thing to a guerrilla shoot that you’ll ever see.”

LUCKY BREAK: Landing a role in “Troy” right out of high school. “Once I had known I had gotten it, I never had such a combusting emotion of disbelief.”
FAVORITE FILM: “‘Being There,’ with Peter Sellers. Good ol’ Chauncey Gardner. You gotta love him.”
THE CAREER I’D LIKE TO EMULATE: “It’s not a career I want to emulate but a work ethic. … There’s a lot of actors who inspire the hell out of me. It’s the unpredictables, the guys who are sort of continuously pushing the boundaries and working their asses off and striving to give the greatest performances they can on each particular project.”

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Where you’ve seen him before: If Garrett Hedlund has done his job right, you might not realize it’s the same person playing all of his roles. This farm boy from Minnesota prides himself on portraying very different characters in each of his films: Brad Pitt’s beloved, hot-headed comrade in “Troy”; a Mormon virgin in “Georgia Rule”; the youngest of four siblings avenging their mother’s death in “Four Brothers”; the bald, tattooed gang leader terrorizing Kevin Bacon in “Death Sentence.” Hedlund will probably lose much of his anonymity when audiences see him as Sam Flynn, opposite Jeff Bridges, in “Tron: Legacy,” opening in December. But as the deep-voiced 26-year-old says, “In terms of the projects I’ve done, I’ve never worked on a project I’ve been offered. I’ve had to work for each film I’ve been a part of.”

“Tron” challenges: Hedlund endured two months of training in hand-to-hand combat on motorcycles to play Sam. The $60,000 light-up costume he wore took dozens of fittings and special care while on set. “Once you’re in the suit, it’s pretty fantastic,” he says. “But it’s this step-by-step process of getting a suit completely custom-fit to your body in every way. The suit’s got to be a part of you, so it’s very precise. It was a whole new experience for me, because my wardrobe up until that day was usually jeans and a shirt or something like that.” Kneeling and other simple movements, he adds, meant being “very delicate on the suit.” But the most challenging part of the job for Hedlund was acting in an elaborate environment that wasn’t totally rendered on set: “You’re in this computer world, so your wheels are always turning; you’re always trying to figure these things out and look two steps ahead of you. You’re also dealing with a lot of blue screen, dealing with things that you can’t see at that point.”

Other upcoming projects: Currently, Hedlund is in New Orleans shooting his dream project, Walter Salles’ film of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” alongside Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, and Kirsten Dunst. He plays Dean Moriarty, a self-destructive character based on Beat figure Neal Cassady. The actor says shooting the film, which comes out next year, has been even better than he imagined. In “Country Strong,” due out in January, Hedlund plays an aspiring country singer from Nashville, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester. To convince director Shana Feste that he had the pipes to play Beau Williams, he took her to a karaoke bar in Los Angeles. “We went to a place that I thought for sure was going to be packed, but we got there and the lights were on and there were only three other people in there having drinks,” recalls Hedlund, who selected Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” for his audition song. “I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’ It was a rough one.” But apparently it sounded good to Feste.

Breaking in: Hedlund has been grooming himself for acting stardom since he was 15 years old, when he began reading the trades and calling his favorite film companies, agencies, and management firms asking to be seen. Before graduating from high school early and moving to Los Angeles in 2002, he flew himself back and forth from Arizona to L.A. for “about 25 auditions,” he says. “I had to do this whole mission for one shabby audition, and everybody else got to wake up and spend $5 in gas. I realized, ‘Everybody else in the room sort of looks exactly the same as me; how can I set myself apart?’ Well, I guess I can try and be smarter than everyone. So that whole year I just kind of read any book I could get into my hands. As soon as my mom would go to bed, I’d put some instant coffee in a cup and try and finish the book before sunrise, and then go back to high school. Novels were giving me a lot more detail than any script I was given would give, those little details. If you’re wearing this hat because it fits this personality—’Oh man, I should do that in the next audition. I should wear the clothes that this character would wear and go in more prepared.’ ”

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ShowBizCafe.com (SBC): How do you feel about being involved in such a big project?

Garrett Hedlund (GH): Well, before I was part of the cast I met up with Sean Bailey (producer) and Joseph Kosinski (director) they showed me the footage of the film [they had shown at Comic-Con that year] and I was driven to take this adventure. You step in[to the project] uncertain then get driven by something no-one else has seen and by seeing the blockbuster material there’s fear and nerves come up, because you know this is a big vehicle that a mass amount of people are going to see you as and formulate opinions on whether they like you or not; is a big way of throwing yourself out there. This is such a fantastic team and a hard family to pull away from [he goes on to list the whole cast and crew].
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