We had been discussing the movie 300 and the state of CGI this week over at Izzy Mo's, and I had brought up the example of the 1982 movie, Tron, as a film that has poor to average computer graphics by today's standards, but was obviously at the forefront of CGI at the time.
In many ways, Tron is actually a very good movie (at least in my opinion ;) ) What I like is the soundtrack by Wendy Carlos, whose musical work I've been familiar with since my teenage years, and the philosophical undertone of the movie, which suggests that, like the computer world of Tron, humanity is a form of organic computer in which we individuals are "bytes," interacting with each other, sharing, storing and creating data that allow our collective "program" to grow and be improved upon. (This, to me, is the meaning of the last scene in the movie, when we look over the sped-up cityscape at night.)
Trivia:
Jeff Bridges produced too much of a bulge in the crotch area in his computer outfit, so he was forced to wear a dance belt to conceal it.
Although the film was an initial failure, the arcade video game based on it proved to be a tremendous hit and actually out-grossed the film.
The movie was passed over for an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects because the Academy felt
Tron "cheated" by using a computer. (Seven years later, The Abyss (1989) would win for its computer visual effects.)
Have you ever noticed how similar the scenes involving the character "V.I.K.I." in the 2004 movie,
I, Robot, including Will Smith's sliding down the computer core and injecting the "nanites," are to Jeff Bridges' falling into the MCP to allow Bruce Boxleitner ("Tron") to throw in his identity disk? Milady did.
BTW, I don't normally feature or remark about tribute videos, but I will say that I rather enjoyed watching this video that sets scenes from Tron to the Eiffel 65 song, Blue (Da Ba Dee).
Tron: If you are a user, then everything you've done has been according to a plan.
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