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

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

[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.