Tron’s History and Failings

[Citadel]

 

TRON’S HISTORY AND FAILINGS
By Pierre Maertin

 

 

There was a time when the Internet was young and new, when video games were just beginning to make their way to the retail shelf.  It was a world largely unknown except for those building an entirely new industry and market for entertainment seekers.

 

The year was 1982 and a little-known pop culture franchise was about to debut, the film was Tron from Disney and it starred a few known names such as Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner.  Jeff had already been Oscar nominated for his 1971 movie The Last Picture Show and again in his endearing, some say his real breakout role alongside Clint Eastwood, in the 1974 adventure Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.  In 1982, Jeff Bridges was already a familiar face and name, his father was Lloyd Bridges who starred in numerous feature films (150) and TV shows, twice Emmy-award nominated, was fondly remembered for leading the weekly TV series Sea Hunt (1958-1961) and both Bridges brothers (Jeff and Beau) had made appearances alongside their dad.

 

The year was also one of tremendous beginnings, 1982 was not only the year Star Trek The Wrath of Khan was a massive movie hit, it was a hit to the mostly plodding and unexciting Star Trek The Motion Picture of 1979.   Superman II had just released in 1980 and the movie sequels fever was beginning to take shape in Hollywood.   Superman III was only one year after Tron.   Star Wars The Empire Strikes had just released in 1980 and was a massive hit, anchoring with the Superman franchise the sequels chapter that continues to this day, some fifty years later.

 

Other big hits at the time Tron debuted were Jaws 3-D (1983), and 1980’s Smokey and The Bandit II aka The Burt Reynolds Adventure Shows which spawned together with Canonball Run a total of ten movies.

 

Still, the real story of Tron starts with the arcade games industry and the fast-rising personal computer and the home-based video game sector that was still in fetus stage.  The Virtual Reality World nightmares and computers taking over?  The Terminator (1984) was only two years away and Videodrome (1983) was already being touted as the next mind bender.

By 1982, several video games had reached stratospheric popularity with gamers, including Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Tempest.  The internet did not exist yet, it was a set of private networks that linked government agencies, academic research centers, and military departments. There was no public access internet as we know it today.  America Online (AOL) and “You’ve Got Mail” were still a decade away.  But the original company that would become AOL, Control Video Corporation launched just one year after Tron’s premiere.

 

Forget AOL, Lycos or Yahoo! The only “search engine” that existed in 1982 was WHOIS and keep in mind there was no public internet to speak of, some private networks that could connect via dial up modems and they were only meant for large institutional organizations.  Netscape Navigator 1.0 (one of the earliest conventional web browsers) would not be out until 1994.

 

Tron was meant as an entertainment project that would capitalize on the arcade video games’ rising tide (the art book edition revue, The Third Wheel – Cloud-E Gamin^2.0).

 

But the visual effects were lackluster and the film looked barren, since it was entirely set inside the computer and computer games then were very thin on graphics. If video games were just starting to explore computer generated graphics, the movie industry was not that much further along, in fact most there was zero CGI, all visual effects were optical and there were no digital cameras, everything was shot on film.  Blue screen and green screen were in their infancy, mostly used in Star Wars, Blade Runner, Star Trek, Alien and the new kid on the block TRON.

 

 

In fact, the popular personal computers at the time selling at Montgomery Ward, Sears and Kmart (all gone out of business) was the Commodore 64K, the top-of-the-line affordable “beast” with, yep you got it, 64K RAM memory chip.

 

To give you an idea of scale, today’s flip phones from Alcatel A406DL (bottom of the price barrel pick) have a 4 GB native chip with an expansion slot for a 32 GB RAM storage chip. The Commodore 64K RAM is a chip that can hold 64,000 Bytes of information so the K is for 1,000, three order of magnitude from One Byte.   A 1.0 MB (Megabyte) chip is 1000K, or 1,000,000 Bytes of information.  So that is called THREE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE higher than a 1K chip. A 1.0 GB (Gigabyte) chip is 1000MB, so that is 1,000,000,000 Bytes and six orders of magnitude higher than 1KB chip.

 

And that is where we are today.  So you can try and fathom how meek and underperforming computer graphics were back in 1982.

 

Its computer sequences exist in a blue-gray scheme filled with flashing lights, speeding objects and dizzying motion. Its visual effects are wonderfully new. They are also numbing after a while. Janet Maslin – New York Times Aug 30, 2004

 

 

Aside from CGI sequences, there’s nothing compelling here.
Fred Topel – About.com Aug 13, 2003

 

According to many critics who reviewed the movie with the benefit of more than a decade of hindsight, Tron suffered from a very thin story, an almost non-existent concept, it was basically a futuristic roller blading inspired movie that wanted to make a big deal out of the computer world. Sadly, Tron was, what some would call today, an exploitation movie. On a budget of $17 Million USD, the film grossed over $50 Million dollars, that is three times its budget which is a great earner by Hollywood standards back then, and now.

 

Without the rosy filter of nostalgia, it’s a virtually unwatchable virtual-reality saga.
Nick Schager – Lessons of Darkness December 17, 2010

 

 

So how come it took Disney 28 years to roll out the next sequel in the Tron franchise?

 

The next chapter of Tron was released in 2010, Tron Legacy.  By this time, technology and computer effects were able to deliver a dazzling visual adventure, Disney was finally able to make good on its original promise to fans and viewers.  But the story, again, remained thin.

Tron was still an exploitation movie, an afterthought.  All other movie studios were rolling out the sequels two to four years apart when their movie struck gold.  And yes the box office of Tron was gold compared to its budget but it a sequel was nowhere in sight while Lucasfilm rolled out three Star Wars originals and then three prequels, all closely paced.

 

The same for the James Bond franchise, all their movies were closely paced. Superman and Batman at Warner Brothers and the Marvel Studios superheroes films were also all closely paced with their sequels.

 

What was going on with Tron? The studio is DISNEY not Focus Pictures or Magnolia Pictures. Heck even the failed, mismanaged Weinstein Company was rolling out the hits.  Disney was a powerhouse studio, a marquee name in Hollywood, so why hold off on Tron for so long? Why hold off on Tron Ares for 15 years after Tron Legacy?

 

Disney was rolling out animated big earners like The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Toy Story (1995), Lilo and Stitch (2002), Cars (2006) and Moana (2016).

 

We will discuss more of the Tron history and failings in the actual Tron Ares movie review due out soon after the movie’s premiere.

 

All contents 2025 for Citadel Consulting Group LLC.  All rights reserved.

 

 ANY COMMENTS? PLEASE POST ON THE  TRON ARES  REVUE SEGMENT. 

Tron’s History and Failings by Pierre Maertin

A look through the era of the launch of the original Tron with pop culture milestones that helped shape the science fiction film industry.

Tron Ares, Tron’s History and Failings, West Coast Midnight Run, WANQOR, West Coast Midnight Run Forums, IGN, GameSpot, GameRadar, Film Revue, Movie Revue, editorial review,CLU, Jared Leto, Pierre Maertin, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Flynn, The Grid, The Matrix, Neo, The Net, Pac-Man, Sega, sci-fi, science fiction, Space Invaders, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Atari, video game, Tron Legacy, 1980s, 

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