Tron

"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.

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.

I recently watched this film again, and I must say that it still looks good.



Tron is the story about Kevin Flynn, a young ,hotshot computer programmer who is determined to find the proof the he is the creator of five of the most popular video games from the man who stole them. When Flynn gets too close, the artificial intelligence super-computer ,MCP, digitizes Flynn into the video game world he created, to fight for his life, all for MCP's amusement.

This film may have been for too ahead of it's time in 1982. It told the story about a super-computer gone power hungry (two year prior to Terminator and seventeen years prior to The Matrix) and it was the the springboard for early computer generated images. Although this film mixed CG with hand-drawn animation, I dare anyone to sort out one from the other. The film also sported computer terms such as bit, ram ,end of line ,etc.)

This film also sported some of the most unique and original action sequences, such as the "Lightcycle Maze/chase" and the "Disc Duel" The same goes for the computer world ,that is unlike anything presented on the big screen. Even the score done by Wendy Carlos was unlike any other. The performences by the cast were well done. One in particular was the commanding performance of David Warner as the ruthless Commander of the gameworld Sark.

This film is one of those over-looked gems from the 80's that should be seen in it's pristine DVD release. End of Line

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.

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.