The Story of Tron

An anonymouse reader writes "Tom's Hardware has a feature up on the makings of Tron which may interest latent fans. Through interviews with the creators they explore the makings of Tron, from how it came to be picked up by Disney to how the effects were put together ('While the majority of the film takes place in the computer world, only 15 minutes worth of footage actually used CGI', because it would have taken years to make the film otherwise). They then explore why the film flopped at the box office. 'It was like we put LSD in the punch at the school prom and it was just way more than they can handle,' said Steven Lisberger."

Comments

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Special effects != Return Investment

May the wind be always at your back,
-Empyrealmortal

Re:Easy answer

[zakezuke]

"The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination."

See? That's dialogue bad enough to have come from one of the Matrix sequels

It's a laugh isn't it? Take this for example

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. --Douglas Adams

In order to take Tron seriously, you have to not take it so seriously. This was what 1981 or 1982 or so... video arcades were newish and computers were fancy mystical machines no one understood, esp this whole concept of easily editable word processed documents I.E. how someone with no real skills can delete someone else's name and take credit for their work, or worse yet create a program which will do this automaticly. Take into the account the 1980s mindset of computers which for the most part would be arcade style video games, using them and some spiffy new computer animation and you have the perfect vehicel for satire. And yes, the dialog is the likes of which that you would find in a Matrix sequal... and *that* is what makes it so funny.

Simple reason for the "bomb": It was too early

[Opportunist]

1982 it was not "cool" to be a geek. It was not cool to "live" inside the computer. 1982 was a time when computers (and even more consoles) were considered toys, not an essential part of our life.

Especially, the audience for such a movie was too small. And the studio was the wrong one. First of all, it's Disney. Back then, what did you get from Disney? Cute li'l films about cute fuzzy animals having some cute adventures. So people did not expect a "serious" science fiction movie.

Second, it was the wrong kind of science fiction for this time. Science fiction back then was either in a galaxy far, far away or equally far away in the future. But most certainly not NOW. How can you make science fiction in the NOW? Now is the real world. The movie was simply not credible for the audience of then.

Before someone quotes E.T.: E.T. was credible for the simple reason that it was a "real" drama movie with an alien element. Not a "real" science fiction movie. There were no laser beams and no robots.

Tron was also not the stereotypical science fiction movie, it didn't carter to the SciFi crowd of those times. No aliens, no space battles, no epic hero. Instead a very dramatic personal battle for Flynn and Tron, with a lot of abstraction that only someone who has at least a clue about computers can comprehend and appreciate.

In total, it is a movie for computer and game geeks. And those were rather scarce back then.

Re:Easy answer

[zakezuke]

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the plot : Man gets zapped into machine and has to battle his way back out.

The plot was a little deeper than that. A man (Flynn?), an ecentric genius, was obsessed over video games... designs a few blockbusters but a not to bright but sneaky person takes the credit for his work and as a result gets promoted to a position of control (VP?) and uses his position and access to lock out Flynn preventing him from vindicating his name and creates a master control program who's purpose is to steal other people's work and prevent others from accessing it. This tale is told by two other employies who are attempting to figure out what is going on with the system. They express shocked disbelief but one statement has enough of the way of truth to it for them to investiate. The MVP retaliates in the only way it knows how and zaps Flynn into it's world... which as you said "man gets zapped into machine and has to battle his way back out".

While your statement was ment with sarcasm, there is nothing wrong with the plot, nor the sub plot of romance between not only the real life characters but between their programs. It's your run of the mill heroic tale that has been told many times before. Those who want to be critical on the store should be on that point as heroic epics have been a staple of western culture even before to Roman empire was born. It was clearly made with a cookie cutter script generator that would work just as easily with an evil prince and dragons or gunmen and the wild wild west. It's redeming qualitys are the satire on bureaucracy and insight on religion, which are two things you would not expect in a film who's main purpose seems to be a vehicle for hi-tech CGI graphics.

Re:Easy answer

[gowen]

Last I checked, that's practically a formula for a successful movie.

The producers of Stealth, I Robot, The Island, Fantastic Four, and Pearl Harbor would like to disagree. Hell, even Kong did disappointing box office compared to how much it cost to make. Almost ever succesful recent blockbusters has had strong characters (or at least franchise characters with whom have a pre-existing relationship: Chronicles of Narnia, Batman Begins, Harry Potter, R-o-t-Sith etc. And, I've spent some of the morning reading the UK press savaging "V for Vendetta", so we may be able to add another to that disastrous list soon.

The Matrix is the exception, but the plot in the Matrix was irrelevant compared to the effect of those incredibly novel visuals. The sequels blew because the novelty wore off enough that we could see the plot creak.

Meanwhile, the producers of Sideways, Napoleon Dynamite, Crash, Walk The Line, Constant Gardener and Brokeback Mountain are smiling to themselves and rolling in the cash generated by their low budget successes moderate gross.

You were an uptight kid

[Sinistar2k]

When I was a kid, especially in '82 (age 9), I didn't really focus on the directing, writing, and point of a film.