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Sequel to TRON Coming Down the Wire 98

Posted by michael from the lightcycle dept.
farrellj writes: "According to SF Wire, TRON is going to be released in a 20th anniversary DVD release...and they are working on a sequal, TRON 2.0. The DVD will be released Jan 15, 2002. There is also a new game in development too!" The rumors have been circulating for years. Maybe they'll get Lucy Lawless to demonstrate the proper application of a spinning disk.
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Sequel to TRON Coming Down the Wire More

Sequel to TRON Coming Down the Wire

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  • What do we get in the anniversary edition? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The deleted Tron love scene [tronmovie.com]? An interview with Alan Kay [c2.com]?

  • hey (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    20$ says this new tron is gonna have a funky tough negroid with an attitude who dies half way through so his honkey ass master can avenge his death. Oh yay.

    Hollywood is gay.

  • What happened to Pixar rumors? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At some point there were rumors that the Tron 2.0 would be handed off by disney to be handled by Pixar. Are these rumors now shafted to the "too implausible to even be repeated" list?

    P.s. to anyone who has played Mac Beamwars or any other lightcycles-like game : GLTRON [gltron.org]

    What do y'all suppose will happen to the billions of lightcycles third-party implementations floating around out there once disney finally releases their own TRON pc game?

  • Re:Just what we need (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hoping for Plan 10 from Outer Space. It's a shame the first nine didn't work out.
  • Reminds me of the Digimon movie (OK, Children's War Game OAVs) where they defeated the bad guy (who was a Digimon, sort of a computer program monster) by having kids all over the world mail bomb it.
  • glTron is, indeed, a very sweet game -- but Armagetron kicks more ass. It has an actual element of speed; better camera controls; and with the "moviepack" replacement graphics and sounds, its graphics are better.

    Both of these are certainly worth playing, though.
  • Posted by polar_bear:

    If they're going to try to revive Tron, they really should re-make the original before they make a sequel. They'd just look far too weird next to each other.

    As for how the original movie handled computers...they were somewhat inept in their handling of computers and the lingo, but...fewer people were exposed to computers then. I find it much more offensive now that writers still flub the big picture, much less the smaller details, when they're probably writing the script at a computer connected to the Internet where they could look up almost anything they needed to check. It's just pure laziness not to get it right now - hell, if nothing else just pull a geek in to "consult" for a few days to repair the inaccuracies in the script...

    Hmmm. That gives me an idea. Since there are doctors that consult on shows like ER, and probably make a pretty penny doing it...maybe there's room for a geek in Hollywood to go over scripts that deal with computer professionals....
  • I would love to see another Tron. When we got our VCR it was the first movie we rented...I love that movie.

    But too often today, when they try to tie into something from the past, they feel they have to completely change it to make it cool for the current generation (of course, alienating the people that are most looking forward to it.)

    So, for Tron, since it is computer related, it would be a guess that they would probably want to make it a Matrix type thing. Then mention on Aint-it-cool-news.com of the light cycles still being there however is a good sign.

    If done right, then perhaps we would have something close to the MetaVerse (until someone finally makes SnowCrash!) Think about it, in Tron, all the characters were processes on one machine, some mainframe. Now, think of all the processes running on machines, with all these machines interconnected.

    I think they are gonna need some faster lightcycles to get around!
  • I thought it was already out.. or at least I've been seeing the MCP make several cameo appearances in South Park episodes.

    >nudge nudge< HEy! ReMamber the time when the MCP plaYed Moses on SouTH Park?! hyuk hyuk!

    (sorry..)

    --

  • I will not watch this movie unless David Warner (Dillenger/MCP) returns. He's pretty much my favorite (male) actor of all time.

    It would be nice to see Jeff Bridges and President Sheridan return, but David Warner is a must.

    --
    "How many six year olds does it take to design software?"

  • Well, until recently Carlos had been saying that she thought that the original tapes had degraded so much that it wouldn't be possible anyway. Evidently this has been solved, so maybe we will get one after all.
  • Tux in the games... Now someone with graphical talent has to go make a version of the Tux logo that has him in a glowing blue suit with a frisbee-o-death strapped to his back. :)
  • Don't worry, they'll add Qubit this time. He'll still only say two different things, but he'll be able to say them both *and* neither at the same time.
  • Did you by any chance post a comment about a "Tron" remake to the nanotechnology and antibiotics story?
  • "...the in-name-only Mission Impossible's..."remake.

    Amen! The idea of making Mr. Phelps the bad guy just so that Tom Cruise could be the hero of the movie still gets me steamed.

    Of course we all that Barney was the *real* hero of the original televsion show.

  • How they handle the computer world in "Tron 2.0" will be an interesting challenge, because when you think about the first film was very much of its time. The CGI was for then pretty advanced, and yet because of its limitations it was abstract enough that it clearly stood apart from the "real world." Now it's 2001 and we live with an expectation of full-screen, photorealistic CGI. Interesting, too how the arcade videogames that informed the first film are now underpowered compared to my PS2, and that the first film was made well before any public understanding of the nascent Internet. The whole idea of a story about unconnected computers seems quaint today.

    Of course, you could argue that a sequel to "Tron" has already been made: "The Matrix," also a story about people projected into computers battling the computer intelligences that run that world, albeit with its very '90s sensibilities of being wired and how powerful CGI can get.

    There are so many technological, philosophical and dramatic threads that could be picked up on that it's a shame they don't opt for a television series instead of blowing their wad on one take on the whole equation. An ongoing TV show would have room to breathe and explore all the inherint possibilities and address a lot of different viewpoints.

    In the meantime, Disney should get off its ass and release an audio CD of the Wendy Carlos' excellent soundtrack for the first film.

    BTW, if you want to have fun with the "Tron" DVD that's already been released, try watching it to the French audio track. Somehow it makes more sense...

  • err deltic or cant you read ? or should I say Dyslexic but realy how can one be expected to spell what they are (-;
  • I have spent hours apon Hours playing the simple tron game when pissed aganst pissed mates (pissed =drunk/tipsy)

    tho I have never seen the film

    look forward to it whats the remake about ?

    the orginal I though was getting the IP back from the guv and rideing bikes in a computer world as far as I could work out

    any answers ?

    regards

    john jones

  • All right, all right, I'll just wait for it to come out on DivX then. ;^)
  • Although it's been a few years since I've seen it, Tron was all about an Evil Corporate Suit® who rose to the top after stealing several hit games from one of the main characters, who then, along with the corporate security guru who was suspicious of the program that was taking over all the company's main frames, went to try and take him down.

    You know, the kind of thing that seems to happen in every third MPAA or RIAA story here on Slashdot. ;)

  • In the Spring I started scanning a giant poster book I got when Tron came out, 1982.

    I have 4 desktops done so far, so if you want to grab 'em, they're on my iDisk [mac.com]

    AS for a movie, err...
    I enjoyed Tron and all, and even got the special Laserdisc box set (years before the DVD market really existed!), but it's certainly one of those flicks that not only should NOT be remade, but doesn't need a sequel. Of course, 'need' has no meaning in Hollywood. :)

    As with all things like this, a good script will go places (Mr. Lucas, are you listening!!?)

    Pope

    What? Bear is driving car? How can that be?!

  • Dunno bout you, but I have a few Tron mp3s. Interesting :)

    I recall going to see this with the first company where I had a real, fulltime computer programmer job. We'd just had our company picnic, and we were wearing our team teeshirts - mine was the "MCPs" (male chauvinist pigs)(yes, Ms. Carlos and I have something in common), and my team number was in binary. Then, at the movie, I saw that the bad "guy" was the MCP. Talk about a coincidence! :)

    I eventually bought the movie on Laserdisk. Twas a very fun movie, rife with inside jokes (the wall map showing what "sector" they were in, the read/write head that transported the prisoners, even the spindle at the center of the disk) that were bafflegab to everybody else but to the "in" crowd they really made the movie.

    I hope they do make a sequel, and that it's as well-built as the first was.
  • Tron was for programmers like the Black Hole was for astrophysicists.
  • "Maybe they'll get Lucy Lawless to demonstrate the proper application of a spinning disk."

    The proper application of the spinning disk is demonstrated in the RunRun Shaw Hong Kong kung fu production, 'Master of the Flying Guillotine'. Accept no substitutes.
  • Ho-ly shit. You're absolutely right. I know precisely who you're talking about...I can picture his death scene in my mind, but I never made the connection.

    Amazing. That's REALLY cool!
  • That is so cool, The first time my parents rented a vcr, tron was the movie that came with it. I think I watched it 6 times. Ahhh, the past.
  • Both of you spelled SQL wrong, as sequal. I look forward to the Tron database. It should have an interesting user interface.
  • Well, imdb [imdb.com] has an Entry [imdb.com] for the movie. Updated as of July 13 and indicating release in 2002. The information looks pretty tentative - so much vaporware at this point.

    That being said I find it interesting that this rumour is at more than one site.

    You know, my mom might not have thrown out my little McDonalds Tron frisbees.....

    I like the plot summary: "An ambitious hacker transports himself into cyberspace to pull off the ultimate hack."

    J:)
  • Maybe,
    But I just got back from Planet of the Apes, and I gotta tell ya, that was some impressive costume design.
    HI Mom!
  • This is just the top of my head;

    Matrix
    Jurassic Park
    Terminator 2
    Gone with the Wind (You might not like it but it is a quality production)

    Movies do good are memorable regardless of a big budget or not. I'm sure that people can list their own favorite movies with small budgets.

    On the other hand, Tron 2.0 seems to be a direct to DVD so you might get your wish with repect to the small budget.
  • Do the original justice? How, by shooting it in the head? Tron was awful!
  • But I though Matrix was the sequel to Tron...?

  • Wait'll Tron ends up in a pr0n site...
  • Wargames caused me more grief in my early years then I care to remember...

    You see, I was 12, and had a modem. Everyone was telling my parents that I was going to start WWIII, because you could hack the military with modems.

    Give me a break, please? It's amazing what ppl will believe.

    Minupla
    --
    Remove the rocks to send email
  • It would be nice to see Jeff Bridges and President Sheridan return
    Another B5/Tron connection: Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari) has a one-scene role (he plays "Crom", the program Jeff Bridges battles against early in the film).

    --
    I have no fin
    no wing no stinger
    no claw no camouflage
    I have no more to say...
  • 1. "DVDs from the big movie industry players are pure economic poison" While this statement may make perfect sense whilst stoned, I'd still like you to elaborate. Corporate control eh? Whats the difference between copying DVD and VHS? A big sack of nothing!
    2. You are too late, Tron was released on DVD back in May 1999 [express.com]
    3. Hey, leave the Miniatures Industry Association of America (MIAA) alone, perhaps you meant the MPAA my weed smoking friend.
    4. The RIAA and the MPAA have become two acronyms associated with Slashdot banter, if you don't like them, don't support their products. Yes, that means no more TV, Radio or Movies if you can bear it.
    5. Heaven forbid that someone out there can make a good sequel, oh, but wait. Most of us cynical bastards have a perfect ideal locked in our brains so anything "the machine" makes is instantly crap. If anything, bad sequels generate wonderful conversation topics.

    -----

  • I don't understand this statement by writer/director Steven Lisberger:
    "When we created [the character] Tron, there were no PCs. We were looking at a possible future," Lisberger said.
    The original "Tron" came out in 1982. There certainly were PCs at that time. Unless he created the character in the early 70s, and it took a long time to get the movie made, I don't see how that statement makes sense.
  • Next time you watch Tron take a look at the effects.. and know that no computers were used to do the effects. It must have employed all of Disney's animators to ink in each cell at a time to create this amazing movie. Of course the sequel will over use computer graphics and try to "push" the limits. This will take away so much that was the original Tron. Sigh.

    Not true. There actually is about 15 minutes worth of computer animation in the movie. However, you are correct in that the majority of the movie is not computer animated.

    The blue and red glowing lines on people's suits were done with photographic false-color techniques. To keep the glow off peoples faces, hand-drawn mattes were used to mask off those areas. You can see the edges of people's faces jiggling a little bit because the hand-drawn matte doesn't quite match from frame to frame. It's especially noticeable during the scenes before they escape (when the characters are all sitting in their prison cells talking).

  • Wonder if the makers of the official Tron game will go after the developers of these games for trademark infringement.

    Can they? Tron games have been around for almost 20 years now, and one would think that Disney didn't try to enforce their trademark once.

    But then, it's probably safer for me not to visit the united states for a while...

    - Andreas (author of GLtron)

  • Tron games (Score:4)

    by AirLace ( 86148 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:41PM (#2186007)
    For those who can't wait for the official release, there are some great GPL'd tron games out there, based on the lightcycle scene [gltron.org]:
    • glTron [gltron.org] - Probably the most mature 3D tron game. Features network playing and themes
    • Obviously Multiplayer Tron [sourceforge.net] - New project, really unstable.
    • Armagetron [sourceforge.net] - Came out when development of glTron became very slow. Best multiplayer support, but glTron's graphics are better.

    Wonder if the makers of the official Tron game will go after the developers of these games for trademark infringement. It's a crazy world.

  • Check http://www.noside.com/catalog/CatalogArtist_01.asp ?Action=Get&Artist_ID=8 [without the lameness-space] every once in a while. Eventually, they'll release it. Eventually.

  • This movie will contain all sorts of schtick about how trading MP3s is Evil and why the DMCA is necessary. I'm waiting for one of these movies to come right out and tell us that we have to kiss corporate ass and beg The Mouse for the right to our very existience. That's pretty much what it's coming to.

    Me? Cynical? Nooooo...

  • This is an excellent point. Do we really trust Disney to green light a project that protrays comptuers/hackers in a positive light?

    More than likely, TRON 2.0 will be about an evil young hacker out to destroy the entertainment industry by hacking the encryption on digital content...and TRON will be a rights-enforcement program out to slay all the P2P clients that are sharing the ill-gotten goods.

    Remember, there is no better spokesman for Hollywood interests than Hollywood itself.

    - JoeShmoe
  • Um....glTron looks most like the original. ALso, it plain ROCKS!!!! EVEN the windows version is SWEET! When multiplayer becomes stable, oh this will be a SHAWEET network game. The AI cycles seem to go in big squares. I imagine that multiplayer games could be short and sweet. LAG could SERIOUSLY be a problem in this game tho as fast as it moves. THANK YOU! Now can you port this to PocketPC ( I need games and I am too cheap to pay for em....at least I admit it. And at least I don't pirate them )? I'd run Linux except I can't because I have no flashrom! :)
  • Well, I sure hope, that for this one they will use a better plot, because my suspension of disbelieve was sorely taxed with the first one. Sucking a person into a computer(-game) without any indication, that that is state of the art, or a recent scientific breakthrough (in case it must remain a surprise as a possibility)?

    There was more, but I haven't seen it recently, so I can't sum the defects up. But it would be nice, if the new movie was coherent in itself, and not a mismatched quilt of wild ideas.

    Stefan.

  • I can see it now... (Score:3)

    by bflong ( 107195 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:54PM (#2186013)
    --Opening scene--

    Our hero is using PSDoom [unm.edu] to "mannage" a Linux workstation that has been infected with a twisted copy of the MCP. The virus was installed onto a Windows 2000 box on the network by the latest Service Pack. Suddenly, a voice is heard from the workstations speakers.

    MCP Virus:
    I see you are not running Windows on this workstation. Come to the dark side.

    Our Hero:
    Never! Just wait till I get the BFG! Then I'll show you whos boss!

    MCP Virus:
    So... You like to play games, do you?

    -- Our hero notices that his mouse, a Micorsoft Optical mouse, starts to pull away from his hand. It flips over, and shoots him with a strange light from its optical window. Our hero finds himself in a place unfamiliar to him. He sees hundreds of Linux sysadmins being held up to the walls of a circular room. They are being scaned by some kind of energy. Something pulls at him, and he is thrown toward one of the empty spots on the wall and held there.

    MCP Virus:
    HAHAHA!!!
    Now you will know my true purpose! I will drain all the knowledge you have and use it for my own evil purpose! I will be [long pause. Drumroll] Windows XP Server!

    Voice from off camera:
    Not if I have anything to do with it!

    -- In walks a short, fat, black and white bird with a yellow beak, wielding a BFG. Camera focuses on him, then the BFG.

    Voice from near dead Linux Systems admin off camera:
    We're saved! It's Kernel Tux!

    -- Uh... He blasts the hell out of everything, the workstation and the world are saved from the horrable evil.

    Damn. It's way past my bedtime...

  • Tron, the flop (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @08:03PM (#2186014) Homepage
    Tron was such a flop at the box office that it was generally considered to have set back the Hollywood end of computer graphics by five years or so. Usually, only successful movies are remade.

    I always expected Burroughs to sue them. The Burroughs mainframe operating system was called the Master Control Program.

  • a live action "reboot" :)

    Want some indy electronic (and other) music?
  • It actually goes a little deeper than that. A friend of mine pitched a show to Disney a while back, and they bought it. They paid him to write the pilot and everything. However, the writer stuck him with mucked things up, and they weren't too enthused about the script, so they bailed on it.

    The trick isn't to think of how much stuff gets pitched, it's to look at how much stuff they actually buy, then never make.
  • In other news, filmmaker George Lucas is filing suit against Disney, claiming that "light cycle" comes too close to his trademark.
  • Because I'm a karma whore, I thought I should point out that the Internet Movie Database [imdb.com] has had this listed [imdb.com] since July 13th.

    "Plot Outline: An ambitious hacker transports himself into cyberspace to pull off the ultimate hack."

    Funny, I thought Tesla pulled off the ultimate hack.

  • Misleading (Score:3)

    by Nastard ( 124180 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:28PM (#2186019)
    Lisberger has proposed a sequel to Disney, and is working on the script, but there is nothing in the works, yet. It's sad that todays journalism allows for a "maybe" to be treated as fact (the Indy 4 stories).

    That said, it would be great if they actually got this going.

  • TROFF? AOL already beat 'em to it (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @08:28PM (#2186020) Homepage Journal

    TROFF: The story of a computer program transported to the real world.

    I see you've grasped the true origin of the name of TRON (trace on). But the story of a computer program embodied in a real world entity has already been done... by Warner Bros. Pictures, a division of AOL.

    A.I.: The Story of a Robot Who Is Even More Obsessed [aimovie.com] With Pinocchio [8m.com] Than I Am

  • Who else could have played Jed better than Jim Varney? Didn't you see the playboy issue with Elly May :)

  • What's the plot? (Score:3)

    by GrouchoMarx ( 153170 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:31PM (#2186022) Homepage
    What's the plot going to be? Instead of actors in body suits pretending to run around inside a tape-driven mainframe, will we have actors in body suits running around the Internet? I can see it now...

    Tron: Uri, you made a wrong turn! That's a Windows 2000 server!
    Uri: AAIIIEEE!!!!
    Tron: No! Uri! NOOOOOO!!!!!

    The MCP, of course, has been replaced with a virus that is spreading and bringing down the entire computer infrastructure of the world. It will be defeated in a huge on-screen battle with thousands of little CGI critters who are all in one place for some reason, despite being contrary to the very nature of computer software.

    Of course, since the first Tron was one of the pioneers in computer graphics in movies, nothing short of Final Fantasy-level graphics will do 2.0 justice. Unless, they decide to save money and bring out the body suits again...

    --GrouchoMarx

  • DVD edition = soundtrack on CD? (Score:4)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:20PM (#2186023) Homepage Journal
    I wonder if this means Disney will finally get off theif duffs and authorize Wendy Carlos to do a remastered CD version of the soundtrack. Tron had a, well, different sound to it which I happened to have enjoyed. Yet despite the techno-intense nature of the movie, the music has never been released in digital. :(

  • News? (Score:1)

    by mlong ( 160620 )
    Not much happening on the TRON front but you can read about all the developments at Corona [corona.bc.ca]
  • What's next? A sequel to WarGames?

    ____
  • I heard Star Wars 1 (the original) had a mid/small budget--and yes, state of the art special effects.

  • Is Hollywood so starved for ideas that they have to mine for sequels this low? (rhetorical question, of course...)

    I mean, I haven't seen the movie since it came out, and maybe someone can refresh my memory, but didn't it, well, suck? I mean, I remember my group of friends saying "Finally! A movie for programmers!", but after seeing it I remember being sorely disappointed in its unrealistic, cheesy use of any buzzword they could pull out of the computer dictionary.

    If software marketing directors wrote a computer script, this is what the movie would look like (except without product placements. :) )


    --

  • mod this ac up..
  • The Tron PC video game is slated for a 2003 release, sources told the trade paper. The Tron game is also expected to appear on Microsoft's Xbox video game system.

    Tron went to work for the Master Control Program?! I don't believe it!

    I guess that's what happens after twenty years of unemployment on the game grid.

    But seriously, I hope that Bit character gets to say more than just two things this time around. He was always so predictable. If it wasn't one thing, it was the other...

  • Unconnected computers??

    I don't know what Tron you've been watching, but in MY copy the Master Control Program speaks several times of its links to other corporate computers. (And how it "steals" from them all the other programs it has captured and assimilated)
  • Pixar doing Tron 2.0? I have no doubt they could pull it off. But their rendering engines are attempting to create more lifelike results. They would have to ratchet down their resolution in order to simulate the pixelated universe in Tron.

    But at least Pixar still has some creative talent to make the story and characters interesting. And certainly there are enough geeks at Pixar to add the techno inside jokes. Can you imagine a Disneyfied boy-meets-girl (invert gender as appropriate), boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back plot in the Tron world? Yawn.

  • And the visage of Balmer superimposed as the face of the reincarnated... err.. rebooted MCP.
  • 20 years ago...

    That is about when I first got sucked into computers. Can't seem to get back out though...
  • Mmmm...Doom system administration:

    Certain processes are vital to the computer's operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated.

    Still one of my favorite links ever from Slashdot.

    TSG

  • People have recently complained about the number of old movies that are being re-made (like Planet of the Apes...) and TV series that were made into movies in the past couple of years - the travisty that was Beverly Hillbillies [imdb.com].

    Finally a movie that deserves a sequel. It should be an interesting chalenge for the producers to do justice to the original while at the same time updating it for the modern era - a daunting chalenge indeed but not impossible. I look forward to both the re-release of the original and the sequal with joy and aprehension.

    --CTH
  • ... Interesting, too how the arcade videogames that informed the first film are now underpowered compared to my PS2 ...

    dude, your PS2 is more powerful than the computers that did the movies, not just the arcade games. Your GameBoy is probably more powerful than the arcade games. ;-)

  • Is Hollywood so starved for ideas that they have to mine for sequels this low? (rhetorical question, of course...)

    Not that they are rift of ideas, but rather that they are run by beancounters who want maximum profit for minimal expenditure. One attractive idea (for them) is to despense with the "writer," take a previously hit film and use contract hacks to rework it.

    That's why we get drek like:

    • Planet of the Apes,
    • Psycho,
    • Beverly Hillbillies,
    • Rollerball,
    • Parent Trap,
    • Star Wars "digitally remastered", et cetera

    Don't worry, there are a plethora of successful, classic films that Hollywood can remake! I'm still waiting for the John Wayne stuff to come up again -- maybe this time by a hot-shot, fit, muscular actor rather than a drunk, overweight womanizer named Francis.

  • I wonder if SPAM will play a role in this movie?
  • 20$ says this new tron is gonna have a funky tough negroid with an attitude who dies half way through so his honkey ass master can avenge his death. Oh yay.

    You're probably right, but weren't the people blue red and green??? Brown doesn't "glow" quite as well... but yeah, the black people MUST be represented regardless of whether it actually fits the characterization. No matter what people do, SOMEONE will find a reason to get pissed off about it. So FUCK THEM! If it works, use it. If it suits your art, create it! But don't let politics determine your creativity. That's just bullshit.
  • You sir, have obiously never seen Sneakers.

    I could tell you about it, but then I'd have to kill you.

    You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

  • If I remember right even the IBM-PC was introduced in 1982. But the term Personal Computer if not the acronym PC was introduced in 1978.
  • Sorry to be a wet blanket but it was just the good side of S-U-C-K-S. The entire production was techie terms for magic. Remember Jiminy Cricket, er, Bit? Alice goes through the looking glass. Is that ho hum or hum ho?

    I had been into PCs four years when it came out and had a dozen published games for the Atari 800 by then. (Starshot in Byte for the curious.) There was no game quality to the "games" in Tron. There were much more challenging graphics in Atari games in 1982 than there were graphics in the movie which were mostly faked rather than computer graphics as we see them today. Anyone feeling nostalgic catch it on cable or try to rent it and discover nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

    Do a sequal of that? How about a sequal of Cinderella? Pinnochio? I saw those when I was about as old as most of this audience was when they first saw Tron. (So was my son and he is now in the business and I presume Tron didn't discourage him. No blame.) What impresses us in youth does not bear repeating in age.

    What is the purpose of a sequal? To inspire today's youth? When most games they have is better than movies can afford to make? To inspire _us_ again?

    Some things were right for their time and not afterwards. Anyone for a remake of the Shirley Temple movies? Tron is about that to Matrix. Shirley Temple was a child talent contest winner with cute lines.

    Leave Tron alone as a period piece so all my above criticisms of it will not become painfully obvious in the flop remake and ruin old memories.

    P.S. Planet of the Apes remake is not on earth? What pray tell is the point of it unless the nerfbrain creator believes in Trekkian parallel evolution? He "corrected" problems in the original while injecting vastly greater idiocies?

    Can Tron 2.0 fail substitute the _creative_ process for very well known facts which would require real creativity from the project?

  • There were several links to discussions of it on Drudge Report in the last two weeks. It was out for nearly 36 hours when I posted. The TV promos have him talking to someone as he crashlands. The SciFi channel Exposure at 7pm EST Friday had him say something like "I have 24 hours to get there to be rescued."

    Where could anyone get the idea it was set on earth? ST Voyager tachyon communications?

  • Boring story, lifeless characters, terrible dialogue. Oh yes, and big brash sfx.

    It was ahead of its time! And looking around at Hollywood product today, you could say Tron's time has finally come.
  • Of course, you could argue that a sequel to "Tron" has already been made: "The Matrix," also a story about people projected into computers battling the computer intelligences that run that world, albeit with its very '90s sensibilities of being wired and how powerful CGI can get.

    The first thing I thought upon seeing Matrix was that it was Tron in reverse. Same theme of technology advancing to the point where it subjugates its creators, reflecting and magnifying their flaws. For more possible Tron sequels, cf. Terminator. For possible prequels, cf. Frankenstein.

  • Ah -- but will the movie that deserves a sequel get a sequel it deserves? Case in point: The original Star Wars were good. Ep. 1 had Jar-Jar (Yuck). IMO, Given the latest releases (some of which you point out), Tron fans may have been better off if a sequel were not being considered.

  • Don't buy it! (Score:4)

    by SocialWorm ( 316263 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @05:48PM (#2186047) Homepage
    I find it ironic that a movie that touches, albiet lightly, on corporate culture should be released in the format of corporate control. DVDs from the big movie industry players are pure economic poison, regardless of their content -- not unlike an toxin-infused envelope. This movie may be marketed as Tron, but it should carry a warning that it's really a vote against freedom, a vote for the DMCA, and, by association, a vote to keep Dimitry [freedmitry.org] in prison [freesklyarov.org].

    Standing up to these megalomanaics is worthy of a movie in and of itself, but if we don't, we could all find ourselves against the powerful systems, both legal and computer, of the MIAA and its allies.

    Besides, do you really want to support these people in their quest to make Tron 2.0 [imdb.com], which has "An ambitious hacker transports himself into cyberspace to pull off the ultimate hack." for a tagline? Even if nothing else written here convinces you to boycott the release of Tron on DVD, that almost certainly should. Yuck, awful -- just what we need, another bad "hacker flick" (almost certainly what's intended, given today's climate).

  • I've been hoping on one since like 1990. I'm one of the most hardcore video game players on the planet and idolized that movie when I was a kid, but no one else liked it.

  • A big budget might ruin it (Score:5)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday July 28, 2001 @06:03PM (#2186049)
    One thing that made movies like the original Star Wars, Mad Max and Tron stand out was the spartan ambiance that came with a (relatively) low budget. As it happened, that ambiance worked well with the screenplay and acting for these movies; that's why these movies are still talked about while dozens of others from that time are forgotten.

    Twenty or so years later, they redo Star Wars (largely on the same planet) with a big budget and too many visual distractions and not enough focus on the story... and it doesn't work. There was nothing special about it compared to all of the other computer-effects scifi movies out there today. I fear the same thing will happen to this sequel.

  • TROFF: The story of a computer program transported to the real world.

    'nuff said!

  • ... in a major player in the MPAA making a new Tron movie?
  • Nothing ruins a good war flick like the addition of an obligatory love scene/relationship. For example, Perl Harbor. All this great hardware flying around and blowing up things ... and they mess it up with some schumltzy triangle.

    Same problem with Tron. We weren't in it for Kurt Russel and whatever flavor/babe of the month Disney was offering. We wanted to see hard core hardware. Recure that binary tree ... but make sure it's balanced.

    But this will probably flop because they'll put some stupid love theme around the good stuff. Personally, I'd load up the cast with veloptous cyber-babes ... and then ... hey wait, what if the cyberbabes took an interest in each other ??? ......hhmmmmmm......


  • I don't want Lucy Lawless. I want Lucy Topless!
  • Frisbee-o'-death? Yer, there is a Linux port for Tribes 2, so Tux _could_ be packing a spinfuzor...
    -==-
    We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
  • Maybe it's just a poor remastering job (my perception is based on the DVD), but I think the soundtrack is the worst part of Tron. It actively detracts from the visuals.

    The best thing they could do would be to hand the movie to Vince Clarke to rescore.

    Or was the original soundtrack significantly better than what appears on the current DVD?

  • Well, if we're doing B5/Tron connections, it should be noted that David Warner himself appeared in B5, as Aldous Gajic in the episode "Grail" [midwinter.com].
    --

  • When will they learn? They can't hope to do much of anything but tarnish our feelings for the original.

    Actually, as long as they just don't try to "take advantage" of modern CGI by changing the look I'll forgive everything else. Angular, untextured surfaces with bright wireframe outlines are what it's all about - and why Tron still looks better than most CGI movies made today.

  • I've got some of Walter's [wendycarlos.com] earlier music on CD, such as Beauty in the Beast [wendycarlos.com], and somewhere packed away a vinyl (!) of TRON [wendycarlos.com].

    I'd love to have a remastered CD of TRON, particularly that which wasn't included in the first go-round.

  • Thanks a lot, Mr Wreck the Movie I didnt read the review because of this, and you just have to put a PS on a totally different topic stating it wasn't on Earth. You shoud be taken out to the street and shot, kind sir. The GiantGuienaPig regrets acknowledging your existance
  • It exists; knowing stuff about Mormonism is necessary to laugh at most of it, the lead is a really attractive writer. Honest.
  • That is in NO WAY insightful. To compare the original Tron being released to having put Dimitry in jail is absurd. How about I start calling you Hitler for trying to take away everyones freedom of choice? Sheesh!
  • Always remember that Tron is a Disney product. Disney is a major force behind the DMCA and the MPAA. Don't arm your enemies with your cash! Want freedom and respect? You can start by refusing to patronize the products and services of those that want nothing more than to strip you of both.

    Proteus7

    "Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job." - Noam Chomsky
  • I loved the original tron (I think it was released the year i was born), and i have it on DVD. I'm wondering if TRON 2.0 will stay true to what made the first one such a great movie, though. Computers aren't as mysterious and alien as they were in the early 80's/late 70's, and i'd hate to see TRON 2.0 get filled with meaningless buzzwords and catchphrases (Swordfish and Hackers come to mind, although I enjoyed both they were decidedly "dumbed down" for a mass audience).

    Anyone else hear about the new TRON PC game that's supposed to be released somewhere around the time of the movie? I thought i read somewhere that Shiny Entertainment was doing it, but i'm not sure i remember that correctly.
  • Don't we always warn ourselves to keep away from those buggy x.0 releases anyways?

    I don't have high hopes for this movie, but that means it might surprise me.

    We'll see.

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