The 1980s were quite the time. The Cold War was at its height until the Soviet Union began to fall. However, pop culture had never been more engaging as comics became more than just for kids and action-packed movies became more thrilling than ever as the world was introduced to Blade Runner and The Terminator. However, in the early half of the 1980s, the future of filmmaking was changing. In the past, films were made with practical effects with occasional crossovers of live-action and animation, but with the age of computers as we know them today, movie viewers were about to see something that would define films for later years; CGI. And one of the first movies to use it was Disney's Tron.
Released in 1982, Tron is the story of programmer Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) trying to hack into the system of the computer company ENCOM, run by the sneaky Ed. Dillinger (played by the late David Warner). Flynn's efforts lead to him being digitized and brought into the world of the Grid, controlled by the ruthless Master Control Program and his loyal commander Sark (also played by David Warner), and he teams up with Tron, a program created by Alan Bradley to fight for the users, in order to stop the MCP, get out of the Grid, and expose Dillinger for his shady practices. During the 1980s, the video game genre was growing and Tron is a video game movie just as it is a sci-fi movie about computers, especially with the start of the film taking place in an arcade before we go into the Grid.
The real world scenes are primarily done with practical sets and locations while the scenes with the Grid were made with black-and-white footage, black sets and CGI animation. Initially, all of the characters in the Grid were going to be blue, but this was changed to have the bad guy programs such as Sark carry a red lighting scheme so they can be distinguished from Flynn, Tron and the other heroes. Looking at the CGI in the film, especially towards the end, Tron looks a bit like a video game, maybe a Playstation game in the 2000s, and it feels right with how much of a role video games play in the movie. In fact, Tron would get an Arcade game to go along with the film, consisting of a few sub games such as Light Cycle and Disk Wars.
Having seen it a couple times in 2011, rewatched it in 2013 and then rewatched it in 2025, Tron is an exceptionally beautiful 1980s family-friendly action-adventure film and one of Disney's best works in my opinion. However, when it came out, it was a moderate box office success and received mixed reviews. And before CGI was embraced, the use of it was slammed and Tron was disqualified from a visual effects award because the academy saw the use of computer-generated effects as cheating, which is pretty harsh. If only they knew how useful CGI would become in later years, even though there are times when the use of it can be criticized. Tron would get a sequel, but it would take 28 years for it to get off the ground and it would take fifteen more years after that for a threequel to come out.
Tron is one of those movies that deserves more appreciation and gets a 9.5. Jeff Bridges is the top highlight and this was before he starred in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first movie Iron Man as Obadiah Stane aka the Iron Monger, even David Warner deserves the respect for playing not only Dillinger, but Sark and the Master Control Program. This is not the last time we will talk Tron, soon, we will discuss the sequel from 2010.
See you later, fellas.
