History of cinema is full of films that were historically important while not being particularly good. This is especially the case with film that earned their importance by being the first to employ certain technological innovation. When such innovations become part of everyday film, this results in flaws of the pioneering films being increasingly revealed. One such example is Tron, 1982 science fiction film directed by Steven Lisberger, nowadays known as the first major Hollywood film to feature computer animation.
Steven Lisberger found the inspiration for his film in the nascent video games industry and his own fascination with early arcade game Pong. The project, originally devised as animated film, was being developed through years with help and insight of many important figures in computer industry, including Alan Kay. The protagonist, played by Jeff Bridges, is one such figure, a computer programmer and video game developer Kevin Flynn. He is also a talented video game player and owns video arcade after being fired from computer corporation ENCOM. He has developed some of that company's most lucrative games, but the credit was stolen by corporation's corrupt executive Ed Dillinger (played by David Warner). Flynn tries to find the evidence about his authorship by hacking ENCOM mainframe. In order to prevent him, Dillinger deploys Master Control Program (MCP), which is revealed to be malevolent artificial intelligence. MCP digitises and uploads Flynn into the mainframe, where he finds strange digital world inhabited by anthropomorphic computer programs forced to fight in gladiator arenas. One of them is Tron (played by Bruce Boxleitner) who decides help Flynn (or his hacking program "Clu") in defeating MCP.
Lisberger was fortunate to have his project accepted by Disney, studio which in early 1980s had rather atypical tendency for experimentation. Relatively high budget was well-spent in development computer animation technology, although computer-animated scenes are featured in less than a third of the film. The rest is live action and combination of old animation techniques. The film nevertheless looked revolutionary at the time and the strange "cyberworld", despite obvious technological limitations and crudeness, looks impressive even after many decades. Unfortunately, Lisberger fared worse with the script co-written by Bonnie MacBird. The plot is almost incomprehensible in the first half and the characters, despite being played by fine actors, are cliched and one-dimensional. Only at the end, where Flynn's adventures in cyberworld become more action-oriented, Tron becomes satisfactory experience. Electronic score by composer Wendy Carlos, best known for collaborations with Kubrick on his classic films like A Clockwork Orange and The Shining is disappointing and forgettable. Despite having mixed reviews and somewhat disappointing box-office numbers, Tron had maintained good reputation by nerdish segments of the audience and its reputation gradually grew, leading to sequel Tron: Legacy made 28 years later.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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