Neonfinity
Tron is a 1982 Science Fiction film directed by Steven Lisberger and stars Jeff Bridges, David Warner, and Bruce Boxleitner. It was distributed by Disney and I consider it my favorite film of all time.Tron follows the story of a "young, bright" game programmer and arcade owner Kevin Flynn (Bridges), whose job is taken away by another employee of ENCOM, Dillinger (Warner). Wanting to find evidence of taking Flynn's credit and selling games under his name. With the help of Alan (Boxleitner) and Lora, he goes into the world of Tron, "where energy lives and breathes". The characters in Tron are a little shallow, especially the titular character. Flynn and Dillinger, along with his digital counterpart, Sark, pretty much steal their scenes. Flynn himself was somewhat a Jesus figure on the grid who was really an everyday guy which is kinda neat to think about. Sark himself gives off a menacing presence in his scenes, though with a little bit of humor attached.I love this movie. The reason it is my favorite is due to the huge impact it had on my life ever since i've first heard about it. It has quite the reputation in visual effects being the first ever movie to include extensive use of CGI in 1982 (20 minutes worth). The distinct style of the world Tron presents bear a huge impact on cyberpunk culture and it's early representation on computers as a positive impact.Tron includes themes of Religion and Technology. One of the main points of the movie as mentioned before is that Flynn is Jesus on the grid and Tron represents a "David the Warrior" type figure. Tron envisioned technology better than most movies of the past using computer-literate terms to describe the world and what characters do, though to a degree. Tron didn't do well during its time and became a cult classic over the years. There is and are people who can appreciate the film the most for nostalgia and visuals with a pretty big impact. This is one of those films that people say "isn't for everyone". Overall, I give Tron a
vesil_vesalier
If you take the idea of TRON, advance it to today's world of computers, and pretend like both it and its sequel never happened… What would today's TRON look like? What would it be like, having a human being digitized into the world of the internet? The reason I ask is merely a curiosity: What battles would TRON face? Would he be like Superman in the internet? Battling hordes of evil corporate programs with the help of other guardian programs? Geez. This is the first time I've ever thought of a reboot as a good idea. It would be an impressive landscape to throw Tron into, wouldn't it? A superhero movie in today's cyberspace.TRON was the first movie I've ever seen in a theater. That by itself pushes it up to a 10 for me. Understandably, I am biased. At the ripe old age of five years old, watching the screen with my eyes and my mouth wide open, I had found Heaven in the battle between light-cycles.But there is more to TRON that meets the eye.A lot of pictures have attempted the idea of artificial intelligence, some even earlier than TRON. COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT comes to mind. WARGAMES comes to mind, though honestly I don't remember which one came first. Newer movies like THE TERMINATOR, and even the much more recent A.I. gave it a shot (though honestly A.I. was a hodgepodge of thrown-together ideas and too many cooks in the kitchen. That review is for a later day).Accepting a film like TRON today is difficult, similar to the way that watching an episode of the original STAR TREK has its challenges. The special effects are dated. The concept is completely silly. Remember a time when MOST movies had silly premises, instead of the ultra-realism of today? It is quite possible (and more than likely) that we take ourselves far too seriously, and today's mainstream films prove it, time and again.Jeff Bridges is the star, playing Kevin Flynn in a movie whose title reflects on a co-star, instead of the main character. TRON is more than a character here, he is the embodiment of a general concept, and truly, the centerpiece of the film. Like his character, Bruce Boxlietner plays TRON, and like TRON, Bruce has (believe me, no offense intended, sir) always been more of a side-character his whole career (unless he's doing television). In that regard, his performance fits perfectly here… Just enough to get the job done, without stealing the show from Jeff.The idea of digitizing matter and sucking it into a computer is a feat that even we, in the 21st century, have not yet cracked. But here, it is produced to us as a given, and like all movies with silly premises, the forcefulness of the delivery is everything here. The operation is taken as seriously as anything else in the film, and that is what forces you to accept it. In this version of the 80s, matter can be digitized and sucked into a computer mainframe.You have to admire the story, and pay attention to the subtle seriousness of it all to really feel the impact. Admittedly, being five years old, I kind of missed it the first time around, but there is some very serious business going on here. Sure, the main plot is simply that Dillinger (played awesomely by Mr. David Warner, sir, one of my all-time favorite actors) stole computer programs from Flynn and found a way to boot him out of the company, riding on false laurels all the way to the top of the chain—but what he's dealing with now is the Master Control Program, a monster of a program that lives in both worlds—computer and real—and KNOWS about them both. By the end of the sequence with Dillinger and him dancing toe-to-toe, not only do we learn that Dillinger is the puppet of the MCP, but we learn its true intentions: World domination. Dillinger, not only spineless but caught in blackmail, is helpless to assist the MCP despite knowing what its intentions are, and goes along with it helplessly.So even though Kevin Flynn is simply trying to right an age-old wrong and get the life back that he rightly deserves, he accidentally assists the computer program TRON in stopping the MCP from taking over the real world… By giving him the chance to erase him from the system.Take that into account, the next time you watch this truly underrated masterpiece of 80s culture, and the fear of Artificial Intelligence, before it ever had the chance to become a real threat.
Mellow Online1
I don't like Tron. There I said it. People regard this film as a cult classic but personally I don't see why.For anyone that is unaware, Tron is a film released in 1982. It's about a video game creator's idea being stolen by a big company head. He goes in to get proof that the idea was his, only for a machine to get him sucked into the game he created. He needs to work with programs that he created in order to get out as well as fight against viruses inside the game in order to get out. The plot was probably one of the best things about the film. It was quite a unique idea at the time and was interesting to see this new sort of plot being taken on.The main thing that's praised about Tron is its visuals and I'll come to agree. The movie's effects were really impressive for the time and even live up today.The one thing I noticed about the reviews of Tron was that they only seemed to talk about how good the visuals were and didn't talk about anything else. I find Tron stupid. Some questions are left unanswered and it also has a few confusing and unnecessary parts. I will go onto list them here. At the start of the movie a scientist says "his whole life he's worked on a machine" and that machine's purpose is to make objects disappear and then they reappear a few seconds later. I don't know about you but I think that's his life wasted. I can't think in one way how that sort of machine could be useful. The guy who created the game is introduced in an arcade playing a video game which he for some reason sweats from, I don't know one person who sweats from playing a video game. It might have also just been an excuse for that actor to take their top off to reveal his pecks for no reason and yes that actually happens. There is a scene when he's about to have a fight to the death with a program. I'm not sure about you but if I was going into a fight to the death and I was just a video game creator, I would be terrified, but this programmer isn't as he goes into the fight to the death grinning like an idiot. There's a huge dramatic moment where one of the programs dies and despite this program appearing in about 2/3s of the film, the other characters don't seem to care. I'm actually going to type the dialogue that is delivered after he dies."Where is he?" "He died" "*gasp* alright* I'm not joking, that is actually what is said. There's another part where one of the programs is tired from lying down. I'm not joking about that either. He literally lies down, gets up and is gasping for breath.I fail to see how other reviews of this movie haven't considered that this movie is so bad that it's good. That's how I see it. Yes the plot is creative and the visuals are cool and still hold up today but everything else falls flat. The characters aren't given anything to be called characters, the acting given off feels like the actors were held at gunpoint to perform, there are scenes that don't go anywhere, and most of all it suffers from bad writing.
