Twenty Five Years of Tron

the_quiet_angeleno writes "I have an article in today's Summer Film Preview issue of Los Angeles CityBeat on Disney's sci-fi classic Tron, which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year. The piece includes a discussion with Richard Taylor, one of Tron's visual effects supervisors on the film's groundbreaking effects, as well as director Steven Lisberger, on how the narrative incorporates the Jungian concept of individuation. Here's a sample: 'Visual Effects Society member Gene Kozicki, of the L.A.-based visual effects house Rhythm & Hues, believes Tron's legacy was in moving computer-generated visuals into the realm of storytelling. "Research into this type of imagery had been going on for over 15 years, but it was more scientific in nature," Kozicki says, "Once artists began to share their ideas and treat the computer as a tool, it moved away from strict research and towards an art form."

Honour it!

[Anonymous Coward]

With some ARMAGETRON! http://armagetronad.net/ [armagetronad.net] (linux pkgs and sourcecode incl)

Re:TRON was just the

[naoursla]

Ah... Manimal and Automan... brings back memories of my terribly misspent youth.

I think that was around the same time as "Otherworld" and "V: The Series".

Re:Storytelling?

[MS-06FZ]

Not that Tron was CG.

No, it wasn't CG. A lot of it was live-action, filmed on physical sets, with rotoscoping techniques for the "glow" on characters and objects.

But it featured CG... The entire lightcycle sequence, for instance - well, not counting shots of the characters or the interiors of the vehicles...

Let us remember the TV Show: Automan

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us not forget the TV "spinoff" of Tron ... Automan [wikipedia.org].
Where Glen A. Larson (what show didn't he make during the 70s/80s?) took the idea of Tron and ran with it for 12 episodes.
Where every episode involved a car chase in which Automan eluded the bad guys because he could make 90* turns and they couldn't.

Re:If you say so.

[Anonymous Coward]

The effects in the (original) Star Wars movies weren't done with computers, as hard as you might find that to believe these days. Effects like lasers and exploding Death Stars were done with the magic of matte painting, detailed model work, fancy pyrotechnics, and most importantly, the optical printer, which is a fancy term for a souped-up mechanical movie camera hooked up to a mechanical movie projector.

Re:If you say so.

[vrmlguy]

Unfortunately, Star Wars didn't use any computer generated effects. The original version was done the old fashioned way, with models and latex. A few years later, Lucas decided that CGI was the way of the future, so he took a hunk of his profits and started a little company to design and manufacture CGI hardware. They did a lot of the effects for Wrath of Khan, among other things, but they never did as well as Lucas had hoped so he sold them to a recently fired billionaire looking for a new business to run. You may have heard of them; their name is Pixar.

Last Starfighter

[Tony]

There were other movies with tons of CG not long after, like The Last Starfighter. Most of them had poor scripts as well. TRON didn't set the CG industry back 10 years; it was 10 years ahead of its time.

And, it *was* expensive. Unless you were after the CG look of the time, there was no reason to use CG.

Re:I can't help but think...

[mshurpik]

Tron was layered about 20 times per shot; it wasn't so much digital as the ultimate analog movie.

Re:Tron wasn't first

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG!

Tron was released July 9 1982, The Last Starfighter was released July 13 1984.

G++

The real TRON sequel, video game, and comic

[Cybrex]

Unfortunately the comic book was discontinued after just a few issues. You can still get them from Slave Labor Graphics, however. The artwork in the first two issues is absolutely terrible, but they changed artists in issue 3 and both the visuals and storyline had found their sweet spot when it was cancelled. *sigh*

As the grandparent stated, the TRON 2.0 video game is absolutely the genuine sequel to TRON. The plot is solid, the gameplay is great, and the environment is oh-so-compelling- far superior even to the original movie. It really would make a great movie, though I don't think that the translation to big screen would offer anything that the game doesn't already have. I place it firmly in my top 5 best games ever list.

And then there's multiplayer. The standard deathmatch mode is nice but nothing special. The arena combat is original and really puts you into the feel of what doing battle on the game grid would actually be like.

However, the game really shines in Lightcycles, both single player and multiplayer! It'd be worth the full price of the game just for that mode alone. I've played a lot of excellent light cycles games over the years, and TRON 2.0 wipes the floor with even the very best of them. Again it's superior even to the original move. It's gorgeous, authentic, and has surprising variety. It's also held up exceptionally well in the few years since it came out. I was at a LAN party just last weekend and we spent a good chunk of the day doing light cycle combat. I was in heaven.

Yeah, I'm gushing here, but it really is that good. I don't understand how it is that more people haven't discovered this game.