When Tron came out in theatres in 1982, it was touted as a revolution in digital imaging technology (which it certainly was), but the film lost any momentum it might have garnered due to the kind of lock-step exposition that characterized the Disney formula of the seventies and eighties. (Think The Cat from Outer Space, or the Love Bug phenomenon.) To this day, Disney animation relies upon anthropomorphic animal sidekicks (there is a floating .gif ball named "BIT" in Tron) and the addled old geezer who's a genius and also the father of the beautiful young love interest--hoary old chestnuts that provide as good an explanation as any for the extent to which Disney has fallen behind animé and even its Pixar affiliates in the realm of animated entertainment. Tron stinks of that kind of laziness and worse (for instance, it rips off images whole cloth from Star Wars), leading to the surprising realization that while it touts its technological influence, Tron is actually more instructive a model for the special effects extravaganzas that continue to litter the multiplex: all bells and whistles with nary a hint of plot or character development.

Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a hacker, a rebel, and a person who really needs to grow up. Between designing nifty non-Pong video games and hanging out at the arcade he owns and operates, he tries to hack into the mainframe of the evil Encom Corporation, the place of his previous employment. The Encom computer is protected by slimy Dillinger (David Warner) and his Master Control Program ("MCP"), but the bulk of Tron takes place inside the computer, where an entire city under siege is imagined with anthropomorphized "programs" strolling around killing each other in gladiatorial pastimes. Presiding over it all is the mysterious MCP and its hench-program, Sark (Warner again); in an attempt to prevent Flynn from accomplishing his task, they teleport him into the mainframe with them. (Someone should have programmed a few story logic routines into the MCP's processor.) Helping Flynn is the mysterious warrior-program Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) and the lovely secretary.exe Yori (Cindy Morgan), both bland and queerly gaffed enough to be Disney heroes.

If a few sequences still captivate (the light cycles were a favourite of mine as a child and remain clever), the overall feeling of the film is one of a grimy datedness and a decided lack of impetus. The backlit "programs," revolutionary for their time, appear pasty and washed-out, while the costumes (speedskating skinsuits decked out with reflective elements) are muted and static. Too often, the backgrounds are clumsy matte paintings and the soundtrack and sound effects (tell me again why a giant floating pixel would make tire-squealing noises as it turns?) are clamorous and disconcerting. The live-action sequences are the kind of low-fi seventies bad hair/bad pants futurama popularized by Logan's Run and Norman Jewison's Rollerball, and the entire exercise feels a lot like too much whiz-bang ambition wrapped up in too little time for the story and characters to develop depth beyond the typical cut-and-paste phantasmagoric quest melodrama.

The greatest temporal irony of Tron is that as a product of what is easily the most litigious corporation in modern entertainment memory, Disney substitutes handily for Encom. When a giant Mickey Mouse profile appears in a computerized landscape, it doesn't play like a Hitchcock cameo as perhaps originally intended, but rather as a pre-emptive nod to the avariciousness of Eisner's reign at the studio. Yet Tron's failure can be handily encapsulated by the fascinating idea of having programs believe that their programmers are myths and deities propagated by religious nuts. What should lead to a sociological model for the problems of theology in the midst of a technocracy becomes instead the squandered framework for just another cutesy, hackneyed Disney product. What should never be forgotten when one sets forth to create a film that is visually revolutionary is that all that's left when the novelty fades is the vapid piece of dreck you used as a platform for the fireworks.

In honour of the film's twentieth anniversary, Disney releases Tron in a special two-disc DVD set almost as clamorous and busy as the film itself. The menu animations and buffers are interminable: every option search results in at least thirty seconds of gewgaw that are only vaguely interesting the first time through--and hair-pulling on subsequent iterations. Worse than distracting, the menu pages themselves have occasional functionality problems because of their constantly-looping complex animations.

An audio commentary by Steven Lisberger, Donald Kushner, Harrison Ellenshaw, and Richard Taylor over the film itself is unusually packed with information, though the majority of it is predictably technical. It's an exhaustive history, but dry as a day-old baguette if you're not interested in the birth of CGI. My guess is that very few people are this interested in anything. Still, if you're a hardcore Tron-head, there's little to complain about with this meticulous yak-track. Complementing the completeness of the commentary is a video transfer that honours the original 70mm print with an image that is as sharp and clean as it's probably ever been. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix gets a rumbling workout, especially during the cracking of a giant security door in the real world. The solar foil sequence has a nice whooshing environment and a chase involving a tank and three light cycles impresses with its rear channel pyrotechnics. It's a beautiful presentation from an AV standpoint--a showcase presentation, in fact, were it not for the general underwater quality of the film's look and sound.

Disc Two contains a 90+-minute documentary (The Making of Tron) featuring new interviews with the principal tech talent. Even-keeled and shying away from hyperbole, the documentary details the difficulties, both artistic and practical, of bringing something as peculiar as Tron to fruition. Of particular interest is the revelation that the studio rushed the story aspect of the film. We learn over the course of the making-of and the commentary that big-name stars shied away from Disney productions in the eighties, insight into the sad state of affairs afflicting the house that Walt built for a long, barren stretch.

Development
Clicking on this option reveals five short films. The first, "Early Development of Tron", is a short interview with hyphenate Lisberger conducted just after the film's completion. "Early Lisberger Studios Animation" shows a few of Lisberger and company's psychedelic boondoggles (repeated in the documentary and betraying no hint as to why Disney trusted this guy to helm a major production); "Early Concept Art" consists of thirty production sketches; "Computers are People Too" is a studio promotional video; and a thirty-second test reel is comprised of shots in Vista-Vision and 35mm anamorphic. Again, twenty years after the fact, it's hard to see what exactly was so great about these tests that justified a feature-length showcase for them.

Digital Imagery
Clicking on this option predictably features several really short documentaries that expose such mysteries as "Backlight Animation," "Digital Imagery in Tron," "Beyond Tron," "Triple I Demo," and the "Role of Triple I."

Music
houses two sequences from the film underscored by "new" Carlos musical tracks discarded for the final print of the film. The light cycle number and closing titles receive the bloop-blurp treatment with highly questionable illumination.

Publicity
Click to find three sub-menus: "Trailers," "Production Photos," and "Publicity and Merchandising." The most interesting of the six trailers is an incomplete one that features a different (and far superior) soundtrack, black-and-white rough cuts, and a more violent end to a high-tech game of jai alai. "Production Photos" is a portfolio of 87 b&w production stills that mainly show people in silly outfits standing around in the dark, and "Publicity" consists of eleven posters, five examples of ad art, nine toy tie-ins, five images of video games, and seven pictures of crew garb.

Deleted Scenes
Three scenes that feature the suggestion of sex in a virtual boudoir, an un-looped morning after, and an alternate opening different for a text scrawl that explains the premise of the film.

Design begins with "Introduction to Design", a new documentary that details Lisberger's philosophy behind many of the gladiatorial entertainments in Tron as well as the general "look" of the piece. "The Programs," "The Vehicles," and "The Electronic World" present detailed production sketches, a conversation with Syd Mead in regards to those light cycles again, and dozens of set design schematics. It's a graphic artist's workshop and, again, no complaint can be made of the thoroughness of the presentation.

"Storyboards" for several animated sequences that are again heavy on the light cycle sequence round out the second platter. It seems obvious that the cycles are the most enduring segment of Tron given the abundance of attention bestowed upon them in the special features. The entire chase sequence, in fact, is presented in a nifty package that allows the seldom-used "angle" button to be employed in toggling between finished scenes and their corresponding storyboards. Not interesting at all to a fair portion of the population, I trust that for those few to whom it is it will no doubt satisfy.

Overall, Tron: 20^th Anniversary Collector's Edition is a bonanza for fans of the film or digital artists looking for an exhaustive overview of the film at the birth of the CGI revolution. The transfer is above reproach, and though Tron is of highly questionable entertainment value to a casual audience, fanatics, take note.-Walter Chaw

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
96 minutes
MPAA
PG
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.20:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1
CC
Yes
Subtitles
French, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Disney

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Published: February 18, 2002