Tron (1982)

Tron (1982)

I wanted to watch this movie because I saw the new sequel and loved it. I had heard that the first movie was not all that hot, but I still thought I would give it a try for plots sake. I always knew the basic plot to Tron (verrryyy basic) because of all of the parodies and spoofs of it in cartoons and on TV when I was growing up. Various commercials and games did the rest. It turns out that spoofs are spoofs for a reason however, as there is much more to the basic plot than I originally thought.

Tron is about Kevin Flynn who is a former employee of the corporation ENCOM, and he now runs an arcade. Flynn has been trying to hack into the main computer mainframe of ENCOM to try to prove that a manager there, Ed Dillinger stole from some of the video games Flynn created. Flynn is sent into the ENCOM computer one night after breaking into the facility with friends to try to find more information. In the digital world Flynn must then compete in the games to try to destroy the MCP, which is his only way of returning home. It is there he meets Tron, a security program, who helps him in his digital quest.

I enjoyed the idea of the movie, and what the plot was trying to do… but there are some things that seemed a little corny overall in the film. It was the 80s… so I suppose the corniness is understandable with this sort of film. Much of this corniess came from the graphics and from the world of Tron. A lot of this was also because of the costumes in the digital world… if there was one thing that became more retro classy it was the outfits of the digital world.

I liked the characters created in the film, the elements that Tron had, and the fact that there was a nice little love affair in the digital world, but I feel like the newer movie did a better job of handling the love affair when faced with the problems of the digital world. In the second film, Tron: Legacy, the journey was more about the relationship between father and son, which I thought was much more real.

Something that was nice about the 80’s version of Tron, was the cinematography. There was an effort to make intriguing digital effects in this unreal world. Each film cut made sense and was captivating with how they would approach the shot. There were shots that would follow the cycles around a corner, that would circle a digital vehicle. This style of filming and cinematography in the digital world was kept in the newer version of the film, which was quite neat.

I do believe that the film would have been much more successful if the digital effects were more like the ones in the current film (which is only possible if you actually make a film in this day and age), but saying that, I feel spoiled. Digital effects are so big now a days in films, especially with this new 3D fad, it probably be difficult for the younger generation to fully enjoy a film from the 80s that requires so much of it.

Something that I liked about the older film was the relationship between the digital world and the real world. The two actively effected each other, and the real world had its own storyline as well as the digital one. This is also probably because of the cost of the various digital work that the movie required. Nowadays, it is absolutely normal to have a whole crew for digital designs, uses, and application.