Hey everyone! Happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week. I did. I'm actually really excited for tonight because it's the season finale of The Hardy Boys and I'm looking forward to seeing if my theories about the case Frank and Joe are solving are right or not. I'll have that review up tomorrow afternoon sometime. I have a video chat with a friend in the morning, so it won't be until mid-afternoon or early evening most likely. We'll see though. Today though I'm here to talk about the 1982 Disney movie, Tron. So let's get right into it.
Outside of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, the original Battlestar Galactica and of course the Star Wars Trilogy, I'm not a big fan of 70s and early 80s Sci-Fi. Oftentimes I find the movies and shows to be too focused on the technical aspects of Science Fiction filmmaking/Television production that they forget that story and characters are just as important as the technical stuff. Which is why movies like The Black Hole and Tron never appealed to me. Though I was interested in at least seeing Tron just because it was one of the movies that experimented with really early CG Animation, which would eventually lead to the use of CGI in movies like Jurassic Park, the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, Men in Black, and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace in the 90s. The others being Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, Willow, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
While Tron is more exciting than The Black Hole was and I was able to finish it unlike The Black Hole, there really isn't much for me to talk about since I'm not a technical person. The story is basic without any complications or even interesting twists and turns. There's also not any real characters. Except Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. Before Flynn is transported into the digital world, I thought that the movie would be about him growing from being a cocky, care-free guy, into a caring person. That's not what the movie is about at all. To be clear, I don't always need a movie to have interesting characters or to be about something. But I had no connection to any of the characters. Especially the human characters, because, except for Flynn, none of the humans in the movie matter. I also couldn't connect to Tron or any of the other digital characters, because there's nothing to them. They're computer programs and that's it.
For those of you who have never seen Tron the only way to describe it is like a computerized version of George Lucas's first movie THX-1138 (1971). Though unlike in that movie, there's no sex in this one. Basically this is Star Wars, after Star Wars, but if George Lucas had made the movie from the first draft, where there were no interesting characters or much of a story. Visually it's stunning but that's really all there is to it.
One thing I will say about this movie is that the cast is pretty good. I haven't seen Jeff Bridges in alot of movies. In fact the only movie I've actually seen him in is Iron Man (2008) where he played Obadiah Stane. He did a really good job as Flynn, but again, the material doesn't really allow for much character dynamic and the character just feels cold and not human. The only other cast member that I'm vaguely familiar with are David Warner who I know as John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Gul Madred on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Professor Jordan Perry in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. I know that Bruce Boxleitner was on Babylon 5 in the 90s, but I never saw the show after the first season, so I didn't encounter his character.
Tron was released by Disney on VHS in 1983. Most likely in October as that's when it was released on Laserdisc. Though the Disney Wiki doesn't list an actual date for the first VHS release. It just says 1983. Unlike my friend Aaron, and many other people, I didn't grow up with this movie. While it was re-released on VHS in 1995 and again in 2002, I never saw it at the video store, and I don't remember it ever airing on TV when I was a kid either. It probably did, but being a live action Disney movie I didn't see it when I was younger. Yet, it was also part of the collective consciousness as it was so successful in home video sales, plus being one of the first movies to use CG as a major part of it, I've known about it forever. Especially because I am a huge Disney fan. So I am a little disappointed that the movie isn't for me. But I like what I like and that's okay. As I said in my non-review of The Black Hole not every movie is for everyone, but there is a movie that fits everyone's tastes. Tron and The Black Hole just don't fit mine.
A sequel called Tron: Legacy was released on December 17, 2010, almost 29 years after the original movie's release. It was financially successful, but like the original, critics were mixed on it. I'm not interested in seeing it, so I won't be watching it ever, but I'm glad that people like these movies.
An animated series, Tron: Uprising began airing on Disney XD on May 18th, 2012 and ran until January 28th, 2013. It got cancelled after 19 episodes. However, I can't seem to find out why it got cancelled. It seems like it was on at a really bad time and so not alot of people watched it. I don't know what audiences thought of it though.
Overall, as a technical experiment, Tron is excellent. The visual effects actually hold up quite well. However, there isn't much of a story and the characters are bland and almost forgettable. I am glad I watched the movie though just because the visual effects do hold up quite well for an almost 40 year old movie. So if nothing else I'd recommend the movie for that. Especially the Lightcycle sequences, which actually remind me of the early 90s series ReBoot.
And that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the first season of The Hardy Boys. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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