User reviews

"Tron" is not for everyone.

This first sentence should make you think that "Tron" is a cult movie. Well, maybe it is. My parents abhor it. My sister detests it. But my friends, who were born in the early 70s (very early, actually) and me see it as an amazing piece of work.

Is it stunning? Yes, even though more than half of the film is colorized b&w. Is it computer animated? Yes, although I am betting your home PC might be able to render the images you will see there without any problem. Maybe not in real time, but almost. Is it special? You bet. Even though CGI had been tried before, Tron took it to the next logical step: creating whole CGI rendered scenes (e.g. tanks, cycles, Recognizers).

The film is confusing at times, and 18 years later you can safely say the script wasn't actually the best. On the light of the Internet, though, it all makes a lot more sense, and it plainly demonstrates that the writers really loved computers. In fact, they were so ahead of their times that I am betting too many people who saw it the first time didn't understand it. That was its failure: only computer geeks could get the whole picture (no pun intended).

Still, I guess Toy Story I and II are the direct development of Tron. And that cannot be bad in any way.

When this came out, about 25 years ago, the special-effects were eye-popping. I was stunned and saw this twice at the theater, something I rarely did. Nowadays, it looks primitive. It's like when video games first came out, compared to what they are now.

However, a few years ago when the DVD came out with the widescreen and 5.1surround sound, it made it somewhat-respectable again in parts and made it still fun to watch.

The story was never that great. There was too much technical talk and the characters were the kind you really couldn't get involved over.

It's nothing super, but if you've never seen it, I still recommend it. I don't recall any other movie quite like it.

The first time I watched this film, I was around 9 years old. I rented it from a library and watched it at a friends house, and being honest, it's somehow exactly how I remembered it. It's quite surreal, having a plot take place inside a computer and it's clear there are places where it's being pulled out of nowhere, using computer buzz words like 'ram' and 'programs' to be cool and fit into the universe, which kinda adds to the weird charm of the film. I cannot tell whether it takes its self seriously or not at all because there are places where it tries to pull at your heart strings or create a serious moment but there are other moments where you just zone out from some of the imagery on screen. Major credit to Jeff bridges who just seems like he's having a whale of a time. He and the bad guy carry this film by fully embracing this idea and doing the best job they can, although it's clear they have no idea what's going on and that's just brilliant to me. The main thing I love about this film is the visuals. They are straight out of a tame impala album cover. I can't tell if it's matte paintings or early digital imaging but either way it looks like it was intedned to; it's so dated to the point where it's come back around and looks impressive. I need to see how they did all this stuff in the early 80s, must have blown people's minds. Although, they never really explain things though. I kinda could maybe tell what was going on because I've seen the film already but half the things they just don't explain, which did get confusing in places. But generally this films more a delightful time capsule for an era on the dawn of computer special effects, and for that I really liked it.

Excuse me, but : wow ! I feel sorry for those who are disillusioned, but Tron (1982) is nothing to me but pure magic ! A poetical "cyberadventure" where the cyber world is a methaphorical representation of the "real" one. And to think that those images were produced, and more unbelievable, imagined, in the early eighties ! OK, by today's standards, it might not look so impressive to some viewers, but still... And the imagination behind that movie, those graphics : wonderful ! I wish to be yet surprised by unexpected ideas such as Tron. And I am not necessarily thinking about a sequel : just surprise me ! Tron (1982) : a classic of the 7th art !

Eric Quebec, Canada

P.S.: Excuse my English, I am French-Canadian.

If there was no TRON then there might be no Pixar or no Toy Story. There have been films with CGI before but it was TRON that showed John Lasseter what was possible yet the film makes cunning use of CGI, there is less of it than people think.

The film underperformed on its release and did better as a crossover arcade game. The light cycle sequence certainly helped. 1982 was the year that home computing was taking off in the UK with the BBC computer, Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64 entering households in greater numbers. TRON was riding on that wave, even its film score was acclaimed.

The story is simple although it has to be noted Jeff Bridges is not Tron. Bridges is Kevin Flynn a programmer who has been cheated by a rival Dillinger (David Warner.) He has taken credit for Flynn's work such as the best selling arcade games and taken control of the Hi Tech company Encom.

Flynn breaks into the Master Control Program (MCP) which has gained its own AI and become a super computer. It takes Flynn inside a computer world in order to delete him.

Flynn is helped out by Tron a legendary warrior in this computer world and he also looks like Flynn's friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner). They along with others seek to destroy the MCP and get rid of Dillinger.

Critics at the time were not impressed by the story. They were by the film's graphical content. It's cutting edge for the time with the representation of a Matrix style world.

The use of synthesised music has made the film endure leading to a belated sequel almost 30 years later.

The beautiful thing about Tron is that there's just no other movie like it. Certainly not before it was released and I don't think since. That, in itself, is a huge accomplishment. The special effects, costumes, and designs may seem hokey to some today but I think they are very cool and unique. The plot's a little hard to follow, I admit. I recently watched it with a friend who had never seen it before. She spent a good deal of the movie confused. I think I had a similar feeling the first time I watched it. It's one of those movies that grows on you the more you watch it but obviously that's not something that everybody wants to hear when sitting down to watch a film for the first time. The cast is good, though the characters are mostly one-dimensional. Jeff Bridges rises above everybody else and adds some much-needed humor and charm to things ("Now THAT is a big door!"). All in all, Tron is a good movie with awesome visuals but not without flaws. It's definitely something you should check out if you like '80s movies or sci-fi movies.

TRON. Now here's a film that seems to generate a wide spectrum of reviews.

As for my take on this landmark motion picture, I have to admit that I will always be able to reflect on it in its original context.

In 1982, TRON (along with Blade Runner) was nothing short of breathtaking. And, although it was originally panned by critics, those who have taken the time to look closer, have noticed that there is more to this film than there first seems to be.

One of TRON's greatest strengths lies in its extensive use of parallelism. There is the world of the user (almost a god or demigod motif), contrasted with the world of the programs (very much a metaphor for our world). And, just to enhance this metaphor, Dillinger's helicopter is shown with neon-red lines, and the final fade to black is preceded with a time-lapse of the city – suggesting data running along traces.

The obvious parallels are with the use of the same actor for each character's counterparts in the digital world. Flynn and Clu, Alan and Tron, Laura and Yori, Gibbs and Dumont, Dillinger and Sark.

However, we see a number of other characters show up here and there, in more subtle form: For example, there's Sark's second in command on the bridge of the carrier. He shows up earlier in the film as Peter – the suit who was watching Dillinger's office. Then there's RAM's human counterpart asking Alan if he can have some of his popcorn.

I find it surprising that many are critical of the 'unbelievable' aspect of this film. However, never is the audience expected to believe that this is the way the computer world really works or that a person could ever be zapped into a computer. In fact, to allude to the type of story that the audience is being presented with, TRON does a near-quote of Alice In Wonderland, with 'Stranger and stranger.' Perhaps Kevin Flynn fell down the rabbit hole…. And – for those who think TRON is a Disney film – watch the production notes and you'll discover that this is not a Disney film (although they did fund it).

Of most obvious interest is the fact that TRON pushed the computer graphics technology of the time to its limits and beyond. And – despite many who have said that its graphics are primitive, they're confusing resolution with texture-mapping. The truth is, the number of colours displayed and the resolution shown in the computer-generated components in TRON is higher than most desktop displays – even today. To output to film with the level of sharpness and smooth gradients seen in TRON, you'd need at least 24 or 32-bit colour, with a horizontal resolution of approximately 3000 to 4000 pixels. On top of that, it was the first film to use transparency in 3D CGI (the solar-sailor simulation). To my knowledge, texture-mapping didn't exist in 1982. Fortunately, the lack of texture mapping works well with the stylized look of the film's 'world inside the machine.'

As a film, TRON is definitely both unique and entertaining. And, for those who are visual in nature, it's full of splendid eye-candy. The design work is top-rate, and is best appreciated when viewed on film. I recall watching this movie when it first came out in 1982, and have to say that it was nothing short of total immersion. Unfortunately, most of the modern transfers of this film have been pretty rough (with the exception of the out-of-print Laserdisc box-set).

The plot for TRON is actually quite simple. Despite this simplicity, it is cleverly used for the purpose of -- hopefully – making the audience think about our world, and how it may relate to some 'higher world.' If we are programs, then who are our users? Is there a level up from us, and do they know all the answers? There is certainly a metaphysical angle to TRON, which the audience can ether pay attention to, or disregard in favour of the simple thrill of watching Light Cycles square off against each other on the Game Grid.

Many elements are combined in this film: the gladiatorial film, the exodus, the revolution, the sentient AI, the battle of good vs. evil, and – of course – the almost prophetic depiction of the computer industry. Encom and Ed Dillinger are very much parallels to real themes that took place in the computer industry in the years that followed the release of TRON. These themes are very much repeated in more recent trilogy of films. I think the actual name for the Light Cycle game that Flynn mentions will give you a clue as to which trilogy I'm referring to.

Finally, there's Kevin Flynn. Some may be surprised that I left this one to the end. However, I thought I'd leave the best for last. Fact is, Jeff Bridges did a brilliant job with this character. Over the years, I have actually known computer-industry hot-shots who are remarkably similar to Flynn. He made the character believable. And, this carries over to the film itself. No matter how much of a leap you're expected to make when approached with a script or screenplay, be compelling. Jeff Bridges and David Warner do exactly this.

TRON is a movie that really entertains. I like to think of it as a big small movie. One that was definitely ambitious and is presented in 'glossy' and vivid wide-screen, yet has a sort of nice-light-snack kind of feel to it. It's a movie with a great deal of replay value, and one with compelling characters.

In short, TRON – like its video game counterpart – is fun.

And for that, and a host of other reasons, it will remain on my list of favourite films.

End of line.

On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy."

It's all-out war inside a powerful corporate computer, as the evil Master Control Program and his villainous user hold sway over all the other programs that fall into their grasp. It's up to a few determined programs and a human User with godlike powers, to restore order to the system.

It would be a massive understatement for me to say that I'm excited about Tron: Legacy. It has Olivia Wilde in it, it looks really cool, it has Olivia Wilde in it, the teaser trailer was awesome, and, did I mention that it has Olivia Wilde in it? I thought that since there's a pretty strong chance I'm going to see it, I should watch the original movie so that I'll know what's going on. Thankfully, Tron is good enough that it would have been worth watching, anyway.

It's definitely an 80's movie. You'll be able to tell that not only from the characters, language, and the settings, but from the special effects. Some of them are really cool, like the light cycles and the costumes of the programs. Others are incredibly cheesy, like the giant face of Master Control (he looks like Zordon from Power Rangers). 

The plot takes a little while to get going, but once we get inside the computer, it's an exciting ride until the end of the movie. It helps a lot if you're somewhat familiar with computer programming and video games, but it's not totally necessary. Tron is a fun movie that is pretty impressive if you judge it by the standards of the time it was made. If you're a fan of the 80's, want to see a young Jeff Bridges showcasing early signs of The Dude, or the story sounds interesting to you, you shouldn't hesitate to check Tron out.

I hope some smart person from Disney is reading this: if ever there was a movie crying out to be re-released into movie-theaters, it's "Tron," the dazzling sci-fi film from Walt Disney Productions. If it were released into theaters today, "Tron" would be a smash hit, 'cause the movie-audiences of today would understand it a heckuva lot better than the movie-audiences of 1982.

"Tron" tells the story of a young computer programmer named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who gets sucked INTO a computer, and must fight for his life playing life-or-death video games, run by the evil Master Control Program. With the aid of a good warrior program named Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), and Tron's significant-other Yori (Cindy Morgan), Flynn must put a stop to the MCP and set things right in the computer world once again before returning to his own world.

With breathtakingly beautiful computer-animation (and the very first film to use computer-animation extensively), and presenting an original, dazzling world where energy lives and breathes inside a computer, "Tron" was way ahead of it's time. This may explain why the film was greeted with incomprehension from critics and audience members alike back in 1982.

The problem was, back in 1982, there was no such thing as the Internet, and, apart from business types, most people didn't really know diddlysquat about computers yet. As a result, the computer jargon heard throughout "Tron" went sailing over most audience members' heads, and for many, the story was difficult to follow. Critics complained that "Tron" was all special effects and no story. And, for the final insult, "Tron" wasn't even NOMINATED for Best Visual Effects at Oscar time, presumably because the Academy in 1982 didn't recognize computer-animation as "genuine" visual effects, i.e. "it's animation, not visual effects," they thought to themselves. "The Abyss" changed all that in 1989, but that was a big seven years after "Tron." Obviously, everyone in 1982 had missed the film's point.

But the passing of time has been very kind to "Tron." Today, the film has a major cult following, and is recognized by many as the landmark sci-fi film that it truly is. Looking at "Tron" today, the movie has aged very well indeed, like a fine wine. Now that time--and people's knowledge of computers--has finally caught up with "Tron," now would be the PERFECT time for the world in general to take another look at this amazing film.

Message to Disney: put "Tron" back in theaters! Clean it up with a new remastered print & remastered sound, and let the world rediscover this sci-fi classic. It WILL be a smash hit! In 1982, people just didn't understand "Tron." Today, they will. Trust me. :-)

OK, maybe Tron was a little cheesy, but I loved it. Disney promised us a world inside a computer and so they gave us a world inside a computer. In this movie, computer programs become people, and programmers, hackers, or just anyone who can use a computer are called users. Users are seen as gods; the creators of this digital world. It's like 'Reboot', only twelve years before 'Reboot' was even imagined.

The villain in this film is the Master Control Program (MCP). The MCP takes over programs and rules the digital world with a 'digital' iron fist. He is so intelligent that he can even communicate verbally with his user, Dillinger. All of the MCP's messages end with 'End of Line'.

It's hard to say who the real hero is, Flynn or Tron. Flynn is a user and Tron is a program, and overall I think they wouldn't have won if they didn't work together.

The CGI images were pretty good for a movie in the early 80's. To the modern viewer, they would seem cheap and lame, but they were great effects for '82. They give you the feeling of floating through digital space.

My favorite part in the movie was the lightcycle races. I think I'd be cool to drive a lightcycle. I still don't understand what the Recognizers do. They just seem to float around and chase things. That doesn't seem very threatening. Maybe if it had guns...

Overall, I think Tron is a classic and I hope it's remembered for a long time. Rent it if you can.

-End of Line-

TRON is a landmark film. Wonderfully visionary, a monumental technical achievement. It made possible so many later films which we came to know and love. There, now that we've got that out of the way can we point out that TRON is not a good movie? It has plenty of technological wizardry but the film is sorely lacking in entertainment. The story is weak, doing very little to grab the viewer. It doesn't matter how much of a visual spectacle your film is if the story doesn't engage. Director Steven Lisberger seems to have lost sight of that. Give Lisberger and his crew credit for pulling off something which in 1982 seemed truly impossible. But the innovative technology is all this film has going for it.

TRON takes place largely inside a computer. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside your computer? Apparently Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner are in there tossing Frisbees around. Now that just sounds silly. But that's OK, silly can at times be entertaining. This is not one of those times. Entertainment here is in desperately short supply. Bridges gives the film a little juice, providing some humor and creating a character you care about at least a little bit. Boxleitner on the other hand is a dud, a total wet blanket with all the personality of a doorknob. And that's a problem since Boxleitner plays Tron himself. Or is it Tron itself? Because you see these characters are playing computer programs. Well, except for Bridges, he's a person but he's in the computer anyway. Yeah, it's all very weird. Could have been wonderfully weird but it isn't. The story just kind of sits there, it's never developed properly. There's the requisite villain and the requisite girl but really it's just a big light show. For 1982 a very impressive light show but still just a light show nonetheless. It takes more than a light show to make a film. You need to actually have something happen. In this film there's not nearly enough going on to hold the viewer's interest. The dazzling (for their time) visuals only take you so far. In its time TRON was something special. But time has been unkind. What was revolutionary in 1982 is mundane today. And the film doesn't have a story to fall back on. We see it with so many big-budget visual extravaganza films today. It doesn't matter how good your film looks if the story stinks. Story is always the most important thing. And the story lets TRON down. Bravo for the vision. Bravo for having the technological know-how to bring the vision to the screen. TRON was a wonderful technological achievement. But there are other films you can say that about which were also wonderful entertainment. Here TRON falls well short.

I still remember having seen parts of this movie when I was a very little kid and I thought it was incredibly cool, I hadn't seen anything like it. Now I have bought the 20th anniversary DVD and this was the first time I watched the movie in its entirety (and with a developed brain). And I still like it. Not in the same way as when I was young, because now I understand the story (I didn't understand English back then and I couldn't read the subtitles) so it's different from what I imagined back then, and now I have seen a truckload of modern movies with CGI effects.

However, even though the effects in this movie are somewhat 'dated', they are still unique. While listening to the audio commentary (which is a must if you wonder how they managed to make a movie like this in 1982), I heard someone stating my thoughts exactly: the unique thing about this movie is that while modern movies use CGI in an attempt to simulate the real world, in Tron one tried to simulate a computer world with real world images. Because they did succeed in this, the movie will never become 'dated', while movies trying to use limited CGI effects will become dated as soon as CGI evolves. The limitations of computer graphics at that time forced the makers of the movie to be very creative. E.g. all camera motions in the CG scenes (including the swinging motions in the chase scenes) had to be calculated by hand, there simply was no software for it! Nowadays computer graphics are nearing perfection, and that's why a movie like this will never be made again.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, to fully appreciate how groundbreaking it is, you must be willing to imagine that you're back in a time where the most complex computer animation to be seen were the moving blocks in video arcades or the 5 seconds of wire-frame models in Star Wars. You might expect that the resolution of the images will be very low and the pictures will be blocky, but this is totally untrue. The images were created at film resolution, often using methods which don't even involve the rasterization of images, so they look perfectly smooth. Some might say too smooth, due to the lack of texture mapping (which hardly existed at that time), but IMHO this is what gives the depicted 'digital world' its unique appearance.

The story is not of great complexity, but it's original and entertaining enough. Of course it's a Disney movie, so there aren't many 'sharp edges' to it (a scene with a mildly erotic undertone was even removed), but don't expect 'Bambi' sweetness either. Grown-ups will probably be more amazed by the kind of effects they managed to pull off in 1982, while children will be enchanted by the strange world shown in this movie. If you want to entertain young kids during a hour and a half, this movie will be perfect. They will like every bit (pun intended) of it!

"Tron" was one of those films that upon its release was a hallmark of filmmaking, like "Metropolis," or "Terminator 2." But this film, unlike the other two, has not held up with the passage of time and fails to provide a gripping narrative. The special effects and the black light suits can be hard on the eyes, and the acting is serviceable at best (even the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, is flat here). The plot itself is mildly interesting (hacker gets beamed into a computer) but the storytelling bulldozes along without any explanation of what's going on. And one can't help but think "that's just like that scene in "Star Wars" every ten minutes. A few highlights do present themselves, though. The famous lightcycle scene is still vastly fun to watch, and Bridges' hammy acting is laughably bad at times (but in a good way, mind you). In conclusion, "Tron" is an important piece of film history and should be viewed, but don't expect anything amazing.

I saw Tron on release and at the time was in the process of setting up my own PC company - we were still struggling with Basic, 120K floppy drives and "undocumented errors".

The graphics were, at the time stunning, the story was vapid and some of the dialogue embarrassing...

" I think I am jus' a coupla nanoseconds away..." Seems paradoxical that Dsiney were at the cutting edge and have had to take Jobs on board with Pixar to retain their leadership.

Of course it sucked at the Box office and I guess the Disney head honchos saw no future in it. After all it doesn't compare with the Muppets Treasure Island.

TRON for those who may wonder, was a very primitive trouble shooting utility in early BASIC language. It stood for Trace ON and this was switched off with Trace OFF.

This enabled the programmer to watch as each numbered line of code was executed so that you could check the execution of each line and examine the way variables changed. Far away from inline syntax checking etc., Happy days when we struggled with 64 K RAM and the first Hard disks were a long way off.

As someone born shortly after the invention of LSTM (programmers know what I'm talking about :) who spend A LOT of time pondering what's going on in the computers and watched this movie in the heyday of deep learning, I find it quite intriguing and thought-provoking. That being said, this movie has two major holes in its plot.

The first is about computer systems. A question that stayed in my mind throughout the movie is, WHERE IS THE OPERATING SYSTEM? But now that I'm writing this review, it occurs to me that perhaps the better question is, WHERE IS THE CPU? Memory and I/O buses are explicitly mentioned in the movie, and I suppose the maze-like structures are disks. But where is CPU? And where is the OS that schedules all the programs?

The second problem is about artificial intelligence. In this regard, the movie made a quite common layman mistake, by confusing computers with artificial intelligence. Many si-fi movies assume that AI systems just at some point gain consciousness, grew out of control, and take over. But that's not the case. Computers are not uninterpretable and that easy to become a killing robot. What's really uninterpretable is deep learning models (which, of course, were none-existent when the movie was made). The knowledge, or intelligence, are stored as billions of parameters in neural networks. In the end, these parameters are just floating point values stored like anything else in computers' memory or disk. What we do not understand is how these parameters, when combined together, demonstrate signs of intelligence. So a truly faithful depiction of AI programs would be far more bizarre than this movie. But the movie is not to be blamed for not correctly foreseeing the future.

Nonetheless, if there is going to be a sequel in 2020s, I really hope they can consult some computer scientists, and surprise us with some real-world AI systems, like BERT, T5, or GPT!

I was terribly excited about Tron when it came out theatrically; I was all of 8 years old, but was already a computer geek. 15 years later, I ended up purchasing the $100 Archive Edition laserdisc box set as my very first LD. Tron definitely made an impact on me.

Tron has survived the years- more so than many other contemporary SF films, and more than I think most critics would have guessed. Instead of looking out-dated and corny, as the years have passed, Tron has aged gracefully. Sure, the monochrome-screen terminals might look a bit old, and the arcade is a distant, fond memory, but the SFX are still beautiful, and the storyline, in this era of the Internet, seems shockingly modern.

One of the reasons Tron's SFX have aged so well is because they did not try to simulate anything already existing. We have no basis to determine if the architecture of the MCP's world is out-dated or not-hip; everything is styled so uniquely that it's never going to look wrong. Much like the design of Maria in Metropolis, the look of Tron is never going to be laughable or quaint.

The storyline is lacking a little bit; you can see the ideas the script writers wanted to insert, but there are too many ideas for only 2 hours of film. There are quite a few points in the film that are mentioned and then ignored (Grid bugs, anyone?), and occasionally the film digresses from the plot for no other reason than to digress- the digressions being unimportant to the story at hand. But, despite the problems, the philosophy of user/program interaction, and the handling of technophobia are both handled admirably.

I recommend every video game, computer, and SF fan to watch Tron at least once. I echo the call for it to be the widescreen version, but I am disappointed with the DVD's extra features- or lack thereof. The LD is much more full featured, and better for fans, despite the side breaks every 30 minutes.

I remember watching TRON as an awestruck little 9-year old. I remember the impact the special effects and particularily, the Snake/motorbike races, had on me as a kid - I loved it. It was a great film to watch as a sci-fi hungry kid.

Now, almost twenty years later I decided to buy the special edition dvd which was released last year, mostly because I wanted to see it again, but also to see how well/badly it had aged.

I had expected it to be a nostalgic, but unimpressive rewatch - full of bad matte lines and badly animated cgi. And, ok, there are lots of fat matte lines around the characters, but the cgi is still good, actually. It's animated well, and it's clear that a lot of thought went into creating the basic design and look of the film, which is wonderful. Thankfully, the filmmakers chose to go with a completely alien look, meaning that they never wanted the film to look realistic or life-like. This is the main reason why the film and it's effects have stood the test of time. I must admit, there were times when I went 'wow, that looks really cool!'

I also think that the film is exciting and suspenseful and the action scenes still feel very original and fun. Gotta love those race scenes - they're great!

And, combined with a great electronic soundtrack, this was a highly enjoyable revisit. I heartily recommend it to anyone who loves sci-fi and effects-driven films.

I give it an 8/10 for still feeling as fresh and interesting, as it was all those years ago.

For the average viewer, 'Tron' is a puzzling film. The language is loaded with jargon, the world experienced by Clu and Tron (inside the computer) appears strange, forbidding and two-dimensional. It is a world that seems to work though, but how does the human Clu instantly know how to adjust to its peculiarities?

Viewers have come to expect that techno-babble jargon in SciFi flicks is completely meaningless. That isn't entirely the case for 'Tron', much of it is firmly based in computing. Even more importantly, this strange world Clu and Tron inhabit is equally firmly based on the way computer operating systems work, and that is the reason why Clu (in real live a computer hacker) knows how to handle it.

Using this world as the basis for a movie was pretty audacious, especially in 1982. Thankfully, the writers did not compromise on their idea, and consequently the film not only worked but it stood the test of time.

'Tron' works, because computers work.

Before "Virtuosity", before "The Matrix", and other similar types of movies, there was "Tron", a movie about a rogue program eliminating all other programs so there would just be him: Master Control Program (MCP).

I decided to check this movie out again being that I hadn't seen it since I was a kid and all I could remember were the race car scenes. Looking at it again I can honestly say that Tron was ahead of its time. Now you have seen the concept played over and over again: machines/computers gaining awareness and cognizance then seeking to break free of their creators, most times violently. Tron was also innovative with the computer graphics overlay with real people. Sure it looked very elementary, but at the time it was all new. The movie was great in my opinion and the story worked really well. I did find myself chuckling a bit at the obvious Atari sounds & icons used in the movie. Galaxian was clearly audible and there was a picture of Pacman in one scene.

More than just reminiscent of Lang's Metropolis, Tron is a beautiful, well made exercise from a main stream producer (Disney) which reminds us of the time before Jurassic Park and Episode One where creative skill was left to human perception rather than a computer's digitally correct ideal. Owing more to the human colourists than the now outdated computer effects, this film is evidence - similar in a way to Kubric's pre-Moon landing, pre-CGI 2001 - to the creative and more sensory-pleasing abilities of the human artist over soul-less programmers, from a time before when a box would 'parse' it all for you. It's difficult to express how high-powered computers fail to create an image that is satisfactory to the human eye; there is always something that rings false about it. Tron was created in a period of wire diagrams being the best you could coax from a computer; anything else was added by human hand. A film that makes you nostalgic for the time when Disney made films that were accessible for all, almost Bakshi-like in its disregard for the mainstream. There is struggle against adversity; there is an oppressive, evil regime; there are two heroes who survive despite all odds; and there is love conquering all (a token woman is included as love interest. Ironically like the IT industry). The naive use of technical jargon merely adds to the "computer program" style setting and this film is ideally suited for today's retro-chic society. As a Disney film this is aimed predominantly at children, so if you fail to understand the plot then I would recommend sticking to the Lion King or some other pabulum. This is a great film - watch it.

Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is convinced that former colleague Ed Dillinger (David Warner) stole his games for his company. With help from Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora (Cindy Morgan), he sneaks into the company. However Dillinger's powerful A.I. the Master Control Program (MCP) digitizes Flynn and sends him into the world of the computer programs.

Does the science work? No.

Do anything here seems the least bit realistic? No.

But it works as an action adventure. The visual design is completely unique and absolutely iconic. Forget about believability. Just allow yourself to enjoy the adventure.

I saw this film upon its release in 1982 and thought it looked cool but wasn't much of a story. Having just seen the 70-millimeter re-release on the El Capitan's giant screen, I've a much greater appreciation for it. Certainly, the characterizations are paper-thin, the dialogue is nothing special, and the music is poorly used, but the writers were quite canny in their Christian allegory, which made the whole show much more than a mere exercise in special effects.

Jeff Bridges as Flynn is basically a scruffy Jesus figure who descends into the world of computer programs immaculately to find that his sort is worshipped as gods by the programs. He also finds that he has powers considered miraculous by programs, such as to heal, resurrect and divert the beam of a lightship (the video game equivalent of walking on water?).

Bruce Boxleitner, meanwhile, is a champion in the programs' Roman-style gladiatorial games, and though he lacks Spartacus' army, he compensates with Moses' heroic religious fervor and sense of rightness. As Moses went up the mountain, spoke with a burning bush, and returned with tablets inscribed with law, Tron goes into the Input/Output Tower, communicates with his User through a beam of light, and returns with his identity disc imprinted with the code necessary to defeat the Master Control Program.

And said MCP? The spirit of conquest and tyranny that informed the cultures of Rome and Egypt, with David Warner's Sark character a blend of Pharoah and Crassus.

As a teenager, I didn't appreciate the allegory, but now I have new respect for this film which many fans tend to dismiss. Science fiction used to try to be about something, but these days they've devolved to being ultra-violent, CGI-choked retreads. True, there's a cheese quality to it, but that's part of the fun. And I think I prefer a nice block of cheese with some character to it than the processed glop squeezing out of Hollywood's tube currently.