TRON Legacy

[walbourn]

> tron = legacy
> eval tron
matrix2 < tron < matrix1
end of line

The good: Great visuals, awesome audio and music tracks, interesting characters, tons of self-indulgent 80s retro nostalgia.

The bad: Stupid, stupid dialog (with plenty of fun one-liners that supports said self-indulgent 80s retro nostalgia).


For a "tech" movie, the computer speak wasn't the most unbearable ever. Really it was more unbearable corp-speak than anything else. It seemed like the script writer had skimmed the Open Source Manifesto and got all his computer industry knowledge by reading Wired, but most of the really bad stuff is over early in the movie. The ENCOM "evil CEO" was trying to channel GatesJobsZuckerman sleeze, but in a room full of Microsofties it mostly generated groans and giggles.

For a child of the 80s, it was actually a very fun film. Lots of cameos including the "That's a big door" door, Lightcycles, Disc Wars, Flynn's arcade, etc.

The cyberspace wasn't as weird as it should have been, and someone commented as we walked out of the theater that it seemed like they just put neon piping on everything. The costuming was neat, but the headgear was just dumb looking. The audio guys, however, were having a lot of fun. Listen for audio "cameos" of the MCP voice, Tron's declaration "I fight for the users!", and others. Even a line from Wargames.

Sadly there was no "Bit" (other than perhaps some inert chotchkies).

I don't credit Tron as getting me into computers--by 1982 I was already well into the BBS scene and hacking away on my Atari 800--but it did make computer-generated visuals captivating--even if in reality most of Tron was not CG at all.