Reaction & Review | TRON

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a sci-fi movie from 1982. That movie is "TRON".

Now, I do vaguely remember a little bit about this movie. And when I say that, I mean that I remember seeing a very short clip of this film a long time ago on YouTube. And if I'm not mistaken, it was from a YouTube Poop of all things. And no, I'm not kidding about that either, it really has been that long ago. But anyway, I never got a chance to see this movie for quite some time, until one day, I bought the 20th Anniversary Edition on DVD, which supposedly has over 5 hours of extra features. So if this movie ends up being any good, I at least have something else to check out sometime after I finish watching the movie.

As for what I know about the film itself, I do know that this movie was one of the very first, if not THE very film to ever implement CG. And for better or worse, it has become a standard when it comes to making movies today. And in the case of Disney, this film was the very first movie in their catalog to ever experiment with CG. Now I know some people might bring up the fact that "The Black Cauldron" was the first animated film of theirs to use CG. And while that is true, it's not something that most people would notice, especially if you're someone who isn't interested in how films are being made. But with this movie, it is made very clear that it was taking a big risk to work with technology that was brand new at the time. So I'm curious to see how exactly this first attempt worked out in Disney's favor.

Now like I said earlier, I only saw a short clip of this movie, which was about a few seconds long, I should mention. So I haven't seen any other footage beyond what I saw all those years ago. I do know about the light-cycles, and I know that this movie takes place within a computer world of sorts. Beyond that, I'm really interested to see how this movie is gonna turn out for me. So the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "TRON".

8 minutes later

I will say this much, guys. The special effects I'm seeing so far look awesome! They seriously do. Granted, I understand this thing came out in 1982, so obviously, they wouldn't hold by today's standards. But still, these effects look awesome for their time, and I'm hoping that they continue to look awesome as this movie goes along.

17 minutes later

OK, I know this is a really trivial point to bring up. In fact, Flynn even brought it up himself. But I have to ask it myself: WHY the hell is that door so fucking big? I understand if it was made for, like, keeping bigger things inside of it or something, or to keep it from being destroyed by outside forces, but it just feels a little bit unnecessary to make a door that fucking big. Not to mention, it was also really slow, too. Just saying, perhaps ENCOM went a little overboard when designing their doors.

17 minutes later

I just saw someone die from playing a slower version of volleyball with Flynn inside the computer world. Mind you, the game itself looked pretty fascinating. But still, I'm kinda curious as to how Flynn is gonna come back from all this, given his current situation and all.

7 minutes later

So even in the computer world, the programs there still need water to survive. Funny, I always thought if you were stuck in a digital world, I don't think water would be something that you should have to worry about. Which makes me curious as to how the Master Control Program is even able to keep any of the programs alive for all of the games that they have to participate in? I understand it's probably all trivial in the long run, but it was just something that I was thinking about.

19 minutes later

Guys, I want to reiterate this point again: These special effects look amazing. I am loving how this movie is handling it's effects, and I am loving almost every moment of it as this film goes by. They really do look awesome, guys.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "TRON". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. So, where to begin with...? I guess I should say that, going into this thing, I was sort of setting my expectations high for this movie. Not because it's from Disney or anything, but more so that it was one of the very first movies to ever utilize CG, and I wasn't totally sure if it was going to win me over or not. Well, guess what? It totally did. This movie was awesome.

So now, I have to actually talk about why this movie was so good. I'm gonna start with the writing, as I usually do with most of these reviews. I will say that the actual story here is really interesting, though it is a little bit rushed at times. I say that, mostly because our set-up here for a plot is kind of a throwaway one. Basically, our main character, Flynn, is a computer hacker, who is trying to gain access to the Master Control Program that was developed by ENCOM's senior executive, Dillinger, because he believes that Dillinger was stealing his work on the video games that Flynn has made. And so Flynn is using his hacking abilities to try and find any kind of evidence that he can use against Dillinger to prove that his work was stolen. Now I say the story is a throwaway plot, because while we do get some kind of build up to where our characters break into ENCOM and try to break into the system to incorporate Allen's program Tron, most of that story gets tossed to the wayside right after the Master Control Program sends Flynn into the computer world. And by the time the film's done, the resolution for how it all ends just feels kind of rushed. Now again, I understand that this was mostly just a set-up, just so we can get to the part where we, the viewer, experience the inside world of a computer. I will talk more about the effects involving it later on, but I will say that, story-wise, it is fascinating to watch, but it could've been fleshed out a little bit more is what I'm trying to get at here.

Our characters here are, admittedly, a little bit shallow. None of them really get tons of depth, but I will say that they are, at the very least, likable. Flynn is seen as a little bit cocky at times, but that's the most annoying he gets with Jeff Bridges's character. The only other characters I can make mention of are Sark and the Master Control Program. Sark is basically a program that is also played by Dillinger's actor, and the Master Control Program is, well, pretty self-explanatory given it's name. It wants to control the entire world and believes that it can run it better than any of the humans thanks to it growing nature as a program. I should mention, again, that Dillinger created the Master Control Program mostly as a chess program, so he's partially responsible for letting his creation get too advanced for it's own good. Now while I will admit that Dillinger himself is pretty under-developed, I can give the Master Control Program a pass, mostly because it acts like one of those superstitions that people have in thinking that AI would completely takeover everything, leaving humans in the dust. While I personally don't really believe in any of that happening for my own reasons, this movie was sorta playing with that idea back then. So again, I'm giving the Master Control Program a pass here, because while the idea for it is kind of seen as a standard trope in a lot of sci-fi films, it still gets the job done. Which gives the viewer more of a reason to care about our heroes trying to overcome this threat and rewrite the Master Control Program off the computer world.

One more minor flaw I wanted to bring up in terms of it's story is something that no one is going to notice, except me, because I'm kind of one of those sad bastards that likes to notice small details. So, when our heroes are on the run on their light-cycles, one of the tanks manages to hit two of our characters out of their light-cycles, Flynn and Ram. While Tron is forced to leave his friends behind, Flynn manages to get Ram out of sight from the programs that are after our heroes. And once Flynn gets himself and Ram to someplace safe, the two decide to rest. The movie then fades to black and fades back to Flynn sleeping, as his fingers suddenly touch something that starts to light up. It's where then we discover that Flynn is a User, which is different from the other programs, because he's able to manipulate parts of the mainframe in the computer world to help him build one of those flying machines that sort of look like a crane you would see at arcades where you could win stuff like candy and other trinkets. But anyway, he's able to use that to help him navigate the computer world for a while in order to get where he wants to go. And the only problem that I noticed about it is that it feels rather *coincidental* that he suddenly has the ability to create what he wants just by simply touching whatever his hand touches first. Because there was really no hint at all about how he suddenly has the power to manipulate whatever he wants, almost at will. But honestly, like I said, this is such a minor nothing that almost no one else is going to notice that kind of detail except me, unless you really are as nit-picky as I am sometimes.

Anyway, setting that minor nothing aside, the rest of the writing here is fine. Granted, it's nothing amazing, but it does help in order to get into the meat of where this movie wanted to go to. Now as for the acting, most of it here is pretty good. The best actors, by far, would have to go to Jeff Bridges as Flynn and Bernard Hughes. Both of these actors were great in their given roles that they end up being the best parts of the movie. Now that isn't to say that no one else here tried. Like I said, the acting in this movie is fairly decent for what the rest of the actors had to work with, but Jeff Bridges and Bernard Hughes definitely steal the show here. The only bit of acting that seemed a bit hammy was the character of Sark, who is played by David Warner, who also plays Dillinger. Now when Warner is playing as Dillinger, he does a great job with his role there. But whenever he's playing Sark throughout most of the entire movie, he definitely feels like he's hamming it up a bit by shouting most of his lines. Granted, it didn't bother me, personally, because I like hammy acting, as it's long as it's not overdone. But I could see that as somewhat of an issue for anyone else, though, if they were watching this movie for themselves. But beyond that, the acting here is pretty good for the most part.

Now let's get into the reason why this movies exists: the special effects. Now before I actually talk about the effects in detail, I want to get this out of the way first. One thing you have to keep in mind is whenever you're reviewing a movie that deals heavily in special effects and also came out in a time where they were not as common as they are seen today, you should always view something that came out by the standards of whatever given year that it originally came out in. And since this movie came out in 1982, I'm gonna be judging the film's effects by 1982 standards. So if you're expecting me to be dumb enough to try and compare the special effects of an over 40 year movie to the standards of today, then you are not going to see that here. Because if I did, I would summarize it by saying that the effects look dated and kinda look like shit. However, as I just said, you would have to be a complete retard to try and compare the effects from 1982 to the standards of today. I just wanted to get that out of the way first, because I notice some people have a bad of habit of reviewing movies that came out from decades ago and try to compare it with modern standards, and it just kinda irritates the shit out of me.

So now that I got that out of the way, let's finally dig into the special effects. And if it hasn't been made clear already, the special effects in this movie look amazing by 1982 standards. The CG here looks great. You really feel like you got transported to a digital world where everything looks bright and colorful, and definitely feels pretty atmospheric too. The CG involving vehicles such as the tanks look awesome, and the Master Control Program also looks great, too, especially towards the final act of the movie, which I will try not to spoil here. That being said, even though most of the effects look amazing, there are a couple of hiccups here and there. The most noticeable one has to do with any of the actors who are being composited into the backgrounds of this computer world. Because whenever you see a character move it's body, you'll notice a lot of shots where the black lines surrounding their bodies seem to be moving around them a lot. And it can be very distracting at times. However...I can't really be too mad about this, because, like I mentioned, this was one of the very films to ever implement CG, so I wasn't expecting anyone to get it exactly right on their first go. I know it may sound like I'm cheating here a bit, but again, I'm viewing this movie by the standards of 1982, so it's not really something that I'm going to harp on too much here, because even with some of the problems involving the composite shots of actors not exactly lining up right, it still looks really good here for it's time. So it's something that you have to take for what it's worth here.

I want touch upon costuming for a second. I will say that the costuming here looks fine for the most part, but there is one minor gripe that I had with it. You see, most of the costuming here is to help create the illusion that the actors look like programs in this computer world. And you'll mostly see two different colors when it comes to the suits, blue and orange. I know some people may contest that it's actually red, but I mostly got an orange feel out of most of the suits. But anyway, getting back to the costuming here. The one issue I kind of had with it was that some of the male actors looked mostly the same. And that mostly had to do with Flynn, Tron, and Ram. Since they were wearing the exact same colored suit, I honesty couldn't tell them apart at times, because I didn't notice any distinctive characteristics about them to see that they looked different from each other. The only way you could've maybe noticed this is if you somehow could tell the difference from them through their height. Which was something that I didn't do, obviously, but still, there were moments here and there where I couldn't tell what actor looked like who. I think Ram might've been the shortest of the group, but I wasn't paying attention enough to really notice it. But aside from that, the costuming here is perfectly fine, and it blends itself well enough to make it look like they could be programs.

Camerawork here is really good. The lighting here is lit really well, especially since most of it was used for the CG in this movie, and it obviously looks great. The sound-mix here is mixed fine. The score isn't really all that memorable. Most of it is kind of aiming for that techno sort of feel for this movie. Which makes sense, given that it's a sci-film and all, but still, it's not really something you're going to remember this movie by.

So, guys, when everything else is said and done, am I able to recommend "TRON"? Oh, absolutely, yes, guys! This film is great. I loved just about everything regarding this movie. Granted, the story here is the only real downside, mostly because it just felt like a throwaway plot that was put together in order for this movie to get made. But I can totally overlook that, because the special effects of this movie are great enough to stand on it's own. And I can most definitely recommend this movie to anyone who has an interest in computers, because this movie is basically an origin story for how CG got it's place in the world of film-making. And for anyone that is a Disney fan, since this was obviously made by them, if you can find this movie on DVD, Blu-ray, or even on Disney+, go and find it anywhere and check it out if you're also interested to see how this movie got it's start with CG. I really enjoyed this movie, so I'm definitely going to be holding onto this thing for my DVD collection. And I'm kinda in the mood to watch another sci-fi film that has to do with video games. I'm gonna go and watch my copy of "Arcade", because it has been a little while since I last watched it, and I'm kinda in the mood to re-watch it again anyways. So I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.