As our old pal Joseph Campbell reminds us, there’s really only one saga for a hero to fulfill, so it’s nice every once in a while to see that saga done with visual panache. The incredibly inventive 1982 (children’s?) sci-fi adventure flick Tron certainly has that. The little Netflix synopsis for the film namedrops Star Wars and German Expressionism, both worthwhile comparisons.
A friend who watched with me commented on the opening scenes’ problematic pacing, and indeed the movie seems to start mid-stride, not unlike Buckaroo Banzai, without any (perhaps needed) exposition. We’re conveyed back and forth between “real world” gamers and programmers, and hyper-stylized costumed characters who, we have to figure out mostly for ourselves, are anthropomorphized programs. Right away, we’re introduced to the concept that programs who acknowledge their “Users” are treated as a religious minority in the computer world, one of the film’s many nice touches, a sort of Phildickian flourish that also sets up the divine origin of one of the film’s two heroes, programmer extraordinaire Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).
Flynn is a User—in fact, the creator of the many videogames that serve as fatal ordeals for the beleaguered programs—who is unwittingly sucked into the digital world by the sinister Master Control Program, voiced by David Warner, who also portrays the MCP’s sinister but out-of-his-league User, Ed Dillinger. The remarkably young Bridges plays Flynn as an easygoing guy, though his unprecedented powers and nigh-invulnerability are very un-Dude. Bridges may have unwittingly created the character of the hacker-slacker, who crops up these days in everything from Live Free or Die Hard to Dollhouse.
The film’s other hero is the titular Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a charmingly driven but ultimately fairly boring warrior of faith. Actually a security program, Tron is purposed by his User, Alan, to undermine the MCP, who is tyrannizing and terrorizing all the other programs.
The visuals of the movie might at first seem dated, but they have something special going for them. They capture the disturbing unreality of early videogame graphics—even the characters’ faces are the wrong color, limited to the palette of old PC displays. This is where the German Expressionism comparison comes in, as much of the blocky computer-world scenery and painterly character design complement the strivings of a hot-blooded actual human trapped in a cold digital universe.
Surprisingly, Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack is a bit disappointing. I actually found myself thinking during the movie’s climax, “This electronic score ain’t got nothin’ on Clockwork Orange,” and was then shocked to see Carlos’ name in the credits.
Tron’s not a perfect movie—its clumsy framing is a bit bothersome—but it’s a pioneering and fun bit of fantasy, and a surprisingly influential film (cf. Sin City, The Matrix).
The upcoming Tron sequel, Tron Legacy, now looks all the more exciting. A story set in a virtual world is the rare film it makes perfect sense to update, since better special effects are practically part of the plot. The only concern is that too much attention to updating the quality of the graphics might neglect the stylized beauty, but the brief trailer released at San Diego Comic Con looks promising.
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