Tron (film) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Tron is a 1982 Walt Disney Productions science fiction movie starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, Bruce Boxleitner as Alan Bradley (and Tron) and Cindy Morgan as Lora (and Yori). David Warner plays the villain, Dillinger (and Sark). It was directed by Steven Lisberger. One of the first films to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style.
Flynn, a game programmer, is absorbed ("digitized") into a digital world tyrannically ruled by the "Master Control Program." In this world, programs are people whose faces look just like their creators; Flynn is initially mistaken for a program named "Clu" he had written. Flynn needs to find "Tron," a security program (created by another programmer, Alan) which can help him fight against the despotic MCP to free his company's mainframe and escape to the real world. Along the way he has to participate in several gladiatorial action games including "Light Cycles" and a kind of Jai-Alai.
The "Light Cycles" game is similar to an old computer game sometimes known as "Surround." The players are in constant motion on a playfield, creating a wall behind them as they move. If a player hits a wall either by accident or by having no more room to move, he is out of the game, and the last player wins. Tron depicts this game as being played by the humanoid programs in futuristic two-wheeled vehicles that resemble motorcycles which create walls of colored light. Countless versions of this game have been created since the release of the movie.
Tron was one of the first movies to use long computer generated sequences. About thirty minutes of computer generated animation (blended with the filmed characters) were used. Though the movie has been criticized for woodenness of acting and -- perhaps unjustly -- incoherence of plot, the movie is celebrated as a milestone of computer animation.
The film, however, contains less computer-generated imagery than is generally supposed: many of the effects that look like computer graphics were created using traditional optical effects. The live action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white then colorized with traditional photographic and rotoscopic techniques to give them a "technological" feel.
Although the film was initially unsucessful, the movie inspired several popular video games. The Tron arcade game earned more than the film's first release and made it a cult favorite. Disneyland featured the Tron SuperSpeed Tunnel in its PeopleMover attraction.
Tron 2.0, a computer game sequel, was released on August 25, 2003. In this first person shooter game, the player takes the part of Alan Bradley's son Jet, who is pulled into the computer world to fight a computer virus.Plot
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