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Twenty Five Years of Tron
the_quiet_angeleno writes "I have an article in today's Summer Film Preview issue of Los Angeles CityBeat on Disney's sci-fi classic Tron, which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year. The piece includes a discussion with Richard Taylor, one of Tron's visual effects supervisors on the film's groundbreaking effects, as well as director Steven Lisberger, on how the narrative incorporates the Jungian concept of individuation. Here's a sample: 'Visual Effects Society member Gene Kozicki, of the L.A.-based visual effects house Rhythm & Hues, believes Tron's legacy was in moving computer-generated visuals into the realm of storytelling. "Research into this type of imagery had been going on for over 15 years, but it was more scientific in nature," Kozicki says, "Once artists began to share their ideas and treat the computer as a tool, it moved away from strict research and towards an art form."
That move changed my life! Up until then I wanted to be a stormtrooper. After seeing Tron I wanted to be a light cycle driver. I ended up being a shift manager at a flour mill. Wee. NoonooNOO noonooNOOnooNOO-nooo...
Tron's legacy was in moving computer-generated visuals into the realm of storytelling.
Sadly, there was not a lot of compelling storytelling in that movie. The script was pretty bad, as was much of the acting (my opinion of course)
Tron opened against ET, and it bombed at the box office. Some people say that Tron's failure at the box office set back CG animation by 10 years. Most studios back then saw the technology as expensive and not worth the investment. Only after CG got it's feet wet in commercials and broadcast in the 80's did the movie studios embrace it again.
For a long time, I carried around a logic probe in my tool kit. I didn't need one for my work...I just liked grabbing it and shouting in my best David Warner voice, "Bring in the logic probe!". ^_^
I also said "Greetings, programs!" way more often than I should have...
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Tron's special effects have influenced in more than just movies. Just take a look at case mods and riced out cars sporting neon to see just how much people liked Tron.
Bobo Mahoney
The funny thing was it didn't win an Oscar for special effects that year because the Academy felt they had "cheated" by using computers. (Of course, the computers were so slow they had to plan every shot out in detail because 'rerendering' would have taken too much time. And they communicated the data over the phone... by reading the numbers out loud.) Interesting to see how attitudes have changed.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
As for which is the dumber movie about computers, I'd say it's a toss-up between Tron and The Matrix. At least Tron had attractive special effects and wasn't so goddamned pretentious.
I piss off bigots.
There were other movies with tons of CG not long after, like The Last Starfighter. Most of them had poor scripts as well. TRON didn't set the CG industry back 10 years; it was 10 years ahead of its time.
And, it *was* expensive. Unless you were after the CG look of the time, there was no reason to use CG.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Speaking of Hollywood reluctance, I wonder what ever happened to the Tron sequel? A few years ago, Disney was in a buzz about how the new Tron movie was coming out soon. They even made the Tron 2.0 game to ride the promotion wave. Yet nothing ever appeared, and the very idea of a sequel seems to have vanished into the ether.
To be blunt: What happened?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So many here say so, but I cannot see their point, as well as how anyone can compare it with anything else at the time; what has Star Wars to do with it, at all?
As many, I was there and it was clearly groundbreaking. I distinctly remember that I had not been moved by imagery like that since I was little and saw my first Harryhausen or later 2001. Not from the script, which was Disney, but the imagery and immense scale, especially the light cycle race and the tank chase.
Sitting in a theater on opening weekend, huge screen and high quality audio, its few minutes of CGI and music, it was clearly a demonstration of things to come.
Tron was not a good movie. Not even close. But man was it groundbreaking. It's up there on my list of favorites with "Dark Star," John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon's collaboration that is a clear precursor to O'Bannon's "Alien."
I heartily recommend that all Slashdot nerds get copies of *both* (VCI released Dark Star on DVD, both original and theatrical versions). They're both like watching a long, slow inside shaggy dog joke.
What memories. "Computers are for USERS." Was that concept prophetic or what?
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Toro