Agenda Movie Club: Tron

Tron

Steven Lisberger

1982

An interesting thing about watching this today is that this movie completely blew my mind when I first saw it, and now any of us could make it in our basements. This is not an exaggeration. It’s also not a criticism.

But let’s go ahead and get the criticism out of the way. The dialogue is cringe-worthy a lot of the time, and the acting– for the most part– is worse. Except for David Warner, who’s David Warner, and Jeff Bridges, who’s awesome.

Whatever. Who cares? This movie isn’t about the dialogue or the acting, it’s about creating an entirely new world and putting us inside it. And, at the time, that’s exactly what this did. This movie put us inside a computer and showed us things that most of us had never seen before, or even thought of seeing. How in the world did they make the people look like they were in a computer? HOW DID THEY DO THAT LIGHT CYCLE SCENE????

Many of us know the answers to this now. But I don’t really see how that’s a good reason to knock the movie now. Sometimes we have to give credit to a movie’s place in history.

If I sound defensive, it’s because I am. Since the new Tron: Legacy came out, there have been a number of “admit it, the old one just wasn’t that good” articles. I think this is ridiculous. The first movie was that good, because of what it did. The dialogue, the acting, whether or not it made sense… those things just don’t matter. Groundbreaking is groundbreaking. I don’t care if you can’t see the movie for what it once was. That’s your defect, not Tron’s.

A few other notes: Doesn’t it seem like Jeff Bridges is kind of in another movie? He’s goofing around and having fun while everyone else is VERY SERIOUS. Maybe it’s because he’s a real person in a computer world, but it seems like this is also true in the “real” world. Maybe he just realized how goofy the movie was going to be (and it is goofy, though that’s not a problem for me) and he decided to enjoy himself. Maybe it’s just because it’s Disney (he ends up with a weird little Disney sidekick toward the end of the movie, too)– there’s some chance they also knew that it was a little goofy and just went with it.

Also, watching this now, who doesn’t want David Warner to start talking about lasers and digital watches?

And I still haven’t quite figured out why my toy of Tron was purple. Is it so we wouldn’t get it mixed up with Flynn? I guess probably.