Many years ago in Southern Oregon, I had a conversation with friends about some of our favorite films growing up. Movies like The Goonies, The Dark Crystal, Watership Down and The Secret of Nimh were all on the list, as well as Disney’s Tron. In our excitement for all these movies, we ended up renting the films from a local video store to relive our childhood. While the nostalgia was nice, we all ended falling asleep halfway through Tron, despite our love for it.

I guess one’s enjoyment of Tron is based on how it’s viewed. I caught the film two years ago at the Museum of the Moving Image, in 70MM. The first thing that caught my attention was the film grain. I’ve grown so used to the clarity of digital film presented in 4K that I couldn’t help but catch the little flicks and “cigarette burns” in at the start. This was life before digital, and it was beautiful to revisit. In a theatre, the film’s 96 minutes blazed by for me. The early 1980s was basically made up of bike rides and video arcades. The little boedga on the corner of my block back home even had a few arcade machines in the front of the store in the first half of the 80s. The Bodega’s still there, the arcade’s now a deli/hot meal area. Times can and do change.

Tron is the story of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, Bad Times at the El Royale), a former employee at Encom, a major computing and videogame company. Encom’s made some wonderful strides in technology as of late, by 1980’s standards. Encom performs special matter tests in a specialized lab, while the programmers grind away code in their cubicles. All of their work is overseen by the Master Control Program, an operating system of sorts. Granted, the workforce at Encom isn’t too pleased about having the MCP monitor their applications. Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, Kuffs) and Lori Baines (Cindy Morgan, Caddyshack) also have programs and projects of their own that are being culled. Alan’s program, Tron (also played by Boxleitner) is of particular interest to the MCP, as it acts an a security threat that could bring some serious problems. Kevin tries to hack his way into Encom with the use of a program he created called Clu (also Bridges), but the MCP and the Senior Vice President of Encom, Ed Dillinger (David Warner, The Omen, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze) keep Flynn at bay. When Alan and Lori discover what Flynn’s up to, they confront him at his arcade, where he explains that he was the actual creator of Encom’s top games. He only needs the data as proof. This leads to the team breaking into Encom, where the MCP digitizes Flynn and brings him into the computer world. Can Flynn escape and help liberate the programs enslaved by the MCP and its henchman, Sark (both also played by Warner)? Can Flynn find the proof to exonerate him? And just who is this Tron fellow, anyway?

The plot for Tron inside the machine becomes a bit theological. The programs believe in the Users, and that they were each created for a particular purpose. From Ram (Dan Shor, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) being an Actuarial Program to Tron being a defense against the MCP, it’s kind of interesting once Flynn shows up. As a User, he doesn’t have much more power than a program, save that he can’t really be derezzed and that he can mimic the neon glow of anyone he touched. I always thought they could have given him something cooler to do, though for 1982, repurposing machines does have some benefits. The story slows down a bit in the middle, feeling like it’s somewhat unsure of itself, but picks up in the final act with Tron vs. Sark and the MVP. Though Flynn is important to the outcome, he’s more like Big Trouble in Little China’s Jack Burton, kind of just watching this happen around him. He does have his moments, though.

When I was little, my dad owned a Commodore 64 and a Floppy Disk Drive. He would regularly pick up magazines like Byte! to catch up on new innovations. In most of these magazines, they’d have a program that you could enter in at home to create various effects like making a balloon fly across your screen. Those programs were usually written over a number of pages with hundreds of lines of code. For Tron, there were 3 teams dedicated for the Visual Effects. According to the behind the scenes documentary on the disc, Information International Inc., known as Triple-I, was brought in to handle the major work along with Mathematic Applications Group Inc. (MAGI), who director Steven Lisberger worked for at one point early in his career. Digital Effects of New York handled some of the responsible for some of the original CGI work used in Michael Crichton’s Westworld (considered one of the first CGI movie uses ever) and it’s sequel, Futureworld. For the time, the effects were groundbreaking. Mind you, most of this was all before we ever hit the 8-bit era of Nintendo, the Commodore Amiga or even the high resolution arcade games of Sega’s heyday like Space Harrier, Outrun or Afterburner. In an actual arcade in 1982 had games like Q-Bert or Dig Dug with the kind of graphics you’d never see on home systems.

The designs for the look and feel of the computer world came from Lisberger himself, with a bit of assistance from both futurist Syd Mead and legendary artist Jean “Mobius” Giraud. Both men were extremely popular. Mead was the equivalent of Apple’s former Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, having created the “V’ger” model for Star Trek:The Motion Picture. Ironically, Mead’s work (both on the set design and the flying cars) would be seen by audiences watching Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner just a month shy of Tron’s release. Having worked on Alien years prior, Giraud helped to design and inspire both the clothing and some of the vehicles, such as the weird cradle for Dumont (Bernard Hughes, The Lost Boys) and the Light Cycles.

A film dealing with computers needed a composer familiar with electronic music.It seemed fitting that Wendy Carlos(A Clockwork Orange, The Shining) took on the challenge. Having built a computer at 14, Carlos’ love for music over the years lead her (with Robert Moog) to help develop the Moog synthesizer system. The Moog would go on to be used by Kraftwerk, Giorgio Mororder, Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy Daft Punk and even J Dilla, among others. The Tron Soundtrack was a mix of orchestra, choir and electronic music. Although the sound may not be as dark and digital as Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy, I felt it worked for the time and moves well with the film. In addition to Carlos’ score, Journey wrote the song “Only Solutions” for the film, which also happens to be a line uttered by Kevin Flynn.

Overall, Tron is one of those movies I can happily rewatch without much in the way of expectation. I enjoy it for its place in Sci-Fi cinema, and the memories it awakens. I don’t think Disney ever fully recognized the full potential of where they could take the story, though the animated Tron: Uprising was a great part of the saga. I’m just hoping Tron: Ares doesn’t stray too far from the fold.