It was the biggest failure of Disney, but today it is a visionary film that has given way to video games and series
It’s been 50 years since ‘Tron’ and the Sitges Festival pays tribute to it on its poster and with a special screening. The truth is that at the time it was Disney’s biggest flop, but today it is a visionary film ahead of its time. The film gave way to video games, series, and even in 2010 a sequel was made, ‘Tron Legacy’, which did not work as expected either.
Available on Disney+, and for rent on AppleTV, RakutenTV, and Amazon.
Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)
Starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan and David Warner. Between animation and experimentation, it was not only the first film created by computer, but the real characters appeared embedded in a digital world, being the prelude to a new subgenre in science fiction, virtual reality. It narrates the adventures of a programmer who gets into the circuits of a computer where the programs have a life and personality of their own:
Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a young, cocky video game developer and programmer who worked for a mega-corporation. One of the executives of this corporation is Dillinger (David Warner). Flynn has been misled by Dillinger regarding the earnings and authorship of the games he has created. In fact, Dillinger has sold Flynn’s video games and they have become his property. Facing the inability to prove that he is the author, and resigning from the company, Flynn is forced to work at Arcades.
Many of the games that he has created himself can be found in his local Arcade. After getting some information from the current employees, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), and Dr. Lora Baines (Cindy Morgan), Dillinger increases the security in the Central Control of Processes or CCP (the artificial intelligence of the company), which which leaves the programmers out of the company, so they go to Flynn, in order to request his help in circumventing the CCP’s security. Alan and Lora seek greater freedoms in their programming. Flynn searches for evidence of his stolen creations. After an arduous trek to enter the building, Flynn confronts the CCP and is sucked into a digital world tyrannically dominated by the CCP. In the real world, the CCP’s interface is reminiscent of high-tech desktops.
From within the computing system, the CCP is shaped like a grid face, radiating red light with energy. In this world, the programs are represented with characters similar to their creators; Flynn is initially mistaken for a show, ‘Clu’, that he had previously written. Flynn needs to find ‘Tron’, a security program created by Alan. Tron can help Flynn fight the despotic CCP to free the company’s mainframe and escape to the real world. Along the way he will have to participate in various action games.
The film is written and directed by Steven Lisberger, who had been there since 1976, when interested in the primitive video games of the time, he created, together with producer Donald Kushner, an animation studio to develop the idea of ’Tron’, with the intention of turning it into an animated movie. To promote the studio itself, Lisberger and his team created a 30-second animation featuring the main character’s first appearance. Ultimately, Lisberger decided to include backlit and computer animated live-action elements for the actual feature film. It was a lengthy process as storyboards for the film had been rejected by several studios before Walt Disney Productions agreed to finance and distribute ‘Tron’.
Between 15 and 20 minutes of computer generated animation was used, in combination with the characters from the film, being a giant step forward in digital animation. To create it, the Disney company had to purchase a Super Foonly F-1 machine, the fastest PDP-10 ever made and the only one of its kind at the time.
The film contains less computer-generated imagery than might generally be assumed. Many of the effects that appear to be computer generated were created using traditional optical effects. A technique known as “backlight animation,” the live scenes within the computer world were shot in black and white, printed on high-contrast, large-format film, then colorized using traditional photographic techniques and rotoscoped techniques. which give it a “technological” aspect. The process was immensely laborious and has not been repeated for any other film; With so many layers of high-contrast, large-format negatives, vast amounts of motion picture film were required, and a payload larger than any conventional film.
Image of ‘Tron’. /
However, the film failed to meet box office expectations. ‘Tron’ was nominated for an Oscar for best special effects and best sound, far below expectations. The box office did not work because viewers at the time did not understand real characters inside a computer and the plot seemed too complex. However, it did not take long for it to be considered a cult film. And video games based on the film began to appear: ‘Tron 2.0’, ‘Tron: The Ghost in the Machine’, the comic ‘Tron: Betrayal’ (1983/1989), the animated series ‘Tron: Uprising’ (1989/1990 ) and ‘Tron Evolution’ (2010), which helped keep the ‘Tron’ characters and universe alive. And it is currently in its second season, through Disney +, ‘Tron: the resistance’.
Available on Disney+, and for rent on AppleTV, Rakuten TV and Amazon
‘Tron Legacy’ (Joseph Kosinski, 2010)
Starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde and Bruce Boxleitner. It was in 2010 when technological advances led to a sequel to ‘Tron’. Directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Adam Horowitz and Bill Wheeler, based on the characters created by Steven Lisberger, who is producing the film here, and Bonnie MacBird. ‘Tron Legacy’ broke new ground in cinematography through the use of state-of-the-art, state-of-the-art technology, performed in 3D.
It thus established several milestones: it is the first 3D film to integrate a completely digital head and body based on a real actor (technology used to create the younger version of the character played by Jeff Bridges); it is also the first to wear self-lit and tailored suits, using exclusively digital sculpture with the creation of molds from computer files using CNC (computer numerical cutting) technology; is the first 3D film shot entirely with 35mm lenses, 35mm chip cameras and uncompressed HD video to hard drive. Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner recover the characters that both actors had already played in ‘Tron’ from 1982:
In 1989, 7 years after the events of the first film, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), a 27-year-old rebel, lives haunted by the mysterious disappearance of his father, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a man who was recognized as the world’s foremost technology visionary. Sam tracks down a strange signal coming from Flynn’s old arcade. He goes there because he knows that only his father could have sent it and ends up absorbed in the digital network in which his father has been trapped for 20 years. With the help of fearless warrior Quorra (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-or-death journey through a visually stunning digital universe – a world created by Kevin himself far more advanced, with vehicles, weapons and landscapes never imagined, and with a ruthless villain willing to do anything to prevent them from escaping.
The film was nominated for the Oscars for Best Editing and Best Sound, without winning any awards. Again a disappointment. For its premiere, a spectacular campaign was mounted months before its premiere, focused mainly on the world of the internet and video games, but history repeated itself and it was not the expected success.
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