Made in 1982 this film is considered groundbreaking. Why?
What do you like about it? What do you dislike? What technical, social and emotional changes do we see in this film that were never seen previously? Today these themes are commonplace (and probably done much better), but what about in 1982? What fortuitous accident made an amazing and totally unexpected "special" effect?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Tron Review
Tron is not a timeless film. The reason for this is Tron relied heavily on ground breaking special effects and cutting edge, rarely before seen technological advancements in modern film. The outer story is stale and slowly moves navigates through one generic twist after another. Since the time has long since passed where Tron can be claimed to be "visually stunning" without the words "for it's time" quickly said thereafter, one would have to discuss why the visual elements of the film were so important "for its time." Unless one could pull something out of the story that was also rarely seen for it's time. Deep within the storyline of Tron is a hidden plot, a hidden struggle. Another piece of innovative film making. Tron is one of the first main stream media films to deal with the issue of bisexuality in a main character.
The evidence for this is rampant throughout the film. In the beginning of the film we see that two of the main characters are together. Kevin is dating Lora and they both work at the local computer company/warehouse/laser refinery. We also see Kevin who is making a program to look through the company's database for some evidence, which turns out to be a printed piece of paper, that says he came up with the idea for some computer game, or program or something not really relevant to the plot except that it pits the three heroes against Sark/Dillinger. The program is represented by a humanoid computer program named Tron. Tron is played by the same character that plays Kevin. So in essence, Alan is at home watching Kevin on the computer. When he loses the computer program/Tron he is violently upset, he uses the emotions commonly saved for real life people.
The real story begins when Kevin and Lora come over to Alan's video arcade. Alan is surrounded by hot, sweaty teenage girls and boys who are watching him play a video game. This technological world is shown to the viewer and from this point until the end of the film as a visual representation as an inner struggle in Kevin, Lora, and Alan's inner psyche and sexuality. A shot is shown of the object Alan is struggling to beat in the game. It is a large thing starship that looks nothing like any starship ever seen. It really looks like a pair of legs and a waist. In between the legs is an indistinguishable bump. What is the name of this oddly shaped star craft? Is it the destroyer, the eliminator, or the terminator? No. It is called the Recognizer. Every day Alan struggles with this recognizer in a quest to determine his sexuality. None of the characters no whom they are attracted to. When they go upstairs to discus things, Alan feels the need to change his shirt. I play video games often, and have never felt the need to change shirts after a long hard day of gaming. Not only does he for no reason take off his shirt, he puts on a shirt that says exactly the same thing. All of these elements are not accidental or silly, they are to show give you the hint that there is no reason for Alan to take off his shirt in front of Kevin and Lora plot wise. It is to show you that Kevin feels comfortable undressed in front of both Alan and Lora and they in turn feel comfortable with him undressed all in the same room.
We later find that Kevin and Lora did have a sexual relationship with comments about it from Alan. We also saw that Kevin has thought about Alan and even created a moving working image of him in his computer/mind. It is not until Kevin is digitized that we see the depth of this struggle to find out to whom he is attracted to. Once he is inside the computer/his own mind, he is put in situations, all to bring about his discovery of his own sexuality. He is in-prisoned by the flying legs and jailed next to Tron/Alan. This is the start of his prison fantasy. Tron is everything Kevin wants Alan to be in the real world. He is a strong, athletic champion who most importantly stands up to Sark/Dillinger who is the father figure of the film. The father figure oppresses all the characters in real life, and in Kevin's subconscious world represented again by the actor playing both roles. Kevin does macho things with Tron like escaping prison, riding motorcycles and climbing mountains. However, they are being chased the hole time by the flying legs, so obviously the struggle continues and being with Tron is not the final answer. In his subconscious mind he meets Lora and begins his sexy secretary fantasy. She is some kind of computer secretary and she and Kevin have a moment of sexual tension. Later her and Tron have a moment and again, even Tron and Kevin have a close up shot of the two of their faces. Kevin holds tenderly a man who is dying in his arms. This man's name was Ram. Finally, as they are working together to defeat Sark/Dillinger Sark for some reason becomes huge. Like a giant. His height makes all the other characters seem as though they are children. When they finally beat him, it is symbolic of them finally outgrowing their fear of what their father would think about them. They all come together and are set free of their struggle. Through their computer representations, Kevin realizes that he loves both Alan and Lora and is equally attracted to them and that it is okay to feel like that. Lora realizes that she may want to be promiscues and be with two men and once and feels that this is okay as well. Finally, Alan too realizes that he likes both Lora and Kevin and this works for him. For the final shot of the film, Kevin comes down out of a helicopter and the three embrace each other for the first time. They have defeated their fathers and struggle through the mazes of sexuality and now they can live happily and freely and truly begin their lives.
These themes had to be hidden in Tron because it was a mainstream film and the mainstream was not thought to be able to handle these themes in the main storyline. The eighties were a strong time for sexuality explorations and evidence can be seen in music videos and other films of the time. However, no film portrays the struggle of realizing you are a bisexual as creatively as Tron. Tron should not only be remembered as a technologically groundbreaking film, but as a film that was also groundbreaking in exploring the sexualities of people who may not coincide with the socially accepted ideas of love and relationships at that current time in history and the struggles and obstacles they would have to overcome to truly be free.
Thoughtful, original work. Insightful observations. I did find myself wondering what sort of
'happily ever after' the three main characters were going to have in the future. Good use of examples to support your hypothesis and nice reference to the music of the '80's as support for your point.
j
Man vs. Computer
I believe that Tron was a groundbreaking film that has placed its mark in animation history using new special effects technology. The concept of Tron, inspired by video games at the time, increased the popularity of video games by using convincing images and pixilated graphic elements that would combine to create an acceptable digital motion picture. Although several processes were used to create stunning effects such as the digitized orange and zapping Flynn into the computer world, the undisclosed war that is manifested in Tron and that continues in our society today, is how man subconsciously battles the technological advancement of a computer. Tron was a visual futuristic snapshot as to how the evolution of computers will one day control the fate of our destiny by replacing our abilities.
Tron, during the time of its release, has demonstrated an understanding for the language of a computer program and its use. Software programmers, computer science engineers and other pertinent technical fields are relatively the backbone for the elevation of computer use and its enhancements. The story of Tron intrinsically parallels our social and political corporate-business working environment and the psychic understanding of the computer revolution. People in our society are composed of a competitive and strong desire to become more successful than others in a sense that increases our motivation to overcome the nature of structural hierarchy. The MCP (Master Control Program) relatively reflects its creator, Dillinger, who advanced himself with a series of promotions by stealing Flynn’s work and presents it as his own. Flynn had then been reduced to running his own arcade featuring some of the games he created and must work extremely hard against Dillinger and the MCP to get the evidence and retrieve what is rightfully his. This demonstrates how two employees, both working as computer software programmers at the ENCOM Corporation, were trying to improve their way of life by trying to become a more valuable asset to the company. As time went on, Dillinger’s creation has become the leader of the corporate ENCOM empire as the Master Control Program.
The MCP is the central focus of the movie and has evolved into this sovereign ruler of the digital universe with the compelling edge to take over the world. As the story continues, we arrive to a place in the ‘digital’ world that shows other programs played by people. At this time we see the opportunity for the ‘programs’ to choose to accept their fate by joining the MCP or battle against him. The battle is exactly what we would expect if we were to play a video game. In this case, a computer system does not believe human strength and tactics would outweigh the processing speed and memory of computer software. So both sides of the playing field have the same mentality, Flynn believes he can defeat any video game because he plays them all the time and the MCP believes that he is unbeatable.
The nature of our existence has endlessly grown into enhancing our quality of life. The role of a computer plays the biggest part in this contribution. Since the beginning of the first computer system, there has been a chronological timeline for the ever-changing advancements of electronics. The historic days of modern computers use to be the size of a room, and now with more functions, have shrunk to the size of a wristwatch. Computers are always evolving and we should be prepared to compete with the ability of a computer to that of our own. One day a computerized robot may be teaching your next class.
Darn who told I was really a robot!! Machine as metaphor always works for me. A nice connection between the two worlds. I find this film compelling in an age of so much idea theft and plagiarism. It was interesting to see Dillinger (famous historic villain name) get his karmic payback, yet I wonder if it would be the same today. How would it play today? I guess we'll find out soon enough when the remake is done. Good work.
Tron a movie best described as a computer enthusiast cult classic. Ironically the creators of the film did not intend to attract its “computer geek” audience, however its primary plotline focused on computer development in a historical era when computers were not dealing on its plotline with the computer subject. Released in 1982, computers were yet to become common commodities in a average home. As a result, the movie’s technical terminology was difficult for the average viewer to comprehend. Visually, the graphics created during that time are week compared to what technology can produce today. For example, CG character “bit” (the little pet who only beeps yes or no at the begining of the movie) look pretty lame; but for that time it was amazing. Also most of the backgrounds of the movie were computer generated and that technique was not seen again till 2004 when Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow emerged. The concept behind, what is beyond the human realm, is quite smart. The characters were created to exists as a human robot, capable of being programed but interact and feel in a ae sort of society where a big bad machine rules and opress all the other creatures. The plot twists in that the “big bad machine” rules within the virtual world as well, requiring his flock to perform the tasks of their human counterparts but on the virtual realm.
I cant avoid to compare it to the movie The Matrix in wich also the main character its abducted from the matrix into the real world, however this movie cant be compared to Tron in terms of audience and success maybe due to the fact that its audience was what I call Postnintendo generation. Meaning those who grew-up with computers and videogames at home, maybe making Tron a movie misunderstood by that generation. At that time people did’nt had computers at home as we do today, its audience wasnt prepared to digest and argument that if its true that was brilliant on it concept; it was a little abstract for a public that did not know how to appreciate this maybe because the sci-fi movies at the time were more like starwars.
Looking it in retrospective as a master student , the animation is not impressive; however the CG imagery within the film is interesting; it was pionneering in creating a completely original virtual world that contrary to what we see today in films does not try to replicate realworld but instead depict an extraordinary colorfull parallel universe that has its own iconography and visual entity that not trys anyhow to cheat the spectator making him believe that is real what is looking but offering him on an impressive stilized modern view of the virtual world where takes place a parallelism between progammer as god and programs as humans and where as in real life there is a struggle between the individual and a huge entity that represents power and somehow has gained power to rule over the system.
If you were an average person who rarely used computers and living during the early 80's, you might have been either completely awed and/or completely confused after you saw TRON. Ironically enough, people today are either completely respectfully awed from seeing TRON, think it's completely cheesy by today's standards, and/or remain confused. However, TRON has grown into a very popular cult film that has left its mark as one of the first movies to extensively use computer graphics to great effect. So why did TRON not become an instant hit and gain recognition like the original Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? The reasons are that throughout its presentation TRON was too much to take in for most of the viewing population due to ironically its heavy use of computer graphics to carry the story all the way through.
The movie TRON debuted in 1982 to an audience that was still awed by much of the special effects movies like the original Star Wars Trilogy. The movie is about a programmer, Kevin Flynn, who's work got stolen by another programmer, Ed Dillinger, a few years back and is trying to prove that the work was originally his. Along the way Ed and his AI chess program who is deemed “Master Control Program” or MCP manage to piss off lot of programmers especially a guy named Alan, the creator of a certain security program called TRON, due to Flynn's continuing effort to bring down evil Ed and the MCP by getting the files that prove that his work was stolen. This sets the stage where Flynn gets zapped into the computer world by the MCP where he must survive against red glowing bad guys, beat the MCP, kiss the girl, and meet a guy, you guessed it, TRON.
The movie starred Jeff Bridges, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, and Bruce Boxleitner. With the exception of Cindy Morgan, each has gone on to achieve other career successes and cult phenomenon statuses. Jeff Bridges, who plays Flynn, represents the programmer that people can relate to as the person who got screwed over but is willing to fight back what’s rightfully his. The rest of the cast represents stereotypical cast roles that people can identify with such as the righteous hero who knows something is fishy and intends to expose the truth, the willing female sidekick, and the bad guy who takes away everything for his own personal gain but ultimately gets a karma backlash for all the wrong he has done. These are characters that the audience can identify with very easily in order to let the audience focus more into the special effects. With only a couple of hours to delve into the depths of the characters, the only way to give depth is at the beginning of the movie before Flynn gets zapped into the computer world. This is actually done decently well as it gives the audience the reasons and time to sink into their brains as to how and why Flynn will end up in the computer world.
The rest of the movie after that point is a roller coaster of sfx and early cg shots bombarding the audience at full force. Leaving many thrilling at the edge of their seat and others mysteriously dropping off halfway through the roller coaster. The story tends to get really simplified from that point of basically escape, drink, powering up, meet the wizard, kiss the girl, kill the bad guys, and go back to the real world before happy hour is over. Seems like a simple story like that could be enough for the audience to take in and make TRON a masterpiece. Unfortunately, the lighting and VFX seems to have really distance the general audience except for those familiar with computers. For older audiences, it was too much to take in to as to how a computer world could exist. On the other hand for those who understood the inside jokes in the movie such as the “bit” pet that can only say yes or no was more of a treat for them to enjoy. There was a lot going for the movie that seem to make it a precursor for what the majority of not so famous CG movies have already ended up: forgettable. Thankfully enough, however TRON does have some substance that makes it not as forgettable as movies such as Stealth and Van Helsing.
Looking solely at the VFX and CG shots, there’s a lot of unprecedented CG work that would later be enhanced gradually to the standards of today. For example, The compositing of the shot where the bad guy grows up to be a giant and takes a head shot from Tron’s disc is still amazingly done even still this day. The use of lighting to illustrate the good, the bad, and the bystanders is simply done effectively. The cycle chase with the tanks was, back in the 80’s, done very stylishly but kept simple in order to complete the shots and feel of the movie within a reasonable amount of time. To that effect the movie successfully kept its consistency with its compositing and cg shots in check in order to not water down the environment and story any further. To try to pull off the better effects of today in an 80’s movie would have probably taken too long and too expensive to complete with the resources during the early 80’s. How the production crew was able to put actors in an almost CG filled environment was definitely enough to pioneer the advent of future CG environment productions down the road. Even though it took a good decade for that to manifest. Thanks to the CG production, the movie itself ended up being catered to a specific cult that has led to games and comic spin-offs after the release of the movie.
In short, the movie had a solid cast, a decent story premise, and fantastic VFX and CG shots. Unfortunately the CG world seemed to have overwhelmed the general audience who weren’t quite ready for a film of that caliber back in 1981 or even today. Therefore Tron was a modest success overall through its early CG work but not enough where everyone could believe and/or understand the world of Tron. The film was ahead of its time but that’s how some films accrue further appreciation and a cult status as the years go by. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having inside jokes and references in other media and movies that refer back to Tron.
Post a Comment