Tron (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
by Robert Meyer Burnett, Steven Lisberger
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barnard Hughes, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, Jeff BridgesDirector: Robert Meyer Burnett, Steven Lisberger
Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
Writer: Steven Lisberger
Producer: Donald Kushner
Producer: Harrison Ellenshaw
Producer: Jeff Kurtti
Producer: John Bernstein
Writer: Bonnie MacBird
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.20:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
Published: 2002-01-01
DVD Release Date: 2002-01-15
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Movie Reviews of Tron (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: Doesn't make much sense, but effects are unique, and it's still effective as fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
Tron is like a dream, where imagery and emotional content are strong but normal rules don't apply, and what rules there are may not have much rational coherence. And on that level it works.
The movie is mostly set inside the computer of the large (fictional) Encom Corporation. The more being inside the computer is explained, the less sense it makes, so you just have to accept it as fantasy. Computer programs are conscious, with personalities reflective of their programmers, called Users. Inside the computer, most programs actually look just like their Users, and behave much as they would. One program, called the Master Control Program (MCP), is taking over all the other programs in the computer, with an eye to expanding to programs in places like the Pentagon. The MCP's hunger for conquest is pleased by using unwilling programs as gladiators in computer games where the losers die (are "derezzed," from "deresolution").
Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) is a program designed to make things open and free in the computer, thereby undoing the dark work of the MCP.
Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a real-world wiz at both playing and writing computer games. While trying to find the evidence that the MCP's original programmer, who now serves the MCP in the real world, stole some successful game programs from him, he's sucked (to use a technical term) into the computer, where he now looks like and has the same basic state as a program. Taken prisoner by the MCP and made to play for his life the games he created, he joins with Tron and a female program (yes, programs have gender), to escape the MCP's control and restore goodness and light.
There's a quasi-spiritual side to all of this. It comes out in a not entirely serious way in treating the belief among programs in Users as a religious belief. The MCP is trying to eliminate that belief, but programs naturally wonder where they came from. When Tron learns that Flynn is a User, he says one of the film's funnier lines, "If you are a User, then everything you've done has been according to a plan, right?" There are sideways glances at other real-world issues too, such as a struggle of decentralized computing (as in personal computers, still new at the time) vs central computing (mainframes), and corporate corruption of idealism and creativity. The latter qualities are embodied in the character Walter, who started Encom in his garage (just as Walt Disney started his enterprise in his--what parallel does that suggest?).
The fantasy of escaping from an oppressive system and passing through trials, with some romance thrown in, is basic and universal, the stuff of dreams. Inside the computer, the story unfolds like a dream, aided by the otherworldly special effects. The backgrounds are mainly dark. A lot of the animation is the addition of light, as though programs and their surroundings glow from within via what are designed to look like electronic circuits. The terrain (as it were) includes both vast spaces and tight passages through which various vehicles move in breakneck, menacing, or graceful ways. Sometimes it feels like what we might imagine it to be like to be in a video game (from the early 80s), sometimes it's more like being in an airplane over a city at night. It was impressive on the big screen, and still packs some punch for home viewing.
The effects in Tron are unique, based on a hybrid of early computer animation and highly labor-intensive manual animation. They were groundbreaking at the time. The filmmakers remark in the special features that no film will ever be done the same way again, which is probably true as to process.
Even so, Tron 2 is coming out this year and the trailer does have a distinctive Tron look, if much advanced (google Tron Legacy to see it and get more info).
The musical score, by Wendy Carlos, makes more sense if you recall what video game music sounded like in the early 1980s.
The major special features in this DVD set are the audio commentary with the writer/director and several of the main effects makers, and an 88-minute making-of feature (with no chapters--poor execution there). It's best to watch the making-of feature before you listen to the commentary, so you'll have a better idea what they're talking about when the commentary turns technical, which it does a lot. There are also some deleted scenes, some substantial. The other features on the second disc often overlap with parts of the making-of, but there's some interesting stuff in some of them, mainly for those wanting more details about how the project developed. (The Kodaliths they keep talking about but never fully explain are the 12.5" x 20" celluloid transparencies used in the animation process, one for each animated frame of film--that's a lot of Kodaliths.)
By the way, if the idea of being inside a computer game is of interest, there's a serious philosophical argument that this universe is a simulation, that we're virtual creatures ourselves. Google Bostrom simulation for details. I think it's an interesting and significant argument.
This would be at most a 4-star movie in most respects, but the pioneering effects make it 5 for me.
Summary of Tron (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
A masterpiece of breakthrough CGI ingenuity, Disney celebrates the 20th anniversary of TRON, a dazzling film at the flashpoint of a continuing revolution in its genre. This special collector's edition showcases an epic adventure inside a brave new world where the action is measureed in microseconds. When Flynn (Jeff Bridges) hacks the mainframe of his ex-employer to prove his work was stolen by another executive, he finds himself on a much bigger adventure. Beamed inside by a power-hungry master control program, he joins computer gladiators on a deadly game grid, complete with high-velocity "light cycles" and Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a specialized security program. Together, they fight the ultimate battle with the MCP to decide the fate of both the electronic world and the real world!The surprising truth about Disney's 1982 computer-game fantasy is that it's still visually impressive (though technologically quaint by later high-definition standards) and a lot of fun. It's about a computer wizard named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate (David Warner) and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) to outmaneuver the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game. Disney's wizards used a variety of cinematic techniques and early-'80s state-of-the-art computer-generated graphics to accomplish their dynamic visual goals, and the result was a milestone in cyberentertainment, catering to technogeeks while providing a dazzling adventure for hackers and nonhackers alike. Appearing just in time to celebrate the nascent cyberpunk movement in science fiction, Tron received a decidedly mixed reaction when originally released, but has since become a high-tech favorite and a landmark in special effects, with a loyal following of fans. DVD is a perfect format for the movie's neon-glow color scheme, and the musical score by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos is faithfully preserved on the digitally remastered soundtrack. --Jeff Shannon
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