TRON (1982)

Greetings, programs! Grab your identity disc and hop on your light cycle, because we’ve got a big one today. The Great Disney Movie Ride is going digital! But will these legendary special effects hack it for me or did the struggling studio byte off more than they can chew? Well….

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Pong was a lot of things. A revolutionary new form of entertainment. The birth of an industry. A technological marvel. But a story…? Maybe not so much. Animator Steven Lisberger begged to differ, looking at the world’s first video game and conceiving a version of Alice in Wonderland with video games. His animation studio used a disc-wielding character called Tron (short for electronic) as a mascot, complete with his own little animation sequence featuring the then-popular backlit animation technique. After another project called Animalympics fell through, Lisberger and his team turned their attention toward a full-length animated film about Tron.

Around the same time, Lisberger became fascinated with the fledgling art form of computer-generated imagery. And in a happy coincidence, a man named Alan Kay read about the upcoming movie about computers and asked if he could be a consultant. Kay, by the way, is one of the most influential computer scientists of all time. He invented the Graphical User Interface, which, in wildly simplified terms, lets someone working on a computer see what they’re doing, and the technology that evolved into the laptop computer. Writer Bonnie MacBird based the character of Alan Bradley on Kay, and eventually fell in love with and married him.

Lisberger and his team independently created test animation and storyboards for a film comprised of groundbreaking computer-generated visuals and backlit animation with a live-action framing device. Unfortunately, no studio wanted to gamble on such an experimental film, and Warner Brothers, MGM, and Columbia rejected the pitch. But there was one studio searching for something to dazzle audiences and prove once and for all that they could do more than kiddie comedies and car chases. Even Disney had some reservations about bankrolling an untried director with so many elements that no one had ever tried. I know, Dark Age Disney, afraid of taking risks. It’s shocking. Happily for Lisberger, they were allowed to film a test reel with an Ultimate Frisbee champion and some leftover costumes from The Black Hole. That was enough to win the studio’s confidence and get the green light once and for all.

We’ll talk at length about the absolutely bananas production process of this movie under Artistry because it really is inextricable from the effects work. Suffice it to say, it was not an easy shoot for anyone involved. Actors balked at the skin-tight, nearly transparent costumes. Extensive rewrites removed nearly all of Macbird’s more comedic script in favor of more serious science jargon from Lisberger. A Directors Guild of America strike loomed over the horizon. And worst of all, they moved the release date, giving the team six months less to finish the painstaking effects work. It was intended for a Christmas release, but chairman of the board Card Walker realized Don Bluth planned to release The Secret of NIMH that summer. To punish the renegade animator for betraying Disney, he moved Tron to compete against his film. Tron actually did make more money… but still got curbstomped by Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of KHAAAAAAN!!!!! and a little movie called E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Tron made back a little over double its $17 million budget but that $50 million gross fell short of the huge Star Wars-level smash hit Disney hoped for. So they wrote it off and considered it a disappointment. Some sources I’ve found say it was such a bomb that they stopped making live-action movies until the creation of Touchstone, but that’s demonstrably not true so I’m not sure where that came from. Still, critics adored the film, especially for its amazing visuals and the revolutionary use of computer animation. There were some criticisms for its weak plot and bland characters, but all in all, the effects made up for it. An arcade cabinet based on four scenes from the film became a smash hit, actually outgrossing the movie. It was nominated for Oscars for Costume Design and Sound, though denied the Visual Effects Oscar because they thought it was cheating, proving once and for all that the Academy is full of crap. And of course, Tron has become a cult classic that inspired Disney to revisit the computer world through a sequel, a TV series, an ice show (yes, really), and a theme park attraction.

My first exposure to Tron was actually video game-related as well. It was Kingdom Hearts 2, of course, because if you’ve been around this blog a while you know my head explodes if I don’t talk about Kingdom Hearts every three seconds. When I first played the game as a teenager, I had never heard of Tron in my life. I was just rolling up to Hollow Bastion, the main plot was kicking into high gear, things were getting exciting… then suddenly I was in a computer with all these new characters that kept talking like I was supposed to know who they were. It’s not uncommon for the series to expect familiarity with the Disney movies that inspired each world, but this was the first time I actually didn’t. Still, I powered through to the Organization plot and didn’t question it too much. Fast forward to adulthood, and I gave it a watch… and did not understand a thing that happened. I gave it (and Tron Legacy) another try in preparation for Tron Lightcycle/Run at Magic Kingdom… and I still did not absorb anything.

Yeah. This is going to be a rough one. What can I say? I am not a computer girl. I can use them fairly competently, but when it comes to the technical jargon? Nope. Worse, the costumes in the computer world do absolutely nothing for my face blindness. Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, and the other guy are fine actors but they are all very much white dudes in their 30s with similar heights and builds. It gets really hard to keep track of who’s who and what they’re doing. And on top of all of that, I’m just the kind of person who focuses more on characters than anything else, which even critics who love the movie had to admit was not the movie’s strong point. I know this movie has its die-hard fans so let’s see if watch number three makes a difference!

STORY

Flynn’s arcade is the home of the hottest video game around: Space Paranoids. But that’s not what we’re here to see. So a glowing whirl of circuitry and neon brings us inside the arcade cabinet to the world of computers. It’s kind of like if f The Wizard of Oz opened with the house falling on the Witch of the East. You’d lose the impact of the moment when Dorothy opens the door and suddenly color floods in, just like we’re robbed of the moment when Flynn gets sucked in here. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Life here is anything but fun and games. The Lightcycle rider representing the player glances nervously over his shoulder as the dreaded Commander Sark chases him down. The momentary lapse sends the rider careening into the ribbon of light behind Sark’s Lightcycle and, in an explosion of sparks, he’s gone. Derezzed.

Sark reports back to his boss, The Master Control Program, who congratulates him on his cruelty. As a reward for his carnage, the MCP grants him tougher matches against military prisoners… but first, he has to go up against an accounting program named Crom. Crom begs the guards for his life, warning that his User won’t like this. But they scoff at him and jail him with extreme prejudice. So the good, innocent True Believers who serve an omnipotent higher power are being rounded up and killed by the villains who are bad because they seek autonomy and control over their own lives. And I’m sorry but are you kidding me?!!?! I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m no fan of organized religion as someone who grew up queer and female in the Southern US. I am fully aware that I am the one with the problem but come on, writers, you are not oppressed because other people have different beliefs. Can’t this be a good vs evil metaphor for rising fascism like every other movie of the Cold War? This is not the venue for this conversation.

Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Or at least I’ll try to. By this point, it’s no secret that this is my berserk button. Anyway, Crom is being persecuted and threatened with execution for not believing in Users. This makes no logical sense even in-universe for several reasons that have nothing to do with my capital I-Issues, but we’ll get there when we get there. Another inmate, Ram, explained that programs are being rounded up and absorbed into the MCP, or just being forced into gladiatorial combat until they die depending on how useful the MCP thinks they are. Honestly? That on its own is a compelling villain plot. I’m on board just with that. You just don’t need the religious propaganda.

Outside the computer, an expert hacker named Kevin Flynn runs a program called Clu to hack into a system from the outside. In this world, programs take on the appearance of the User who wrote them, to represent the amount of personally identifiable information in the digital world. Really makes you wonder what this would look like in 2024 when there’s a whole lot more information about us than just social security numbers and such, even for those of us who aren’t programmers. Anyway, Clu looks like Flynn. Flynn gives him a pep talk that he’s the most perfect program ever which surely won’t come back to bite him, then sends him and his sidekick Bit in a tank to find a certain file. A gang of Recognizers, a sort of automatic armed goon, chases them through the system. Though Clu puts up a good fight, the Recognizers outnumber him and smash the tank with a laser blast. Clu tells Bit to run for his life, and the Recognizers haul him off to the MCP’s tender mercies. The MCP tortures him, demanding to know who sent him and what he’s looking for, but Clu refuses to confess so he gets derezzed on the spot.

Back in the real world, Edward Dillinger’s super cool glowy helicopter lands at Encom Tower. He steps into his office, decorated by Bond Villains R’ Us, and dismisses his assistant. Using his very cool giant iPad desk that I totally want even though bending over it would murder my spine, he logs in to the Master Control Program. The MCP explains that it caught Flynn poking around the system again. It managed to keep the all-important file away from him, but they’re going to need to take stronger action than the MCP can do from its side of the screen. Dillinger decides to shut down the whole system so no one can get in, not even Flynn the expert hacker. Or something. The movie gets very bogged down in corporate speak and technobabble, especially in the next few scenes, and I’m not 100% sure I get what Group 7 Access means. But hopefully, this is close enough.

One of Encom’s employees, Alan Bradley, is hard at work coding his own firewall program called Tron. Hey, that’s the name of the movie! But the system suddenly locks him out. Annoyed, he steps out of his cubicle into a sea of cubicles to investigate. His neighbor pokes his head in to ask if he can have a snack, which is only notable because this is the only time we see Ram’s User. Apparently, his name is Roy Kleinberg, according to some supplemental material. Alan heads to his boss’s office to ask what’s going on. Dillinger smugly explains the security breach that forced him to pause access to the system. No big deal, just a precaution, really for real. He casually asks what’s so important that Alan needs to do his job like right now, and Alan tells him everything about the independent Tron program that can secure their network and even keep the MCP under control. The second Alan leaves, the MCP orders Dillinger to stop Tron. This hostile takeover bid has come too far to end now.

Alan storms down to the laser laboratory to break the news to his girlfriend Lora Baines. She’s working on a program called Yori that can translate matter into data. I’m starting to see why Nomura likes this movie enough to include it in KH2, that’s the whole premise of Coded. Her boss, Encom founder Walter Gibbs, explains that digitizing works by suspending molecules in cyberspace, and they all commiserate about how the MCP is ruining this company. Gibbs points out that they’d have to be crazy to think that anyone could think a computer program could run an international conglomerate. And then he predicts social media algorithms: “Computers and programs will start thinking and the people will stop!” After that prescient comment, he potters off, leaving Alan and Lora alone to rage against Dillinger’s shutdown of the system. Lora points out that they just happen to know a disgruntled ex-employee who won’t stop talking about hacking Encom: Kevin Flynn. Alan scowls because Flynn just happens to be Lora’s ex-boyfriend, but his jealousy doesn’t mean he wants him arrested.

After the cold, dull cubicle farm, the energy at Flynn’s arcade is almost overwhelming. Lora and Alan pick their way through the crowd and ask young Richard Simmons for directions (seriously, that costume is a choice). With his help they find Flynn breaking the world record high score on Space Paranoids for a cheering crowd of teenagers. He greets them and leads them up to his awesome bachelor pad, home of seven Pride flags, so they can chat somewhere a little more private. Away from prying eyes, Flynn changes shirts for no real reason except to show off to Lora and all the moms in the audience.

Lora loses patience for all this posturing and asks him straight up if he’s been hacking Encom. He doesn’t deny it, but there’s a good reason. Dillinger stole the code for several video games Flynn invented. Flynn only wants evidence of the plagiarism that earned Dillinger billions of dollars and his high-ranking executive position. But it’s the end of the road. Lora warns that Dillinger knows what he’s looking for and he’s shut down the whole computer system to stop him. Only Alan’s Tron program can stop him, but first, they have to get him into the locked-off system. Flynn declares that he can get them into a different system on the same network or something man I’m so lost. But we have a plan and off we go.

Meanwhile, Gibbs confronts Dillinger for shutting the system down. Dillinger refuses to let them back in because the MCP has told him not to, which Gibbs finds absurd. They can’t run their business based on data projections and leave the people behind! That would be madness. Cough cough. Dillinger snaps that efficiency is more important than people and I’m so sorry I’ve come down with a massive coughing fit. When Gibbs fires back, Dillinger fires him, the founder of the company, on the spot for the crime of caring about his employees’ livelihoods over his profits. With the bleeding heart out of the way, the MCP declares that it’s going to start taking over governments. Dillinger realizes He Dun Goofed, but the MCP blackmails into helping its world domination bid. A sentient AI trying to take over the world? Now you have my attention! That’s a good plot right there! But to my immeasurable disappointment, this never comes up again.

Team Good Guys 1.0 hacks their way through Encom Tower’s Really Big Door, meeting absolutely no resistance along the way. By the way, the real building’s Really Big Door is Really Big because it’s full of concrete to keep dangerous radiation inside and they’re just letting these actors and crewmembers galavant in there like it ain’t no thing. Flynn settles into Lora’s desk in the laser bay while she and Alan head upstairs to prepare the Tron program. On her way out, Lora warns Flynn not to mess with the huge digitizing laser directly behind him and wow I sure hope nothing happens. Flynn easily breaks into the system where he’s greeted by the MCP. Far from the threats it’s pilled onto Dillinger, the MCP tries to sucker him in with memories of the days when the big scary AI was just a chess program. Flynn ignores it and plants a logic bomb of unsolvable problems to keep the program at bay. Of course, the MCP doesn’t like that so it takes over the laser and zaps Flynn into the computer.

After a good old 80’s drug trip, we’re finally inside the computer! Flynn sees himself wrapped in spandex and glow lines and thinks he’s dreaming, but otherwise takes this really well. Part of it’s because he has bigger issues to worry about like the guards stabbing him with taser spears, but it does seem like a slight underreaction. The MCP orders Sark to bring the newcomer to the Game Grid to play until he dies. It’s all business as usual until the MCP informs him the newbie is not a program, but a User. That gives Sark pause, but MCP tortures him until he agrees to put the User through his paces. Mr. Exposition himself, Ram, chats with his new cellmate and fills him in on the deadly video games he’s about to be pushed into. Flynn gets all macho about it because he’s a pro-gamer and soon the guards march him and some other prisoners off to the Game Grid to receive a briefing and their identity discs. On the way, Flynn spots a program absolutely dominating at Sudden Death Ultimate Frisbee. Ram explains that this is the system’s very own holy warrior paladin guy, Tron.

The name rings a bell but before Flynn can dwell on it, the MCP’s goons march him back to his cell. He and Ram bond and Ram exposits his own backstory: he’s an insurance program and a big old nerd. It’s always disappointing to find your cellmate is absolutely useless for forming an escape plan, but Flynn politely introduces himself and lies that he’s lost his memories. By crazy random happenstance, that’s not uncommon for programs that are transported by the MCP, so Ram buys it completely. Ain’t that convenient.

The guards march Flynn out to the Game Grid to play what is essentially Pong, reimagined as some kind of lacrosse-type thing played on a stovetop burner where the rings beneath their feet vanish when the ball hits the barrier. His opponent is none other than Crom from the beginning of the movie, and Flynn has a grand old time. Somehow he still thinks this is a friendly competition despite Sark telling him it’s life or death like five minutes ago, until the ring under Crom’s feet vanishes and leaves him dangling over a bottomless pit. Only now does Flynn realize he’s about to kill an innocent man so he refuses to continue. Sark can’t have that so with the press of a button, he makes all the rings under Crom vanish, dropping the poor compound interest program to his death. He almost does the same to Flynn, but the MCP wants him to suffer.

Back at the pit cell, Flynn finally has the chance to meet Tron properly. To his shock, he looks just like Alan! And to Tron’s shock, Flynn knows the name of his personal god. Flynn manages to smooth that over by telling him that his User knows Tron’s User. And wouldn’t you know it, they both want to get rid of the MCP so they form an alliance. Step one: get out of here, and take Ram with them. And with another game looming over the horizon, Flynn has an idea. It’s time for the most famous scene in the movie: the Lightcycles! It’s basically Snake, but with motorcycles that emit solid walls. But it really is much more exciting than I just made it sound. Motorcycles are inherently cool, and this sequence has the bulk of the film’s CGI so that’s nothing to sneeze at. Also, the Kingdom Hearts version? Super, super fun.

Team Good Guys 2.0 takes on some of Sark’s guards, and Tron takes out the first one with some crafty maneuvering. One down, one to go. And Flynn has a better idea for how to get rid of the second guard. He lures him into a maze of tight corners until he derezzes so violently it blows a hole in the arena wall. Flynn grins and urges Ram and Tron to follow him through the hole to freedom. Sark is not happy and sends a whole bunch of Recognizers and Tanks to retrieve them. And somehow they manage not to make another stale, tired chase scene! Good job, Disney, proud of you. Eventually, Team Good Guys 2.0 escapes Team Bad Guys and the three fire-forged friends laugh, thrilled with their victory.

With their freedom assured, Flynn gets ready to take on the big bad, but the others tell him to pump the brakes. They can’t do anything without help from the outside, and the only way to get that is to reach the last functioning I/O Tower. And wait wait wait wait. Remember when I said that the religious angle is annoying and unnecessary but also doesn’t make sense? This is where it stops making sense. Direct communication with the users used to be commonplace. There is infrastructure in place for actual conversations with the other world, not prayer, but an actual real-time two-sided conversation. And now we don’t believe Users even exist? We see at the end that time moves differently inside the computer but it seems a bit much for something like this to go from commonplace to the stuff of myths so quickly that multiple living programs know the names of their Users. You can’t even say that they’ve been cut off because Dillinger cut off Sector 7 access because that happened after the religious thing was introduced.

Clearly, the writers didn’t think this hard about the script’s internal logic, so I guess I should make like the characters and move on. As the journey to the I/O Tower begins, they come across a pool full of liquid power to literally recharge their batteries after the grueling chase. It looks so much like blue Powerade that I can’t believe the parks don’t sell a drink based on it with like, a glow cube and a white chocolate Frisbee or something (hire me). After an extended scene of them drinking water and talking like it’s some kind of drug, it’s time to go. With their energy renewed, Tron and Ram start to make tracks, but Flynn has to be dragged away from the power pool.

The trio heads out into the big blue world, unaware that Sark’s tanks haven’t lost them after all. A tank sneaks up behind them and blasts all three Lightcycles to smithereens. Tron gets away unscathed but Ram and Flynn take a direct hit so he immediately assumes they’re dead. He’s half right – Flynn’s actually fine, but Ram is so badly injured that Flynn has to carry him to safety. They find their way to an abandoned, broken Recognizer where Ram can rest. To their surprise, Flynn’s touch powers up the dead ship. No program has power like that. They never really define like what, he just kind of can do ill-defined Impossible Stuff because he’s a User. So using his User Powers^TM, Flynn restores the Recognizer’s broken pieces and voila! They have a ride back to Tron! But poor Ram is fading fast because the plot no longer needs Mr. Exposition. With the last of his strength, Ram asks if Flynn is really a User. And of course, he is. In his last moments, Ram realizes his faith is justified and Users really are watching over them. Even if he can’t be saved, the system can. And he de-rezzes with a smile.

With Ram dead, the pacing dies too. Flynn flies the Recognizer really slowly through a polygonal expanse of stuff for approximately forever. As impressive as the effects are there’s only so long I can watch nothing happening. Meanwhile, Tron sneaks aboard an enemy ship staffed by a bunch of female programs running calculations, including Lora’s program Yori. At first, she’s too brainwashed by the MCP to do more than spout numbers but Tron’s embrace revives her. You wouldn’t expect programs to have human romantic relationships but what am I saying? She’s a female character, that’s her entire purpose. Yori leads Tron to a hiding place, past a bunch of random NPCs in much more interesting costumes than the main cast. Seriously, I want their story.

After more slowwwwly sailing the Recognizer through the formless blue void, Flynn makes a friend: the same Bit from earlier. Apparently, it thinks Flynn is Clu which isn’t really explained anywhere but it’s the only logical explanation I can think of. The Bit is a welcome bit of levity, but driving the Recognizer, however badly, is such a long sequence that even the poor Bit’s frazzled reaction to Flynn crashing the Recognizer in town falls flat. Eventually, he crash lands in a… town? full of people in more varied costumes, but he doesn’t see Tron anywhere. Before he has the chance to search, Sark and his troops march through wherever we are. Flynn punches a guard, which because User Powers^TM turns his own circuit lines red so he can infiltrate.

Meanwhile, Tron and Yori are also wherever we are, climbing up some kind of wire thing towards the beams of light that represent User communication. Yori slides down into a big pit and I got excited because I finally know where we are. It’s the arena where you fight the Hostile Program boss in KH2! We’re at the I/O Tower, yay! The Tower is guarded by Gibbs’ (remember him?) communication program Dumont, who pokes another hole in the “Users don’t exist” narrative because if Users don’t exist what is he guarding? He’s not happy to see them because whether they exist or not the MCP made communicating with the User world illegal for everyone except it. But if they succeed, no one has to worry about that, and besides Sark’s guys are knocking on the door. So Dumont says a prayer and lets Yori and Tron in.

Once inside the I/O Tower, Tron raises his disc to the sky. The voice of Alan beams down in a ray of holy light to give Tron his instructions. If he throws his identity disc into the base of the cone that makes up the MCP, they win. If he doesn’t… well. He has to win. To help him with that, Alan programs Tron with new functions that should enable him to finish off the MCP once and for all. With new upgrades and new purpose, Tron and Yori hurry off to the final battle. And not a moment too soon – Sark and his guys break down the door and arrest Dumont at the exact moment Alan’s voice drops out. Some guards chase them so Tron taps into his new abilities and wrecks some bad guy face.

Little does he know, the “guard” Tron knocks off a ledge is actually Flynn. Apparently, I’m not the only one who struggles with face blindness in this movie. Yori hijacks a Solar Sailer and we’re on our way to the MCP’s sanctum with Flynn still dangling over the side. Tron finally realizes that’s his friend and pulls him up, and the touch of his hand turns Flynn’s suit blue again. As they fly over a giant Hidden Mickey, the two friends fill each other in on what’s happened since their separation, including Ram’s death, and Tron introduces Flynn and Yori. Flynn starts mouth-breathing so grotesquely at Yori that Tron steps in to defend his girl… which somehow prompts Flynn to confess that he’s a User? It’s a really weird nonsequitur. Tron and Yori don’t really react at all to finding out a deity is walking among them, nor to Flynn’s admission that Users wing it one day at a time just like programs. Silly things like facts and logic can’t possibly shake their blind beliefs. Ick.

The Solar Sailer makes its slowwwww way across the light beam that makes up its track. It’s really more like a very slow train than a sailboat in a world with no sun. They fly over some grid bugs that Yori tells us are dangerous but they don’t really do anything. As they meander, Sark tortures Dumont but he refuses to tell him where Tron is and he has some choice words for the MCP. It’s kind of awesome to see this old man stand up and call their dictator a chess program with an ego problem, even if it doesn’t go well for Dumont. The MCP takes offense and sends a power surge to stop the Solar Sailer in its tracks – so it does know where they are? Unless something drastic happens, they’ll never make it to the track switch. So Flynn reaches his hand into the transport beam to connect the two with his User Powers^TM. The effort takes a lot out of him but they escape even if Tron has to carry him onto the ship.

Neither program can figure out why Flynn hasn’t derezzed. But the fact remains that he’s dazed, but otherwise not hurt too bad. But before they can celebrate their savior being alive, Sark’s carrier smashes right through the Solar Sailer dropping Tron to his death. Actually, he falls like three feet to a ledge below, but no one bothers to look down so they assume he’s dead. Sark hauls them to a holding cell, where they find Dumont looking no worse for wear. Sark gloats for a while but to his fury, Flynn wasn’t supposed to survive that energy beam, and Flynn snarks back that he’s nothing. Enraged, Sark marches Dumont off to be assimilated to the MCP and sets the ship to be derezzed – and Flynn and Yori with it.

Yori gives up pretty much immediately and collapses into a swooning puddle of Girl. Flynn’s not ready to die just yet so he uses his User Powers^TM to resurrect her and uughghgghhg. Every Hero’s Journey has some roots in a messiah narrative but this starts out with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and just keeps getting more in your face and I do not appreciate it. With new purpose, Flynn and Yori hijack what’s left of the ship and continue on to the MCP. Tron gets there first in time to watch the MCP torturing a new round of prisoners, including Dumont, before it absorbs them. It’s the first time we really see the MCP, a giant red face possessing what I think is supposed to be an 80’s hard drive but kind of looks like a giant evil washing machine.

It’s time for the final battle. The MCP, being a giant evil washing machine, can’t really do much so it sends Sark down to fight his battles for it. The ensuing epic Frisbee battle really is much cooler than it has any right to be even if there’s no music, thanks to the unique fight choreography and some enforced method acting. Lisberger took it upon himself to annoy Bruce Boxleitner until he gave the incredible furious glare that adds so much to what we see onscreen. Sark laments Tron not joining his side but Tron has none of it and nails Sark in the head with his identity disc. We even see some digital gore fly from the crack in his helmet, earning the movie its PG rating, as Sark falls. With his best lieutenant on the brink of deresolution, the MCP makes a Hail Mary and transfers its power to save him. And Sark… gets really big?

Tron manages to fend off the giant Sark and wing his identity disc at the MCP’s base as Alan instructed. Unfortunately, it’s protected by a holographic wall. He keeps up the pressure and manages to break through in one spot, but the wall spins rapidly and Sark gets more aggressive. And I’m actually impressed by how faithful the KH version of this fight is, down to the spinning holo-wall. But I digress. While Tron grapples with the giant Sark, Flynn, and Yori fly overhead in the Solar Sailer. Flynn looks down at the gap in the holo-wall and realizes what he has to do. If he’s going to save the programs from evil, he has to sacrifice himself and ooh I keep saying I’m going to stop harping on this because the comments are never kind but the movie just keeps doing it and it makes me mad hgnngghh. Yori tries to stop him but there’s no other choice. So Flynn kisses her because she looks like his ex and he’s a lech. When they break apart, he promises that things will be okay and dives inside the MCP’s head.

The MCP starts glitching out, and the holo-wall stops spinning. Tron finally has the opening he needs and flings his disc home. The double assault finishes off the MCP. As it dies, we see a split-second image of an ordinary program with Walter Gibbs’ face chained to a chess board. And just as quickly, it’s gone. The MCP derezzes, and Sark along with it. The ensuing explosion frees the system’s information to be transmitted throughout the system, turning the beams of communication from red to blue. Tron embraces Yori and Yori’s so happy he’s alive that she shows him this new kissing thing Flynn showed her. Tron wholeheartedly approves. The two of them and Dumont look out over a new, liberated Grid and a brighter tomorrow.

Flynn isn’t dead, of course. Being blasted into data packets just brings him back to the real world where only seconds have passed. With the MCP’s memory banks gone, the file that contains Flynn’s evidence (remember that plotline?) is free. The code proving once and for all that he, not Dillinger, created Space Paranoids prints out onto a piece of paper for all to see. Yeah, that’ll fly in court. He runs upstairs to share his victory with Lora and Alan while Dillinger returns to his Bond villain lair. He starts to boot up the MCP, but it doesn’t turn on. Instead, the code that proves his crime appears clear and undeniable across his screen. And you just know he’s thinking “awww crap.”

A new day dawns for Encom, and the only daylight shot in the entire movie dawns for us. Lora and Alan meet on the roof to watch the boss’s helicopter fly up to the landing pad on the roof. It’s a friendlier blue color, foreshadowing who’s about to step out. It’s Flynn! With Dillinger’s fraud exposed, Flynn has taken his rightful place as CEO of Encom. Because in the corporate world, creativity always gets rewarded over backstabbing and corruption. Right? Amirite guys? Riiiight? Anyway, the three friends embrace and the movie ends with a lovely shot of sunset in L.A. When the sun goes down and the traffic zips through the streets, it almost looks like… a Grid.

It’s no secret by now that I’m a lot more familiar with the Kingdom Hearts version of this story than the movie itself. And you guys, I think I have to say the Kingdom Hearts one is better. Let’s set aside the rest of the game and the wild left turn the main plot takes in the middle of this very world (if you know, you know). We’re just focusing on the hour or so we spend in Space Paranoids. Sora’s a much more accessible protagonist – his technological illiteracy allows the computer jargon to be broken down into much more user-friendly language, compared to Flynn being a computer genius to whom these things are second nature. Part of that is we as a society understood computers better in 2005 compared to 1982, but still, this movie’s use of computer terms leaves the viewer in the dust.

Tron gets a character arc in the game, too, going from pure logic as computers are wont to do to learning about the power of friendship. Here he’s just kind of A Hero, and it’s not all that interesting especially because he’s not the main character. Finally, and I touched on this in the review, the MCP’s world domination bid is the main plot. There’s no convoluted corporate espionage thing going on, we’re just stopping it from corrupting the entire world of Hollow Bastion (bonus, we actually see how this affects the real world). It’s a much tighter story that really lets you bask in the world surrounding you.

But back to the movie. Under the veneer of those groundbreaking special effects, Tron is a hot mess. It is abundantly clear that Lisberger is not a writer. He had a lot of solid ideas, but therein lies the problem. There’s too much going on and no effort at all to make any of it fit together. Nor do you have the strong characters or locations to make the quest narrative work. It’s clearly trying to be the Wizard of Oz on some level, down to the final boss being a big scary head that’s actually a feeble old man. But Flynn is no Dorothy, and Tron, Ram, and Yori are no Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion. Nor do the vast expanses of formless blue shapes we traverse on the journey really hold a candle to the poppy fields or the Emerald City. We’re off to see the I/O Tower, but where are we going on the way? The movie doesn’t seem to really know, and it makes it really hard to care, especially in the interminable stretch of nothing between the Lightcycles and the final battle. And the religious allegory stuck in my craw.

The Lightcycles are really cool, though.

CHARACTERS

Kevin Flynn is positioned as this devil-may-care lovable rogue. Disney really wanted their own Star Wars, so why not a hero who was essentially Han Solo with the serial numbers filed off? It works great in the real world, even if Lisberger clearly has no idea how to write a computer genius (“memories?”). Unfortunately, he fades into the background and becomes a cipher once he gets to the computer world. I kind of get it, you want your Dorothy or Alice to guide the audience through this mysterious magical world and you can’t do that if they outshine it. But they overdid it, and on top of that the world’s a lot of blue and not much else.

Screenwriter Bonnie MacBird had a much more energetic, comedic Flynn in mind for her original script, possibly to combat this phenomenon. In this version, Flynn would have been played by a very young Robin Williams. I would have loved to see this version, it would have done wonders for my enjoyment of the film. The script doesn’t give Jeff Bridges many opportunities to show off his incredible charisma (and he is very charismatic), and Robin Williams don’t need no stinkin’ script. Bridges does great with what he’s got, though, even if you can totally The Dude creeping into his performance. He’s known for taking unusual roles and this “far out” (his words, not mine) experimental thing definitely fits the bill.

Tron should be the tough jock in contrast to Alan’s nerd. The movie clearly wants us to think of him as the system’s golden boy. But because the characters in the system are so bland, this falls very flat and Tron just becomes another guy instead of a freedom fighter. And it’s particularly annoying because again, they wrote the character so much better in Kingdom Hearts 2 that I know what they were going for. Giving Tron an actual character arc where he learns about friendship does wonders in making him more interesting, and mitigates the blind reverence programs have for their Users by turning the relationship into a partnership. This is why we write multiple drafts, people.

Lawrence of Arabia himself Peter O’Toole desperately wanted the role of Tron, but because he is a British man with a deep voice the studio typecast him as Sark and he left the project altogether. Instead, we ended up with a Western actor named Bruce Boxleitner who works well off Jeff Bridges despite his characters both being tragically underwritten.

Yori is yet another Girl. Everyone’s underwritten in this movie, but Yori is hardly written at all. She’s literally there for our hero to make out with. But wait! We have two heroes! Welp. Guess she has to make out with both of them. There is no other option, no other possible way to reward Flynn and Tron for their heroics. It’s neat to see Lora be a woman in STEM, but despite coming up with the plan that leads Flynn to Encom in the first place, she disappears completely.

Once again, she was almost played by someone else, in this case, Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry, but she declined the role after balking at the skin-tight, nearly transparent costume. So they replaced her with Caddyshack’s Cindy Morgan, who also had reservations about the jumpsuit, losing five pounds in two days to fit in it. Oof. She also struggled with the cap she wore early in the film, which had to be glued to her head and left blisters every time she peeled it off. Eventually, she gave up and put on a hockey helmet like the boys, because gender segregating her in the first place was dumb. She also just passed away a few months ago. RIP.

Ram exists to deliver exposition, which isn’t much less thankless than poor Yori existing to be Girl. In fact, it’s arguably worse. At least Yori survives. Poor Ram gets shot dead the second he’s done being useful to the plot. And once he’s gone, we’re floating through a formless void without knowing where or why. I shouldn’t need to be monologued at to know what’s going on, but this movie makes it necessary. Also, Dan Shor is adorable. I almost didn’t recognize him as Billy the Kid from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure!

Sark is Darth Vader by any other name. He’s technically not the big bad but he’s got much more screentime and more than enough malice that he’s just as much of a threat to our heroes. He doesn’t get the redemption arc, but other than that, you can easily see Disney grasping desperately for a Star Wars of their own decades before they straight-up bought it. He’s as much of a stock character as anyone, but David Warner somehow manages to elevate his lackluster material, because he’s David Warner. I love him as Evil in Time Bandits, and his particular sneer is probably the most watchable thing in this movie. Sorry, Jeff Bridges.

The MCP is the one element of this movie that actually lands better in 2024 than 1982. Now that AI has become an actual, tangible threat, the idea of one taking over whole governments doesn’t seem like the stuff of fantasy anymore. It’s chilling. Its design as a giant red face looks silly now, but the character as a whole is very scary. He is also played by David Warner, which along with Dillinger means that the guy’s doing triple duty. Kudos!

MUSIC

Okay, it’s no Daft Punk. But Wendy Carlos more than proves that she’s a legend in her own right. She was well known before this for pioneering the use of the Moog synthesizer as an instrument, adapting several classical pieces to synthesizer on an album called Switched On Bach. That caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who brought her in to provide The Shining and A Clockwork Orange with their own electronic-classical fusion. And, just because I want to talk about this, she collaborated with Weird Al Yankovic on an electronic adaptation of Peter and the Wolf. The Tron soundtrack gives her the chance to finally compose her own music instead of adapting existing pieces. Large swathes of her score got cut from the final film, which is annoying because it could have enhanced scenes like the Lightcycles and the final battle, but what’s there is very, very good. And of course, we have to salute the contributions of our queer siblings in this house!

Only Solutions is our first pop song to play over the credits! It’s the beginning of a… tradition? in film that continues to this day, so it’s neat to see it begin here. Disney welcomed legendary rock band Journey with open arms to contribute this song and the instrumental 1990s Theme to the soundtrack. They were allowed to write any way they wanted to appeal to the teens with a hip, modern sound before they and Disney went their separate ways. It’s not their best song, but I appreciate that the lyrics tell the story of a singer escaping an unfair, strict society into a world of his own creation that runs on its own logic. It ties in well with what the movie’s trying to do and somehow manages to be a total bop at the same time.

ARTISTRY

DEEP BREATH.

Here we go. This is what this movie is known for. The visuals in this movie are so important to not just this film, but film itself that I don’t even know where to begin. So let’s start with the design process. Influential French comic book artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud and sci-fi legend Syd Mead brought their striking visuals to films like Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, so it’s no surprise that Tron shares that proto-cyberpunk aesthetic. They also partnered with Peter Lloyd to create 300 matte paintings, though they could only be so detailed because of the technological limitations. Only about twenty minutes of the film actually include CGI, but because almost all of that is vehicles like the Solar Sailer and the Lightcycles, their design had to be incredibly specific. Because CGI was in its absolute infancy, animators had to create each frame individually, photograph them with a Polaroid camera, then mail them to the director for final approval. There was no room for reshoots. No room for error. It’s more tedious than the notoriously finicky stop-motion process!

So, if only twenty minutes were CGI, how’d they do all that glowy stuff in the backgrounds? Well, that, my friends, is backlit animation, a version of hand-drawn animation… but like, more. Wikipedia outlines the entire ludicrously complex process in its description of the movie, and it’s so involved that I’m not entirely sure I grasped most of it. But the gist is the characters were filmed in black and white in a black box theatre, with lines drawn on their white suits in black Sharpie. The footage was transferred to a special film, then rotoscoped (essentially, traced over). The resulting animation cels were placed over colored lights before being photographed and exposed multiple times before another team hand-colored the characters’ circuit lines and the backgrounds with gelatin filters. WOW. The process was so extremely costly and labor-intensive that no one ever tried anything like this ever again. And to top it off, they were forced to outsource all of it because Disney’s own animators refused to work on the film out of concern that they’d be replaced by computers. And… well, they were about twenty years early, but they weren’t wrong.

I can’t say I blame them. I sure wouldn’t want to go through all that twice. And the end result is breathtaking. It’s a very, very cool-looking movie, well worthy of its place in history. Nothing looks like Tron, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the pioneers who were willing to take chances and test new techniques. It’s wild to me that the Academy decided that all of that was cheating when it would have been much simpler to use the blue screen and sodium vapor processes in use since the 40s. My gripes with the movie have everything to do with the fact that no one bothers to really define what these amazing locations represent and nothing to do with the locations themselves. Despite its faults, this is a beautiful, beautiful film.

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

Not the ride you were expecting, huh? Don’t worry, we’ll talk about the joys of having your shins mashed into a fine paste when we get to TRON: Legacy. TRON: Lightcycle/Run directly mentions Rinzler and uses the sequel’s designs for the Lightcycles sooo… yeah. But that wasn’t the first attraction based on the franchise. A celebration of computer technology was a shoo-in for Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, which had and still has a problem with staying futuristic. The Peoplemover there had a Superspeed Tunnel which displayed racecars to advertise the nearby Autopia attraction – why not switch that out for Lightcycles? So they did. The calming tour guide’s voice glitched out and gave way to the menacing voice of Corey Burton as the Master Computer Program because someone didn’t proofread. The cars braved the aforementioned Lightcycles and escaped deresolution by the skin of their teeth. The retheme remained until 1995 when the poor Peoplemover was removed in favor of Disneyland’s biggest mistake ever, the Rocket Rods.

But that’s not all. Well… it is, kind of. You see, 1982 also saw the opening of Walt Disney World’s Epcot. Future World, the front half of the park, celebrated emerging technology and the wonder of communication. So, of course, a Tron tie-in seemed inevitable. Unfortunately, the park was already over budget, so the Game Grid expansion of the Communicore exhibit would have to wait until Phase 2. And wait it did. And wait… and wait… and wait. Just like the planned Spain, Switzerland, and Equatorial Africa pavillions, the Game Grid Arcade was quietly scrapped.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Tron is a feast for the eyes. Unfortunately, like any feast, there’s only so much I can consume before I need to rest and digest, and this movie refuses to allow that. Don’t get me wrong, I respect Tron. It’s a groundbreaking experiment that paved the way for modern filmmaking. And I’ll always applaud someone, especially Disney after 20 years of making the same movie over and over again for trying something different. It’s so refreshing to see them trying again. So yeah, I have nothing but the utmost respect for this movie.

But sadly, that doesn’t mean I liked it. Lisberger is not a writer, and tossing out MacBird’s dialogue in favor of a mishmash of ideas was not a good idea. He’s flinging spaghetti at the wall and very little of it is actually sticking. You could have had a straightforward quest narrative if the characters were strong enough to hold it up and you focused on getting to the I/O Tower to stop the MCP. Instead, you have a jumbled mess of religious philosophy, commentary on corporate politics, and a Cold War allegory that directly contradicts itself more than once. It’s hard to follow and harder to watch. And since I’m familiar with a much more polished version of the same story, the lost potential is hard to watch.

Favorite scene: Is it weird that it’s in the real world? The conversation between our three leaders above Flynn’s Arcade is well-lit, well-shot, and actually lets us dig into our characters. You learn what Flynn is all about and you get the relationships between him, Alan, and Lora – it’s by far the most competent writing in the film.

Final rating: 6/10. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I’d rather they shoot for the moon and miss than stop trying. We’re starting to see more and more of that and I am very excited.

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