Revisiting TRON

For it's time Tron was a masterpiece of combining live action and the emerging digital animation technology. It may have not done well in the box office but I was blown away by the look of the movie when I saw it in the theater. Looking back,it still holds its own against it's contemporaries. Sure the animation technology has advanced incredibly since Tron but considering that they had to create some of the technology to make the film as they made it,this was an unbelievable undertaking.

Essentially, this movie was an exhibition piece, a novelty. Perhaps even a proof of concept. They were relying on the effects and imagery to carry the film. As anyone who has watched enough movies can attest, even the best studios can fall into the trap of "If we make it cool/action-packed/dinosaur-y/Sith-y enough, people will pay to see it."

Also, I think one major problem here was that, in the early '80s, computers weren't part of the popular consciousness, so there was a lot of awkwardness in how to deal with a plot involving such technical issues. On the face of it, most of TRON is utterly absurd (I say this with love, since TRON is easily one of my favorite movies.) You have Flynn interacting with CLU,for instance, as if he's having a conversation with an actual tiny little dude roaming a glowing maze while the cameras are careful not to show what is actually happening on Flynn's computer screen between log-in and final failure. Programs talk like blue-collar workers doing their jobs. Other programs are actively malicious. And so forth. In that context, it seems the screenwriting was so intent on creating this improbable world while dealing with the inherent tensions between a logic-oriented program environment and the messiness of human behavior and emotion that they scarcely had the luxury of developing things like the romance subplot. It's a very odd duck of a movie to begin with, and when they try to create anything approximating character development, it just multiplies the complexities of the screenwriting. A better writer probably could have pulled it off, sure. But it would likely take a better insight into the subject matter to allow that to make it onto the screen. They were trying to create a paradigm that was inherently difficult to convey convincingly, in a movie about technology that few really understood, including studio executives whose approval was necessary for any plot outlays.

Also, and I hate to say this, most of the actors weren't really at the peak of their powers at that point in time. A couple, and I won't name names, were never really all that good. So you may be demanding more depth from them than they could convincingly convey.

I think Tron is a beautiful work of abstract art. I also think it's laughable how back in the day most people didn't get even the most basic computer terms and concepts explored in the film. I always viewed the story as a classic good vs evil plot and nothing more. It's a fantasy film after all.

I was 15 when I it came out and it blew me away. I remember thinking it was boring, but the visuals made quite an impression. Just watching it again now and it's pretty trippy. It's got a Bakshi vibe to it....

The script for Tron is not much worse than that for a lot of big movies from around that time.

*couldn't* care less about

I hear you. Yes, the script could have been better, but I don't mind it as much as you do. It's supposed to be a family adventure film, I think, and although I don't think it's quite on-target for that, either, that's where maybe some of the character struggles originate. Lisberger probably found it hard to write high-concept sci-fi for the whole family, and it can be tough to give a character the easy-to-grasp motives that kids can grab onto while simultaneously making them complicated enough for the sophisticated world he was clearly envisioning.

There are a few things about TRON that elevate it for me, and while I don't think of it as a great movie, I think it's a bit better than you're finding it.

1) Of course, the CGI and effects. They hold up today, giving us a unique-looking world. Even though we have better effects now (obviously) these are charming and well-designed. It's always fun exploring the world of TRON.

2) The imagination of the world and the premise. A lot of thought went in to figuring out the computer realm of the film, and it's great to see it operate and to get a feel for digital society. Also, the idea of converting into energy and travelling into a computer is a fun one, and frees up the imagination. So many films miss this mark, but TRON makes you want to play in the world.

3) The "religious-lite" angle. I'm a sucker for some spirituality getting whipped into adventure films, and I was very intrigued by the idea that Bridges would be a god running around in his creation, this avatar, and he would encounter a Holy War between the believers and unbelievers, those yearning for contact with users and those rebelling against the very idea. It's interesting thinking about metaphysics like that. Okay, it doesn't go deep here, but it does touch on some interesting enough ideas for me to springboard into deep realms of thought, and I dig it. It's like Superman. It also bears thinking about our responsibilities towards programs if we're going to be progenitors of AI.

Wrapping up, I can't help but think of The Matrix. It's got some simplistic action movie structures that buoy up excellent, groundbreaking special effects, an imaginative premise (about going into computers), and a bit of a cannonball "dive" into philosophy and religion. The Matrix went way deeper than TRON and is all-around the better film, but I like both for similar reasons.

Or maybe I just still want a laser motorcycle I can keep in a bar for use any time.