Right now at CINEMA SOUNDS.COM, you can listen via REAL AUDIO to the TRON soundtrack from the original LP! Check it out. I am.
Every now and again I realize that I really do have a
cool sister. I’m quite thankful for this, because... well
she could be one of them preppy BARBIE loving
teens that rebel against all the coolness that I hold
dear... BUT.... She isn’t.
This was a big weekend for her. We were throwing a
party to celebrate her Graduation from High School
as well as her 18th Birthday. I called her up and
asked her... What movies she wanted screened during
the party and she chose.... TRON and THE
ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.
Too.... Cool...
You know, it made my heart warm. Here is a now
adult female that I helped raise who is so
completely... in the cool it’s not even funny. For
example... What did we buy her for her
Birthday/Graduation? A Volkswagon Bug (69 of
course), that cool new MacFarlane MEDUSA toy, a
ton of chick action figures, that Nightmare Before
Christmas Snowglobe, a Circus Freaks lunch pail
(which she’ll use as a purse) and a Basil Wolverton
ARTY sculpture. One friend got her a Skull bank,
another picked her up a book on the history of Female
Murderers (she’s into criminal psychology btw).
But... this isn’t a piece on my sister, but rather on
TRON. And I’ll also be writing up a separate review
of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.
I remember when I was a kid, before I bloated out
into my current form of existence, that I was
transformed by TRON.
The movie is simply one of those movies that... felt
like a religious experience for me. You see, I had
grown up with those old 1930’s Warner Bros and
Fleischer cartoons that often times took place at a
magazine stand or a toy shop or in a book store....
and all the characters would come to life after the
clock hit midnight, and they would have some sort of
adventure.
So as a kid, I had the thinnest grasp of reality
possible. I kept wanting to believe that all my toys
had personalities. That the characters in my
magazines came to life and interacted whilst I was
asleep.
At the same time, at my elementary school (ROBERT
E LEE ELEMENTARY here in Austin) we were just
beginning to have the first computers and computer
classes. We were busy writing BASIC programs.
Things like....
10 PRINT “Harry is God”
20 GOTO 10
And then the screen would be filled with HARRY IS
GOD.... or if you happened to be RYLAN or JOSH
or JEFF or NIGEL or KIELAH... well you too could
be GOD.
I remember thinking the computer was fun, but really
quite useless. It didn’t really do anything. You had
to program everything into it. But then I saw
TRON...
And suddenly I realized that the little 10 print and 20
goto program I wrote could live inside the computer
world. And that there was this little Harry with all
this cool neony designed armor and he could be in a
light cycle, or could have his little disc... and that he
was trying to fight to reach me... THE USER.
Ok, now that was only the first night’s worth of
thought about TRON. But the next day, I began
thinking about those Light Cycles, and that cool
Dragonfly ship that rode on that laser or whatever it
was. I’d never seen images like that before. And I
asked my father... What they were. He said it was
COMPUTER ANIMATION.
I thought I had a grasp on what animation was by that
point in my life. I was well familiar with how Stop
Motion and traditional Cel animation was done. I
knew the giants in the field. But.... what was this....
Computer Animation?
Dad picked me up the latest magazines on it. I began
relating it to Space Invaders and Gunfight and
PacMan. I picked up on it in STAR TREK II... and
ya know... It fascinated me.
I animated a stick figure. It took weeks to type in all
those damn POKE statements. And at the end of it
all.... Well... it just didn’t look like a light cycle. SO
it frustrated me. Of course that didn’t stop me. I
went from my TRS 80 to my SUPER PET to a
COMMODORE 64 all the way on up to the APPLE
2e in School.
Computers fascinated me. And it began with TRON.
So... Last night as I watched my print in 16mm and
marveled at the fantastic colors... I realized that these
effects were PERFECT for this movie. At no point
does it not seem perfect for this universe in this story.
Out back... we had a lot of folks, and during the reel
changes we would talk about the significance of
TRON.... A couple of people saying how this film is
much better than THE PHANTOM MENACE... and
then I said, “I love TRON as much, if not more than,
EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.”
You would have thought I had just confessed to
raping their mothers. But ya see. As utterly cool as
EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was for me. Sure it’s
narrative is stronger than TRON’s. Sure the beauty
of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and the emotion of it
being Star Warsy is awesome. BUT TRON
introduced me to computers. It made me fall in love
with this medium that I am now a part of.
It’s part film, part computer. It was about writing on
computers. And when I saw WARGAMES... well
that was the missing piece that doomed me to
computers for life.
Some smart ass started taking pot shots at BRUCE
BOXLEITNER... saying, “Boxleitner was robbed at
Oscar time!” Of course they were saying it with the
maximum sarcasm. I jumped to his defense. He’s
not playing a HUMAN, he’s playing a computer
program who has a singular purpose... TAKE DOWN
THE MCP... He struggles with his emotions and
desires beyond that, but nothing can distract him from
his task at hand. He has someone he loves, but...
when he gets separated from her... he doesn’t go after
her... he goes after the MCP. It’s simple and perfect.
And ya know... Jeff Bridges was AWESOME in this
film. I loved his character. It’s the reason why I’d
love to see him and Terry Gilliam team up on THE
DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE.... Similar role with a
harder edge. But his FLYNN.... well FLYNN really
is a wonderful computer hacker character.
Then people started in on the whole MATRIX is
better than TRON rap, and I started wanting to hurt
people. I love MATRIX... I’ve seen it... maybe 5
times thus far (seen Phantom Menace 4 so far), but
TRON kicks Matrix’s ass. Tron would have opened
up a bottle of whupass on Neo.
First off... That little disc of Tron’s is just so much
cooler than a buncha stupid guns (albeit the guns in
Matrix are very cool). See... I’ve seen guns in about
a bazillion action films. But I’ve only seen that
badass Disc of Tron in TRON! And ya know... I’ve
been waiting for some sort of badass superhero movie
with energy weapons coming out of hands, and bolts
of power.... ARGH.... Enough with the gun stuff....
Seen it... done it.... move on.
Ya see... It’s why Light Sabres are so damn cool. We
don’t got those in every movie. I mean.... when NEO
is going after Fishburne he’s supposed to like be able
to request whatever the hell he wants to go after
him... and he thinks up.... GUNS? I mean... they are
currently moving around in a universe with tenticled
sperm shaped machines dogging them everywhere...
and all Neo in his little world can think of is...
GUNS?
Give me any number of things I’ve read about in Sci
Fi magazines. I mean... hell bullets don’t exist,
neither does anything else, so if it’s all in a land of
make believe.... Make believe better than the bad
guys.... Right?
Not that this is a major fault with MATRIX. I still
love the movie, but not as much as I love TRON.
Meanwhile, the conversations quickly turned to the
rumored DISNEY exploration of a TRON sequel.
And we all agreed on a couple of things.
We don’t want to see the advancements of digital
effects in the TRON universe. Instead... What you
have to look at is.... In TRON, the programs have the
souls of the writer (singular) that created the program.
Well.... in the modern day... No one writer creates
hardly anything. Instead... you have entire teams of
people working on programs. So... you would have
schizophrenic programs... OR.... entire teams of
people that all serve a single purpose have to exist.
You wouldn’t have TRON the singular person...
instead you would have teams of people that would
have the shared goal. They wouldn’t have internal
strifes.... or disagreements... they are programed to
work together to do... whatever it is they do.
There’s a lot of conceptual fun that can be had in
TRON 2000 or 2001. But... the look and feel of the
universe established in the original film is still every
bit as effective today as it was back in the day it was
created in.
God I love this movie. Why the hell does the score
not exist on CD? I mean... that score is cool as hell,
where is it? I want it. I want to put it in my computer
and listen to it for HOURS... I mean.... I have the
main themes trapped in my head, but... I want them
guys at FILM SCORE MONTHLY to produce this
score. It’s a winner. Man.... Come on... Somebody
make this score a reality!
Sigh.... So... what do you people think of TRON?
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