A computer hacker is abducted into the digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program.
The son of a virtual world designer goes looking for his father and ends up inside the digital world that his father designed. He meets his father's corrupted creation and a unique ally who was born inside the digital world.
Director:
Joseph Kosinski
Stars:
Jeff Bridges,
Garrett Hedlund,
Olivia Wilde
Video game expert Alex Rogan finds himself transported to another planet after conquering The Last Starfighter video game only to find out it was just a test. He was recruited to join the team of best starfighters to defend their world from the attack.
Hacker/arcade owner Kevin Flynn is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate known as Master Control and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the ultimate blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron to outmaneuver the Master Control Program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game.Written by
Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com}
The portable gaming device that Flynn briefly plays while Alan and Lora are talking to him in his room above the arcade is a Coleco Electronic Quarterback. See more »
Goofs
In Flynn's Arcade, a couple of kids are "playing" pinball machines that aren't switched on (visible at the top left of the screen in the overhead shots). See more »
There are no opening credits, save for the production companies (and the opening prologue in the English language foriegn version.) For the title, a pair of lightning bolts flare, forming a brilliant point of light, where various parts coalesce to form a human figure. The point of light flares, revealing the title TRON, which an electric point of light shimmering in the "O". The title TRON rushes toward the camera, rotating around the "O", and as the title gets closer, a landscape of three dimensional circuitry appears within the letters themselves. As the camera dives in, it levels off, and the circuitry turns into the lights of a cityscape, dissolving into the establishing shot of the arcade. See more »
Alternate Versions
Also included in the DVD is the original "Opening Monologue" from the original theatrical release, a la Blade Runner, that "explained" the world that the viewer was about to enter. It said: 'This is the story of two worlds and the beings who inhabit them. One of these is our world, the one we can see and feel. The world of the "Users". It lies on our side of the video screen.' The next card read: 'The other, an electronic micro-civilization, lives and breathes just beyond our grasp. This is the world of the "Programs." Because we, the Users, have created this new world, part of us lives there, too...' The third, final card reads, in large type: 'ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN'. This occurs between the Buena Vista and Walt Disney credits from the original screen. This was put in the international English language release, and the subsequent domestic wide release in the United States. Some versions of this are just text, while others (such as the UK rental release) have actor Percy Rodrigues narrating the text. See more »
I still remember having seen parts of this movie when I was a very little kid and I thought it was incredibly cool, I hadn't seen anything like it. Now I have bought the 20th anniversary DVD and this was the first time I watched the movie in its entirety (and with a developed brain). And I still like it. Not in the same way as when I was young, because now I understand the story (I didn't understand English back then and I couldn't read the subtitles) so it's different from what I imagined back then, and now I have seen a truckload of modern movies with CGI effects.
However, even though the effects in this movie are somewhat 'dated', they are still unique. While listening to the audio commentary (which is a must if you wonder how they managed to make a movie like this in 1982), I heard someone stating my thoughts exactly: the unique thing about this movie is that while modern movies use CGI in an attempt to simulate the real world, in Tron one tried to simulate a computer world with real world images. Because they did succeed in this, the movie will never become 'dated', while movies trying to use limited CGI effects will become dated as soon as CGI evolves. The limitations of computer graphics at that time forced the makers of the movie to be very creative. E.g. all camera motions in the CG scenes (including the swinging motions in the chase scenes) had to be calculated by hand, there simply was no software for it! Nowadays computer graphics are nearing perfection, and that's why a movie like this will never be made again.
If you haven't seen this movie yet, to fully appreciate how groundbreaking it is, you must be willing to imagine that you're back in a time where the most complex computer animation to be seen were the moving blocks in video arcades or the 5 seconds of wire-frame models in Star Wars. You might expect that the resolution of the images will be very low and the pictures will be blocky, but this is totally untrue. The images were created at film resolution, often using methods which don't even involve the rasterization of images, so they look perfectly smooth. Some might say too smooth, due to the lack of texture mapping (which hardly existed at that time), but IMHO this is what gives the depicted 'digital world' its unique appearance.
The story is not of great complexity, but it's original and entertaining enough. Of course it's a Disney movie, so there aren't many 'sharp edges' to it (a scene with a mildly erotic undertone was even removed), but don't expect 'Bambi' sweetness either. Grown-ups will probably be more amazed by the kind of effects they managed to pull off in 1982, while children will be enchanted by the strange world shown in this movie. If you want to entertain young kids during a hour and a half, this movie will be perfect. They will like every bit (pun intended) of it!
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I still remember having seen parts of this movie when I was a very little kid and I thought it was incredibly cool, I hadn't seen anything like it. Now I have bought the 20th anniversary DVD and this was the first time I watched the movie in its entirety (and with a developed brain). And I still like it. Not in the same way as when I was young, because now I understand the story (I didn't understand English back then and I couldn't read the subtitles) so it's different from what I imagined back then, and now I have seen a truckload of modern movies with CGI effects.
However, even though the effects in this movie are somewhat 'dated', they are still unique. While listening to the audio commentary (which is a must if you wonder how they managed to make a movie like this in 1982), I heard someone stating my thoughts exactly: the unique thing about this movie is that while modern movies use CGI in an attempt to simulate the real world, in Tron one tried to simulate a computer world with real world images. Because they did succeed in this, the movie will never become 'dated', while movies trying to use limited CGI effects will become dated as soon as CGI evolves. The limitations of computer graphics at that time forced the makers of the movie to be very creative. E.g. all camera motions in the CG scenes (including the swinging motions in the chase scenes) had to be calculated by hand, there simply was no software for it! Nowadays computer graphics are nearing perfection, and that's why a movie like this will never be made again.
If you haven't seen this movie yet, to fully appreciate how groundbreaking it is, you must be willing to imagine that you're back in a time where the most complex computer animation to be seen were the moving blocks in video arcades or the 5 seconds of wire-frame models in Star Wars. You might expect that the resolution of the images will be very low and the pictures will be blocky, but this is totally untrue. The images were created at film resolution, often using methods which don't even involve the rasterization of images, so they look perfectly smooth. Some might say too smooth, due to the lack of texture mapping (which hardly existed at that time), but IMHO this is what gives the depicted 'digital world' its unique appearance.
The story is not of great complexity, but it's original and entertaining enough. Of course it's a Disney movie, so there aren't many 'sharp edges' to it (a scene with a mildly erotic undertone was even removed), but don't expect 'Bambi' sweetness either. Grown-ups will probably be more amazed by the kind of effects they managed to pull off in 1982, while children will be enchanted by the strange world shown in this movie. If you want to entertain young kids during a hour and a half, this movie will be perfect. They will like every bit (pun intended) of it!