Michael Sheen Talks About Acting And VFX In Tron Legacy

We've known for a while that Michael Sheen would be in Tron Legacy. Sheen has started to explode into high-profile films, and while he's been stuck in the Underworld films and now the Twilight series, he's also impressed us in Frost/Nixon and The Queen. His presence in the new Tron flick is nothing but a good thing.

Coming Soon talked to Sheen in Toronto, where his film The Damned United premiered. Sadly, his role in Legacy sounds like a small one, as he's playing a nightclub owner within the computer world.

That was amazing, because there's a lot of green screen in that. But my stuff was mainly in this amazing set that they built because I'm a nightclub host, so they built the nightclub and there were hundreds of extras and it was one of those great scenes where there's just loads going on.

Sheen also made a point about the light cycle battle 'teaser' that was finally released online, reiterating that it was essentially a proof of concept clip made to convince Disney to make the film. I thought that was pretty widely known, but I still hear a lot of people talking about that clip as if it is actually footage from the film. ComingSoon paraphrases Sheen as saying the effects in the actual film have 'far surpassed' the stuff in the teaser. Sheen also says:

[Director Joseph Kosinski] did that to get Disney to give the okay to make the film. Joe now says that he doesn't like people seeing that because it's moved on so much from that, and that looks awesome.

That the proof of concept test clip was impressive enough to be released as a teaser for the film says a lot about the abilities of Kosinski and his crew. I'd expected the film would go way beyond what that clip, and while an actor saying 'trust me, it's going to be amazing' is hardly the voice of reliability, this time we can likely expect Sheen to be right.