Tron (1982)

The sad thing is that I saw Tron when I was five years old. Then, seven years later, I saw Tron: Legacy in theaters without seeing the original again. And thank God for Blu-ray re-mastered films. I finally got to re-watch Tron, after seeing the sequel. That’s a shame, because I knew what was going to happen to the characters, what fates would go to the actors’ respective roles. But even then, I was still captivated. I felt the exact same as I did during 127 Hours, where I paid full attention despite having perfect knowledge of the ending. And that takes a very good film. And yes, Tron is a very good film, much superior to its sequel, which features much more eye candy than brain. Tron does feature a lot of eye candy, it being at the top of the special effects kingdom at the time, but it also has a huge amount of brain candy. It is a smart, fun, and brilliant film, miles ahead of its time. The only reason it didn’t win the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction film was because E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial was released that year, and the only reason it didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Special Effects was because the Academy was a bunch of snobs and said that they cheated by using computers. Those snobs. The film stars Jeff “The Dude” Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer hacker who believes that the company he used to work for, ENCOM, stole his video game ideas. He decides to break into ENCOM’s building, and as he is about to get the information he needs to prove his claims, he gets zapped by a brand-new laser that is in programming, which blasts an object and transports it into the computer. Kevin is transported into the computer where he finds a digital world where programs fight, depending on which ones believe in the users (us humans in real world here) and which ones don’t. So Kevin leads a group, which features Tron, a program written and looking like Kevin’s former co-worker Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleinter). These two, and others, go on a quest to destroy the Master Control Program, which is making life in the computer horrible. A good portion of the film takes place inside the computer, which has some effects that, as I said, were groundbreaking at the time. If you gave me 1.7 million dollars exactly (1/10 of the film’s budget) I could make it in this modern day and age. The effects, if viewed cynically and in comparison with today’s films, they would be terrible. But this was 1982, and if you are to enjoy the film, you need to remember that. It is 1982. The year we got such hits as E. T. and Poltergeist. Tron just adds another film to the list of hits.
9/10