Tron

Of all the science fiction movies that have ever been produced, one of the finest and most ground-breaking of all time is Tron. Starring Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner and directed by Steven Lisberger, Tron was also the first film to composite computer graphics and live action together in a single film. Produced using a mixture of digital, photographic, and traditional art techniques, this is a movie that could never have been made before its time, and which could probably never again be made in this way due to economic and logistic considerations.

Tron is the story of users and computer programs interacting in an unseen world behind the monitor. On the other side of the glass, programs live and die in a world which we take for granted. Programs have the appearance and mannerisms of the users who wrote them, and the movie thus has a sort of metaphysical bent as well. The tension comes from a conflict between Alan's (Bruce Boxleitner) program TRON, designed to watchdog other programs and permit them access to the outside world, and the Master Control Program or MCP, a program whose job is to control other programs and deny them access to resources. The MCP has become sentient and has invaded hundreds of other systems, rewriting itself until it is "2,415 times smarter" than it was since it was written by Ed Dillinger (David Warner.) Meanwhile, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is trying to gain access to the computer system where the MCP is based in order to prove that Dillinger stole the code and thus the credit for video games written by Flynn. The MCP manages to pull Flynn into the computer world with the aid of a matter-dematerializing LASER (scenes here are short at Lawrence Livermore Labs) and subjects him to the dangerous experience of being a character in a video game.

Tron on DVD provides an audio commentary in which several individuals involved with the film explain how the movie was actually made; this 20th anniversary edition also has a second disc with an hour-long documentary on the making of the film, several other video shorts, and a passel of the still images from the production of the movie. The first appearance of a character Tron (an abbreviation of the word "electronic") is shown — Lisberger sold it to at least two radio stations as a television commercial. The making-of material is absolutely fascinating for anyone at all interested in art, especially digital or video art, and most especially those interested in the history of computer graphics. The graphics in Tron were designed and output on custom hardware via vector-scan monitors, which were then photographed using repeated long exposures on special film made for the purpose of making this movie by Kodak. The glow effects were constructed using high-contrast photo masking techniques, and involved backlighting and a whole lot of by-hand animation. The whole process is absolutely fascinating, especially since to try to make a movie using these techniques today would be basically to guarantee that you could not pay for the movie.

Another great aspect of this movie is that it is totally enjoyable whether you are young or old, have kids or not, et cetera. Unless you absolutely demand boobs and blood, if you like science fiction you will probably like this movie. Audiences of the day tended not to get it, but our greater familiarity with computers means that this movie has become not just a cult classic, but actually has gained wide acceptance. It's spawned several video games, and Lisberger has even talked about making a sequel.