Disney Movie Challenge Bonus: Tron (1982)

 Disney Movie Challenge Bonus

Tron (1982)

As I get into the late 80’s with the Disney Movie Challenge we are starting to see the beginnings of CGI in animation.  The Black Cauldron dabbled in it with a few computer generated images and The Great Mouse Detective had a scene that relied heavily on CGI.  With today’s bonus post I wanted to take a step back a few years to examine the movie that was one of the first to really use computers to do special effects.  In 1982 Disney was again at the forefront of technology when they released Tron,  a movie that wasn’t a huge hit but changed the movie landscape.

Tron is about a computer program called the Master Control Program that tries to take over the digital world. When Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) tries to hack into the system the Master Control Program digitlzes Flynn and sucks him into the computer and forces him to compete in the games.  He teams up with Tron a powerful program designed to take down the MCP.  

The movie was at the cutting edge of the computer graphics and was a big showcase to what it could do.  While the effects don’t quite live up to today's standards it still has an amazing look and cool vibe.  The problem with the film is that despite how cutting edge it was it lacked a really strong story.  The story is a bit confusing.  This could be that the knowledge of what computers would go on to be wasn’t as understood and some of the things that happen seem silly.  But I think if it did a better job of explaining the rules of the world we could at least go along with it instead of bringing in our own knowledge.  The film gets a bit slow at parts and some of the scenes that do have action look cool but lack intensity.  The exception is the light cycle scenes which look awesome and are really engaging.  

The acting is a bit subpar.  Not sure if it was just people didn’t know how to act with all the special effects or what it was.  Jeff Bridges does his best and keeps the film from being too bland.  Everyone else just feels flat and not very exciting.  The scene where Tron supposedly dies is really anticlimactic.  

Overall:  Looks great.  Needs better world building.  Feels like a lot of time was put into the effects and design of the film and not enough into the story and actors just didn’t seem to have any idea what they were doing.  

Random Fact: 

The movie was disqualified for Best Visual Effects Oscar because the Academy thought it was cheating to use computers.