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Tron Legacy Exposed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the end-of-line dept.

KingofGnG writes "Disney has chosen the San Diego Comic-Con International to present its new sci-fi project: the sequel to Tron. The classic movie from 1982 dealt with video games, virtual reality and 3D graphics when none of those things were widely popular. The new movie has got an official title and synopsis now, and they've released the very first trailer from the movie (this time without silly censorship) together with some concept art and the teaser poster." No matter how silly the movie is, they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

14 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Videogames in 1982? by winkydink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Videogames weren't popular in 1982? Let me guess: in 1982, you were still a
    Hershey bar in your dad's back pocket.

    One word: Pacman

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    1. Re:Videogames in 1982? by timeOday · · Score: 5, Informative

      He didn't "merely popularize" them in the sense of using star power or deep pockets to get people hooked (since he had neither). Rather, he made 3d (or 3d-ish) games that could run well and look good (better than the competition) on PC-compatible hardware in the pre-acceleration days. This brought 3d to critical mass where it was worth developing 3d acceleration products for the masses. You could look at any of the previous innovators in 3d gaming, including all the ones you mentioned, and say they merely did this or that, since there was no single breakthrough that defined gaming as we know it. But his contribution - his technical contribution - was larger than most.

    2. Re:Videogames in 1982? by corbettw · · Score: 5, Funny

      ÃoeGoinÃ(TM) BerzerkÃ

      Yep, that one's a classic, alright! Who could ever forget ÃoeGoinÃ(TM) BerzerkÃ?

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
    3. Re:Videogames in 1982? by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Laurie Anderson's song "Smoke Rings"

      When I was a Hershey bar
      In my father's back pocket.
      Hey look! Over there!
      It's Frank Sinatra
      Sitting in a chair.

      Possibly something to do with the WW2 cliche of GIs offering candy for sexual favors?

  2. Disney pah by Plunky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No matter how silly the movie is they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

    Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

    1. Re:Disney pah by Tetsujin · · Score: 5, Funny

      What culture?

      PROTOCULTURE!

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
  3. What Plunky is talking about by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

    Before you mod Plunky's post all the way to -1, consider that The Walt Disney Company was one of the two biggest advocates of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (the other being the Gershwin estate).

  4. Re:TR2N? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    TR2N: 3l3C7R1C B0064100

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  5. Lightcycles only do straight lines! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is nothing sacred? Lightcycles going around curves. How could you... *sob*

    1. Re:Lightcycles only do straight lines! by NormalVisual · · Score: 5, Informative

      Lightcycles could navigate curves in the original movie, and were clearly shown doing so during their escape from the game grid. When I get home tonight I'll pop the DVD in and give you a timestamp to look for.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  6. Introducing new characters... by Temujin_12 · · Score: 5, Funny

    New characters/themes to bring Tron into the 21st century:

    1) Qubit - flies around saying, "Yes", "no", and "maybe"
    2) Tron-troll - Any scene involving communication between more than two characters is constantly interrupted by the local Tron-troll
    3) Anonymous - suddenly hordes of identical looking drones appear to aid the main character in his/her quest then dissipate feeling good about themselves
    4) Users - rather than only having sparse information about the users, characters in Tron know everything about the users and are constantly interrupted by the user's incessant communications about what they are currently doing or their asking Tron characters to fill out quizzes which have nothing to do with the plot of the movie
    5) DRM - weapons, vehicles, and entire structures suddenly stop working at the whim of the MCP

    --
    Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
  7. Screw the Ludites! by KGBear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They'll have an unrealistic expectation of any expression of technology, by definition. All the while War Games and Tron were inspiring a whole generation (myself included) to learn what it's all about. We knew very well the expectations in both movies were unrealistic, but that was never the point. I had no hope of making my Sinclair ZX81 do anything remotely close to what Tron showed me but I got to fell like Flynn when I hacked a reset button for it (pin 13 to ground on the Z80). (Good) sci-fi is about inspiration, not reality. If it were realistic it would be a documentary and in 1982 a very boring one...

  8. Re:Could not care less. by fprintf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But, but, but... we are Generation X, long forgotten in between the baby boomers and their annoying offspring, the GenY'ers. Now that the old fogeys are retiring it is our turn in charge, and we are going to create nostalgia for our youth era gone by. No longer do we have to relive the 1960s and 1970s... nooooo, that is only for the baby boomers. Now instead we get to relive bad hair, metal, band-aid, the dawn of personal computing and video games. We get to recreate Atari 2600 games and make them into movies. We get to mandate any new pop stars create hits "remaking" the hits of our generation... hopefully we'll do better than Phil Collins did with that Supremes remake. This way we'll get to like the current popular music. And g'damn it you are going to sit through it and like it. Maybe in time you too will get sick of it and create your own grunge movement. Rap doesn't count.

    To all those GenY'ers who might complain, I say you guys have nothing to bitch about for quite some time. We GenX'ers after all have sat through countless replays of Beatles and Mama's and Papa's songs on the radio, umpteen recollections of what a tragedy it was when losing John Lennon, television show after show on JFK Jr., and that god-awful mess that "the Cuba crisis" was about. About the time you have listened to Nirvana's Teen Spirit for the 10,000th time, and have your own stars go tits up (and I mean beyond that dude who played the Joker in Batman) like Kurt Cobain, well then you can complain.

    Now get off my lawn.

    --
    This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
  9. The sign of the beast by ral · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here's a bit of odd trivia. The original Tron movie was created (in part) on a clone of the Digital PDP-10 computer. The PDP-10 includes an instruction called TRON (Test Right-halfword Ones and skip if Not masked). The opcode in octal (which is the convention on the PDP-10) is 666.

    I doubt Disney will actively publicize this.

    (I still fondly remember working for years with this odd but elegant 36-bit machine.)