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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."
the box office flop is all the proof that I need that people really are idiots, I mean, did they even see the lightcycles?!
ptsch.
The movie is absolutely great. I saw it in the cinema twice. The DVD version I have contains a great making-of and I enjoyed the movie again since I bought it a couple of times. Actually I always wondered why this is a Disney film...
In Korea, all your base are Only For Old People
Who would have thought it was a bomb? I remember seeing it and loving it as a kid - and loving my toy lightcycle and some of the video game - and the movie seems to be so well known. If you ever mention it to someone, they know what you're talking about. It amazes me it was a flop.
I saw Tron, opening night, and its one of the things that made me really, really want to figure out how those nifty looking typewriters with screens could do so much. I didn't know what memory was, I didn't know what a processor did, I barely understood how a calculator worked and if you said Binary I'd say "Sure, I have a Huffy!".
:)
:)
We're always looking at value as something monetary. Tron made me go get my first trash-80 (Err Tandy TRS-80 heheh) and later my first Commie. I wanted to know how those things worked.
You all may remember the short lived series "Whiz Kids" , with the talking computer that looked like it was assembled from stereo components. That was another one way ahead of its time.
The value of the film wasn't how much it grossed , if you want to calculate that, then calculate the life time earnings of those who got into computers partly because of seeing it and you may be surprised
However only 15 minutes of CGI? I somehow (not sure why, because I know what was available then) thought most of it was CGI.. but yes, that would have been very very difficult at the time. My bubble sort of broke reading that article, never really thought about the making other than being fascinated as a child with the results.
Much like the show Whiz Kids, it was just a little too abstract for most people. Entertainment isn't entertainment to most if it requires too much thought.
Tron got to be the pavement others were able to ride in on. So wallet aside, I don't think the film was a flop. I was too young to remember any hoop-la coming from Disney about the film.. I wonder how it would have done if it had been underplayed before release.
Cool article, if you can wade through the advertisements
I liked the plot. It was just badly handled with a poor script. The basic idea of going into the computer and teaming up with a superhero program is kinda goofy but a pretty cool idea for kids. Plus I think the idea of anthropomorphic computer programs working in the computer was pretty cute. The same basic concept was used fairly well on Reboot.
Sure, you can take any line out of context and make it seem soulless. The point of that particular line was that it was dripping with cynicism. The MCP wasn't giving those programs a place of honor to "serve their systems" at all. Programs were sent to the Game Grid to die. In fact, Sark probably would rather have been doing something else. The only enjoyment he got from his little speech was the opportunity to kick the prisoners in their religious nadgers, which made a nice counterpoint to his later conversation with the MCP:
Sark: I don't know, I mean, users wrote us. A user even wrote you!
MCP: No one user wrote me. I'm worth millions of their man-years.
It actually has interesting parallels with Cold War indoctrination and Stalinist gulags, with a hint of medieval religious indoctrination as well.
Another interesting concept brought up by the line you quoted was the staggering difference in time scale between the real world and the computer world. The religious pogrom in the computer world had the flavor of something that had been going on for decades. But actually, users were able to work with their programs right up until the point where the MCP shut down Group 7 access ("just to be safe"). The efforts of the MCP and Sark to eliminate belief in the users must have started after that point, and it was a matter of mere hours from then to the time at which Flynn found himself trapped on the Game Grid.
I think the reason that many consider TRONStar Wars and that movie changed the standards for what is a hit. But TRON making back double what it original cost to make would make it a success to me.
I think the problem with TRON was that it came out at the wrong time, a time before most people were very familiar with computers. Due to this some of the humor in the movie did not instinctively carry to the average viewer.
But some elements of the movie still hold up to this day. The light cycle sequence has become iconic, and the interest in TRON is still there, as shown by the excitement over the inclusion of a TRON level in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts II video game, and a sequel to TRON has been released in the form of a video game: TRON 2.0.
Although some have knocked the plot of the movie as confusing, when you distill it down to the basics it is a quest movie like Lord of the Rings. One weakness in the movie was the lack of interaction between the real world and the computer world. In the novelization of TRON they included a scene where, when Flynn refused to kill his opponent, in the real world a video game at an arcade froze while waiting for Flynn to act.
The idea of a person trapped inside a computer has become a common theme by now. It shows up in movies like The Matrix, and in anime series like .Hack. This proves that interest in a movie like TRON exists, but it has to have the right timing.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. --Douglas Adams
I just wish the movie was better. I recently grabbed it on DVD, thinking it couldn't be so bad... the plot changes weren't so bad, but I really hated the parts where they kept the plot, and left out the punchline. I honestly don't know what happened. Either
a) Adams didn't want to repeat himself and threw the baby out with the bathwater
b) They never let him put the good parts in
c) They ripped out the good parts after his death
d) They weren't actually good at the movie medium
For example, right at the very start you have the "display department" joke and the part where Ford convinces the demolition manager to lay in the mud instead of Dent. Instead they cut out two funny scenes, and replaces it with a scene that makes absolutely no sense and isn't even funny. Why do they need to go the pub if Ford already has brought beer? Instead he gives it away and they go buy beer? WTF? The bartender conversation is also a punchline short, sigh.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
She's got a great style. Sort of a more epic version of Vangelis or Tangerine Dream. It's pretty damned cool that they remixed some of those tunes into Tron 2.0.
And the sequel to that should be called Troll
You can't handle the truth.
Some then young budding PHB or IP Lawyer to be, realizing, hey- this guy used company resources to make video games on the side, with the intent to spin-off a VERY PROFITABLE COMPANY...
We should make job contracts that say "all your base belong to us" iffen you make them at all whilst you are working for us...
Thanks TRON!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I suppose that people who never saw Tron missed the reference.
The article says Disney experimented with using comupters for animation in the seventies. I think the first thing they tried doing was to do in-betweening of hand-plotted vector graphics, animating the series of lines on a vector scope, then drawing the lines to cells using an XY plotter. This was done using an IBM Whirlwind vector terminal in 1959 or 1960.
calculate the life time earnings of those who got into computers partly because of seeing it and you may be surprised :)
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I resemble that remark. (Even ended up working with a III system later in '82, though not doing anything nearly as interesting with it...)
Yeah, the dialogue is awful (though not as bad as The Black Hole), but the look and soundtrack are still inspiring. As another poster said, this film was ahead of its time - by at least a good twenty minutes...
<grrr
I was working (learning) in the biggest graphics lab in the world at the time _Tron_ was made, Summer 1982. The New York Institute of Technology had a DEC VAX/VMS datacenter, with DEC GIGI graphics terminals and other rendering HW. We were busy scanning 1970s progressive rock album covers and inserting our own adventures into the cover art. Then Disney opened their Tron lab, and we weren't the biggest anymore - just another little college computer room.
It was like our bong hits wore off, just as someone else at the school prom dosed us all with LSD, then they started flying around the dance hall.
--
make install -not war
As implausible as the plot devices were, Tron actually captured something about how it felt working with computers in that era. You had a great deal of control, but programs had reached a point of complexity where different pieces of software almost had a mind of their own. And since the suits only had a vague idea of what you did, they tried to avoid you as much as possible, which meant on a day to day basis you really interacted with bits of software more than you did people. There were no ex-geek managers for the simple reason there were no ex-geeks.
Add to that, very few of us had computers in their home; the home computers that existed were for practical purposes not much more than toys.
The upshot was, when you sat down in front of that terminal at the start of the work day, it really felt like preparing to dive into an alternate universe, with its own population.
And furthermore, there was no Internet. Internet means you're handling emails, IM, blogging and interacting with real, flesh and blood people; or at least what those people are pretending to be. Having the Internet means that software flows in and out of your computer like electricity. In those days your computer was isolated, like one of the Galapagos Islands, and sparsely populated with humans. The real people were, in the cast of characters a distinct minority. When you chatted at the watercooler about one program or another idiosyncracies, it was gossipping.
Tron, while it may not be Citizen Kane, captured the feeling of an unique moment in computer history.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Discs of Tron is still one of my favorite video games. It has good graphics, but the gameplay is a blast.
Anyone else remember that game?
I tried it on MAME a few years ago, but it wasn't the same as playing it in the arcade.
The Matrix sequels flopped, at least in part, because of the secrecy surrounding the sequel's storylines.
Lacking any info, virtually every one of us who saw the first film imagined what the sequel plot would be, what would be revealed, what the hell it all meant anyway, and so on.
Once the second film came out, it was clear that nearly all of that imaginary storyline stuff turned out to be a WHOLE lot more ambitious than what they actually filmed.
In fact, the sequels -while profitable- were more or less a huge letdown. This is pretty normal for sequels. The main difference was the incredible level of hype and the gigantic expectations from the public and the movie company. Other than that, nobody would have paid a lot of attention to the weak story or cared what the heck the thing was about.
I cared enough to not bother seeing the third film. Caught it on HBO one lonely Christmas Day. Neo was blind and I sure wished I was.
Sig for hire.
Flynn, who initially started out as an innovative programmer of videogames, presides over Encom as it becomes the main provider of operating systems for personal computers. Flynn grows more and more out of touch the more money he makes, and his lust for more and more domination of the field becomes more and more intense.
It is now 1995. Two things have emerged that he cannot control:
1.) Arpanet becomes the Internet, and is opened to the Great Unwashed. It begins to take shape as its own cybernetic landscape, much like the interior of the Mainframe but infinitely more vast.
2.) A Flynn-like programmer in Europe, Karl Svenson, has created an operating system which, while still rough around the edges, has the potential of blowing Encom's "Portals" system out of the water. And he's giving it away. The thought galls Flynn.
So Flynn goes back to a wheel of paper punch tape and resurrects the MCP. The MCP's new mission: to conquer the Internet and to eliminate Svenson. The MCP gets out of Flynn's control, and Flynn and Svenson are eventually forced to work together to prevent the MCP from putting them both out of business.
If you work at Pixar, go right ahead and take this. You're welcome.
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