TRON 20th Anniversary Edition DVD Reviewed

gevmage (Craig Steffen) writes with the review below of the new DVD boxed set of Tron, which he says is a "must-have for any science fiction fan." So whether Tron brings back fond memories, or only serves to show you what movies before your birth, read on for his take on the set. If you're not familiar with Tron at this late stage, beware of a few spoilers within.

Review: TRON 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, 2 Disc DVD set

January 15, 2002, issued a special edition DVD set of TRON. For those of you who have never seen the film, I mention some plot details revealed in the third of the film.

First, the film itself. It's a fantasy about a computer programmer who gets pulled inside the mainframe at the company where he used to work while trying to hack into the system to retrieve evidence that one of the execs stole programs from him. While inside the computer world (on the other side of the video game screen) he's forced to play the games that he's programmed, while trying to keep the computer world safe for democracy. It's an interesting plot premise, and who wouldn't want to go inside his computer and interact with programs as people?

The film is paced reasonably well, the script carries through but is kind of klunky in some places. The computer world scenes are visually stunning, and the DVD is an excellent transfer. If you have the means, I highly recommend watching it on a progressive-scan player. The original film was released in 6-track magnetic 70mm, and the sound track carries through very well. In addition to the back-lit animation for the "program" characters in the computer world, the film has 20 minutes plus of pure CG generated footage, unheard of at that time.

If you like the film at all, the special edition is definitely worth the extra money. Disney's standard DVDs are single-layer letter-box; this is two double-layer disks. The first disk has the film, on a THX certified "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs" presentation. The commentary track on the film is interesting and informative.

The second disc has all the extra material, and there's a huge amount of it. There's a 1 1/2 hour "making of" feature; also many hundreds of storyboards and photographs from the set for comparison. There are shorts talking about specific aspects of the production, and the usual previews, deleted scenes, publicity material, and lots of interviews with production and cast members.

An excellent presentation of an excellent film; a must-have for any science fiction fan.

Film Ratings:
Plot Originality: 8.5
Pacing: 7
Characterizations: 6.5
Dialog and Plot Coherence: 6
Visual Impression: 8.5
Geekness "Cool!" Factor: 8
Overall: 8

DVD Specific Ratings (Special Edition):
Film Transfer: 8.5
Sound Transfer: 7.5
Commentary Track: 7.5
Making Of Feature: 8
Other Additional Material: 8
Overall: 8

(All ratings are from 0 to 10 inclusive, 10 being better, with the ratings 2 through 8 encompassing 99% of all films.)

Comments

Sequelitis

[Cinnibar CP]

Yeah, and the review neglects to mention the overpowering hints on the DVD regarding "Tron 2.0".

The sequel is coming.

Better reviews

[cowboy junkie]

If you'd like a review with some actual depth, check out DVDFile's, which goes into much greater detail as to the picture & sound quality as well as what the extras are all about. This thread at Home Theater Forum also has more useful feedback about the disc.

IMHO, it's a pretty nice disc. The picture quality is good, the sound is sweet and the extras really show you in great detail how it was all done.

Problem with the first disc

[Lord Javac]

I was really excited about this edition and bought it shortly after its release. Unfortunately, there is a flaw in the disc which makes it unplayable on a PS2. In the eighth scene, during a conversation in the holding cell, there as a graphic error that causes a PS2 to totally flip out. Fortunately for everyone with a real DVD player, this is a small enough glitch to go unnoticed on all but the PS2. I did try returning the disc, but the replacement had the exact same flaw and when I took it back again, they guy at the store said there had been complaints at other stores.

The movie is great, if you can get it to play, and the special features are nice. My favorite part of the disc is the menus. I will try purchasing this edition again when either Sony updates their DVD drivers to address issues like this or Disney re-issues the disc with a new master (to remove the flaw).

Re:Problem with the first disc

[ElrondHubbard]

Really? I have an original Apex AD600A player, and the goldurned thing won't recognize the anamorphic flag on this movie - I end up with tall-skinny-Boxleitneritis. If I want to watch it in the correct aspect ratio, I have to use my computer because there's no way to override it on the Apex. It's probably time to replace the thing anyway. It was a good deal when it was new, but it really is cheap - it overheats, it won't handle seamless branching correctly, and various other problems as well.

Certain DVDs incorporate widescreen menus - _Tron_ is one, _Gladiator_ is another. It uses the pan-and-scan flag to tell the player to zoom in on the menu image when playing on a 4:3 display. These menus usually don't have actual selectable menu items on the sides which would get cut off, just extra background image. It sounds like your Samsung isn't getting the pan-and-scan flag right. (This flag was supposed to enable anamorphic DVDs to act like cropped discs so that both crowds could be pleased by the same disc, but a lot of players don't seem to get this right.)

My favourite part of the extras on this disc is when someone describes generating animation frames by hand. He actually had to write down the camera coordinates on paper - six spatial and angle coordinates each for hundreds of consecutive frames - to be manually input into the system that rendered the images, because apparently there was no mutually compatible storage medium (floppy discs, etc) between the system they used and the rendering system! Compare that to, say, _Monsters Inc._ - talk about stone knives and bearskins...

Tron2k - Tron Killer App

[Flamesplash]

Keep an eye out for the new tron movie.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0208650

I don't see how this can't be a total flop, given historical sequals/remakes of classics, but we can hope.

Re:Tron2k - Tron Killer App

[sharkey]

Rumor has it that Jeff Bridges will reprise his role as Flynn. The character is supposedly retreated fully into cyberspace.

www.tronkillerapp.com is the official website for the movie. Just a single Flash applet.

Re:Look out -- grid bugs!

[wikthemighty]

This scene was worked in because they developed the arcade game at the same time, which had a grid bug sequence in it...

Re:Letterbox Being the Disney Standard

[Rob Parkhill]

Actually, there is a BIG difference between "letterboxed" movies, and "anamorphic", or enhanced-for-widescreen-TV movies.

I can't possibly explain the difference as well as these guys can, so I won't even try. Go there and read this, it's a great explination. It's true that both present a wide-screen picture, but you lose a lot of information in a letterboxed format.

And is the video anamorphic?

[Dimensio]

I'll avoid the natural comments about Disney and the MPAA and SSSCA and all that crap and address the review.

This is kind of a minor nitpick for a rant, but someone has to bring it up.

One of the common elements in DVD reviews that I read is whether or not the video is anamorphic. For some viewers -- especially those with TVs that can take advantage of the enhanced resolution -- that is an issue. Whenever a widescreen DVD is reviewed it should be noted whether or not the video is anamorphic, I've refused to purchase discs because of that issue.

BTW, the video, from what I've read, is anamorphic -- though Disney in the past was notorious about only releasing "letterbox" movies in 4:3, not 16:9.

Re:Tron!

[CyberDong]

Thankfully, there's a MAME download for those who can't imagine it...

Re:Geekiness factor only gets an 8?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tron was devised and implemented by Computer Graphics Professor Ken Perlin, whose CGI techniques won him an OSCAR that year.

Soundtrack is out too

[NetRanger]

Admit it -- you like the music. The soundtrack is now on CD for the first time too, to coincide with the 20th Anniversary release. The composer has some really interesting notes on how it was nearly lost forever until it was baked. Yes, baked, as in an oven.

It makes for a fascinating story, especially considering the future of classic works -- will they be lost forever when the media disintegrates?

Re: Real Life Tron scene

[JWW]

The really neat thing about the Jai Alai scene is that Flynn's competitor Pete Jurasick the same guy who would go on to play Londo Mollari in Babylon 5. It really hard to recognize him without Londo's trademark hair.

Re:No Tron for me...

[TheLoneCabbage]

Do you realized how hard it is to boycott Disney?

They just dont sell old movies, and over packed theme parks.

I lived for 2 years in Orlando, Fl... seat of the Disney/Eisner Kingdom...

Let me tell you something... Disney owns EVERYTHING. They have a 10billion dollar a year general aquisition fund, for buy NON-Disney like companies...

Though you may not like them the Cristian Coalition also tried to boycott Disney... they failed miserably..

BTW: Disney is not all bad. They were one of the first major coroporations to offer benifits to same sex couples. (since this message will be archived for the next Gazillion years on Google, I should probably mention I'm not gay) And they do a heck of allot of charity. Just because they don't GET tech doesn't make them evil, just a little (or a lot) slow.

Re:I'm sorry

[gmezero]

Actually, Tron did bomb in the theaters when it first came out... and I'll tell you why. It came out the same time as E.T.

I personally went and saw Tron by myself while my parents took my little sister to see E.T. (which I never bothered to see in the theaters), and I never regretted it.

It's Disney's fault.

[Jakobud]

Yes, there are problems with Tron in the PS2. I work for SCEA and talked to our hardware guys about this problem. They contacted Disney to find out what the problem was and found out that even though Disney had PS2's to test their DVD's on, they forgot to test them...so basically Tron is jacked up on the PS2. Stupid Disney.

Jakobud

Re:The CG was great for it's time - Jim Sachs

[ashitaka]

A very talented artist. I was always amazed at what could be produced at 320x200x32. Note, that's 32 colours, not 32k!

A portfolio of his work is here.

The women in your life will love these gifts [blatent plug link]

Nah, they'll like these better. :-)

Re:Letterbox Being the Disney Standard

[gea]

OK, you're wrong.

All DVDs encode the material at a resolution of 720x480. A flag in an MPEG header indicates whether the bitmap represents a 4:3 image or a 16:9 image; either way the pixels aren't square.

On a DVD box, "Enhanced for 16x9 televisions" means the bitmap represents a 16:9 image. When played on a 4:3 TV, vertical scaling is performed in the DVD player, producing a letterboxed image.

For whatever reason, some DVD creators letterbox the film first, then encode the letterboxed image. So some of the 720x480 bitmap is wasted on the image of the black bars, resulting in lower picture quality.

So if the Tron DVD is "enhanced for 16x9" then Disney did it right.

TRON didn't get any Oscars

[gevmage]

One of Steven Lisberger's (writer/director of TRON) constant beefs is that TRON didnt' even get nominated for any Academy awards.

So no, I don't think that's true.

Sorry.

Re:One of the only movies...

[ackthpt]

Back before you were born, computer movies were about real computer components with real terms;

I dunno, I can remember a lot of movies depicting computers completely wrong back in the 70's. Tron at least used some correct terminology, but I still thought it was tommyrot when I saw it. IMHO the arcade game was better than the movie.

Think about making a movie like that today, where you have to get past the Firewall, or dodging packets, or taking a fast ride on the AGP, or heck, going to meet the Kernel! :)

There's a 1 1/2 hour "making of" feature

Think of this as "History", since you could probably do a lot better now with the PC you are sitting at.