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Pixar Tron Remake? 85

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-that-be-interesting dept.
RAZ was among several folks who wrote in to tell us about a ZDNet article that talks about Pixar and Tron. No official comment from the studio, but there still are rumors floating about that Pixar may be redoing that classic little piece of disney sci fi. And I just got the DVD of the original ;)
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Pixar Tron Remake? More

Pixar Tron Remake?

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  • Re:No way (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24, 1999 @10:07AM (#1786335)
    This is correct. Pixar is about creating endearing stories, not re-hashing older films already exist as classics. However. . .

    Here's the truth.

    Toy Story II will be released in November. Monsters Inc. is the next movie in production( summer of 2001). In pre-production is a series of three films. The original characters will not be the main protagonists, but will be woven into the story. For now, think Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Blade Runner. This is a HUGE project.

    The animators will be training on Monsters Inc. under John Lasseter with new motion capture systems being developed at Pixar. The voices of the actors will be professional actors, but the animation will be done at Pixar's new site currently being built. Steve Jobs is working with Apple (on hardware), NeXt (for software), and within Pixar itself (for Renderman software) to create what will be what they call the "Uber-Renderfarm" (25 times more powerful than what was used on "A Bug's Life"). This will be necessary as all the humans will be computer generated. In fact, Geri's Game was a test to push the human technology further.

    I've never been more excited about a project. The pre-production art looks beautiful. The story guys are pumping out some of the most amazingly exciting, heart-warming, and funny stuff I've seen in an epic project like this. And well, we'll just have to wait until 2003 to see the newest exploits of the son of son of Tron!
  • TRON bombed in the box office, and except for the special effects (which were pretty cool for the time), was a pretty dumb movie with a very tired (Disney-standard) plot. As others have pointed out, it is unlikely that such a loss will be remade, nor a prequel or sequel. ZDNet is just filling padding thier site with blown smoke.
    --
  • Umm, probably mispelled but I think it was EMCON, or some such derivative (emcom? darnit.. ). I'm basing it on a 10 yr old memory of 30 seconds of film of a neon lit helicopter. (salt, grain of, need I say more?)

    Hope that helps.

    :)

    Grell
    Wasurenaide - doko e itte mo soko ni iru yo.

  • The best thing about Tron (apart from the use of computer graphics) was the idea of programs being sentient beings in their own little world, looking at their User as a personal deity. (I guess this was back when it was assumed that each program only had one user!)

    Anyway, if they make a sequel, I hope we get to see what, say, Microsoft Word would look like as a sentient being. I imagine something like "Pizza the Hut" in SpaceBalls...
  • As an aside, check out what Square Honolulu is doing with the Final Fantasy movie.
    [RPGamer] [rpgamer.com]
    Specifically, the job openings ad. Yes, that's CGI:
    [Foo] [rpgamer.com]
  • I don't know about this posting. It combines some publicly-known details with some stuff that I find difficult to believe. Even if it does come from someone at Pixar, it may be someone who wishes to mislead us.

    Bruce

  • Does anyone remember Ralph Bashke? Motion capture isn't "toony" enough.
  • That's some incredible stuff...except for those damn eyelashes. The rest of it is extremely impressive. :)
  • I read somewhere in the days leading up to the SP release that Matt+Trey were quoted as 'Going back to the roots and the original cardboard'. There was definately CG anims in there (the hell scene was supersweet) but when I saw the closing credits it looked as though they outsourced that to a 3rd party CG house.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
  • Intellivision was great! I recall as a kid growing up in the 80's whenever a group of kids would play frisbee the game would eventually devolve into a violent form of tag (called TRON) in which the sole object was to hit the other players with a thrown frisbee. Ahh, those were the days.
  • For a '90's update on the same theme as Tron, check out "Reboot" [mainframe.ca] on The Cartoon Channel 4:30pm EST.
    I already consider this to be a remake/sequel of
    Tron. As already mentioned by several others, the
    original script for Tron isn't strong enough for
    a true remake... However I'd love to see a sequel
    if Pixar could find a terrific script.


    Edges are for leadin' not bleedin'
  • My initial reaction is that is could be terrible, but...

    The thought of Pixar 'completely misunderstanding' computers and the net is laughable. Pixar are one of the most technologically savvy companies about. Look at who works for them, it's almost a who's who of the computer graphics industry. And they developed RenderMan, one of the coolest pieces of software on the planet.

    HH
  • Here's a better URL for the
    Reboot page... [mainframe.ca]



    Edges are for leadin' not bleedin'
  • I agree that the movie itself was very fluffy bunny in typical disney fashion, but the vision of the people who came up with it opened an entirely new genre of movies and shows in its wake.

    Unfortunately, quite a few of those really sucked too... does anyone remember 'Automan?' ;)

    I loved TRON when I was a kid. I broke the Beta of it in the machine from watching it so much. Recognizers became my first 3d modelling projects. My grade 7 computer science class had something like 22 different versions of the lightcycle game independantly created as final projects (mine wasn't one of them ;), so I guess I wasn't solely affected.

    My worst fear is that a remake or sequel would be attempted, and it'd fall flat on it's face. We're better off letting it remain the somewhat campy geek-motivational flick from childhood, something to draw on subconciously for future 'cool things'.

    I would, however, happily help to code and/or beta an opensource version of Space Paranoids. With all the 3d FPS game engines out there, I think 'Noids is long overdue. Any takers?

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • A remake is absolutely necessary, but they'll have to change TRON's name to something more modern like "-w" or "strict".

    Ack, I should get this, but I don't. It has something to do with Perl, right? Is it surrealist comedy?

    I don't think so. TRON was a command in many BASIC interpreters for debugging (I think it was something really primitive, like printing a line number in square brackets when each line was interpreted). Not really like "use strict" in perl, but I think "gdb" would be a really sucky movie title...

  • Dreamworks SKG, with a bit of Microsoft backing rushed the inferior Antz to market

    To be honest out of 5 people that I know have seen both movies, all but one preferred Antz.
    The reason that one didn't like it was mainly because of Woody Allen.

    I have never thought that Antz was rushed. It certainly doesn't look it.

    "With Tron, a competitor could create another flick in the same genre, also computer animated, and release shortly before."

    Thats a big risk to take. Warners have tried to do disney style movies and they really haven't worked. (Mind you I'm getting feed up with Disney retelling the past through their eyes, its why I am glad that the Muppets are no longer in Disneys control). Animations, computer or otherwise, are expensive enough that its probably to risky to try.

    Rob

  • How could they make a sequal to Tron? It was pretty much a one-shot movie. What could they base it on? Go back and watch Tron again. All the lose ends were pretty much wrapped up in the end of the movie.

  • TRON in the some of the Atari Basics 8-bit stood for "Trace On" as I recall. It would display at the top of the screen the line number and the BASIC statement of a program written in BASIC as it was executed as an debuging aid.
  • 8-Balls aren't supposed to be shaken - it creates bubbles which obscure the answer.

    right -- they're supposed to be wired to the internet [federated.com] and rotated in real time [federated.com] using a debian linux [debian.org] machine... 8)

  • /* I'd rather see a sql than a remake. */

    CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW new_tron AS
    SELECT bm.old_tron,
    bm.the_matrix,
    bm.lawnmower_man,
    bt.reboot,
    bt.power_rangers,
    bt.beast_wars,
    FROM bad_movies bm, bad_tv_shows bt;

    :-)
  • ...when a Pixar spokesperson denies knowlege of it?

    Or, are they just keeping the noise level down until they decide whether or not to do it?

    The original was great... I would not want to see a remake that just adds more modern animation. On the other hand, I would love to see a well-done sequel. Only, maybe this time they should use more Unix terminology and fewer Burroughs (Unisys) terms!
  • A number of TRON cast members went onto work on Babylon-5...TRON was played by Bruce Boxleitner, who also played John Sheriden. Peter Jurasik, Londo Mollari...and knowing the Pixar people (And animators in general), there would bound to be many B-5 References, injokes in a remake of TRON...Let's go de-rez some Shadows!

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • If it's a remake, I wonder if they'll round up the original actors? If it's a sequel...well...I'll be very nervous about what 1990's minds can create. I think a lot of the fun of Tron came from it's early 80's views on computers. They were mysterious and unknown...today it's net this, browser that. Even grandpa has an AOL account to talk with his war buddies 300 miles away.

    Just have to see, I guess...:/
  • If they have caught the "we don't comment on products that haven't been announced" bug from Apple...I'd say it could be likley.
  • Though I know if ayone should do something like this it's Pixar, I doubt very much if it's true.

    Pixar has alwredy announced their next project, monsters inc [pixar.com], and I find it unlikely that they will work on two big features at the same time.

    The original; was one of the worst flops for disney, btw, very few people went to see it..

    even less actually liked it..


    --------------------------------
  • > even less actually liked it..

    It might have flopped at the box office, but personally, I've never known anyone (outside of forums like this) who honestly hated it. Just a fun fantasy flick that left an impression on them as kids.

    Here on Slashdot, though, one can find people who have harsh words for Mother Theresa, I'm sure...rather like a really complex 8-Ball. Don't like the opinion presented? Shake the ball...read another post. :D
  • Three words: "Lawnmower Man 2."

    No, really. I liked the original Tron, though even way back then I knew it wasn't even close to "realistic." I just have this awful feeling that if they were to do a sequel, it'd turn into some horrible mishmash of "Lawnmower Man," "The Net," and a bunch of other movies that were substandard. Computers/+the Net have permeated popular culture far enough to be completely misunderstood by those in the movie business. (Hollywood truth: anyone who knows anything about computers can hack into top-secret NSA databases in less than 5 minutes!)

    Or is Pixar going to make a kinder, gentler "The Matrix," with semi-violent heroes in glowing blue suits substituted for ultraviolent heroes in black trenchcoats?

  • It's not really Tron unless the graphics were done on a Super Foonly.

    (see the Jargon File.)
  • A remake is absolutely necessary, but they'll have to change TRON's name to something more modern like "-w" or "strict".
  • Tron was cool, the experience enhanced by taking off from work because my boss wanted to see it. :-) I remember wanting them to use "deallocate" instead of de-rez. :-) To this day, I don't know if de-rez is a real computer term, or if they made it up.
  • clarification: I liked tron.

    This didn't come accross in my message, oh well..

    What I ment was that Tron was a rather complex film full of jargon which at 1983 (or 82) when it came out, very few people could relate to. a lot of people who went to see it found it boring.
    --------------------------------
  • >The one dud in the bunch was the Maze-A-Tron
    >game...pointless, boring, and tedious only begin
    >to describe it.

    I rememeber reading about it in the little Intellivision catalog things, but never got to play it. Sounds like I didn't miss much. :D
  • even less actually liked it..

    I dunno about that. Not only geeks, but even Roger Ebert liked it. Ebert gave it an extremely positive review at the time and I believe, even featured it at a film festival of underappreciated films a couple of years ago.

  • >>Shake the ball...
    > 8-Balls aren't supposed to be shaken - it
    > creates bubbles which obscure the answer.

    Good tip. :) I snagged one of the Yoda 8-Ball's from Pizza Hut, and it's got Yoda-themed responses "Do -- not try", etc. I dubbed it, "Yodaball". I make all my important decisions with him. ;D
  • Yeah, but you just know they're gonna load up on "Hackers" style crap...I'd be EXTREMELY shocked if they cook up something that is faithful to the original...

    I'm bitter, yes, as it seems like it's all the rage these days to take something old and just ignore why it was popular and make their own thing, almost always poorly.

    How come the audience can smell crap a mile away, but the people making it can't? Are they so close to the project that they lose objectivity on what the Right Thing is? :(
  • What are you talking about? Motion capture doesnt reduce the need for animators, it just changes how they do their jobs. Motion capture is great for humans and human-like models, but you cant very well motion capture something with 5 arms and wings, or the waving of a plant in a breeze, or a car etc. All motion capture does for animators is make their job a bit easier, not replace them. And as for not making money on animated films.. tarzan was up there around #1 for cash intake its first weekend if i remember (i didnt pay much attention as i must admit i dont intend to see it.. but that's me) and neither bug's life nor antz (as the most recent fully-computer-animated movies) did very badly either. People dont really care what format a movie is in so long as it's a good watch. South Park was funny as hell, defenitly worth watching, and made out of cardboard cutouts. Alot teens/20ish people might not want to go see a cartoon because they're viewed as 'childish'.. but I dont think computer animated movies suffer the same stigma thanks to cg movies in games and such.
    Dreamweaver
  • Wow... I am amazed to see this word - Foonly :) I didn't know a Foonly was used for Tron - But back in 1983, being seven years old, I used regularly (once a week, maybe) the Foonly where my father worked, learnt some TeX and Emacs - and had no idea that 16 years later I'd still be using them... Well, anyway, the Foonly F2 was so important for me that now I like even more Tron! Heck, if I could get hold of a Tron movie in Mexico :)
  • A remake is absolutely necessary, but they'll have to change TRON's name to something more modern like "-w" or "strict".

    Ack, I should get this, but I don't. It has something to do with Perl, right? Is it surrealist comedy?

  • every modern story is a rip off of shakespeare.
    and he stole from the greeks, etc...
  • The problem with the original Tron was its long stretch on facts and thin story line. The movie had no greater intentions than some light entertainment, far from today's super-hyped movies such as the remake of Godzilla. You can't just go to a movie anymore, you have to be totally immersed in the movie-going "experience".
    I remember the following pleasant memories:
    • Jeff Bridges as the hacker/arcade owner. I remember such places in the early 80's in Atlanta, and there was a pretty sharp arcade spot right next to the theater where Tron premiered where I lived at the time. The opening scenes of Flynn with his avatar trying to break into the machine are priceless. So was the avatar's companion, Bit.
    • A very young Bruce Boxleitner, skinny with glasses and very geek-like. He turned out to be the real star (IMHO), and won the beautiful babe (Lora/Yori) that Flynn couldn't keep satisfied.
    • An equally young Peter Jurasik. When Jurasik showed up as Londo on Babilon 5, I didn't recognize him at all. Not only the years, but accent threw me. What's more, Peter is still using an accent on his latest gig on Sliders as a mad doctor. He was only given a short part in the movie, loosing to Flynn (Bridges) in a digital version of jaialai.
    • David Warner. What can I say? He's played every bad guy from Jack the Ripper (Time after Time) to a Klingon ambassador and points in between all over the acting map. He made an excellent villian in Tron, as well as accurately portraying the typical spinless upper management type.
    • Cindy Morgan, the gorgeous babe who looked super in sweaters or blue body suit.
    • Barnard Hughes, the conscience of the movie.

    What I also came away with was the theme by Wendy Carlos (Walter Carlos before the sex change operation, "Switched-on Bach") for the solar sail simulation run. I can still hear that running through my head...


    Like I said, this was a pleasant little movie. A remake or sequel is guaranteed to fall flat on its face. I'm not interested in another sucks-out-load movie extension like "Phantom Menace" that's all CGI and no decent acting whatsoever.

  • >Does anyone remember Ralph Bashke? Motion capture isn't "toony" enough.

    Bakshi's problem isn't motion capture so much as stock-film-footage capture. COOL WORLD was an enormous imporvement over WIZARDS in this respect, and with motion capture being used in the sense that it is in modern comptuer games (i.e. digitally editing, rather than the cut-and-paste variety), it can be as "real" or as "toony" as need be.
  • Not really like "use strict" in perl, but I think "gdb" would be a really sucky movie title...

    How about "strace"? That's almost kinda sorta more or less the same thing, and is probably as good a title as TRON. Or alternatively "gprof", but I'm not sure that counts as it's not a real-time profiler.

  • All that acting (and musical) talent! Not to mention a fun story and awesome effects (esp. on a big movie-theater screen - I'll readily admit it looks like a cheap video game on a regular TV screen).

    That having been said, I agree that a remake or sequel is probably a Bad Idea. There's so little to gain and so much that could go horribly wrong. But I'd still be first in line to see it when it comes to my town!

    One more bit of Tron trivia... the French artist and Metal Hurlant heavy-hitter Moebius did a lot of the preproduction design stuff for the film. No wonder I loved it!

    -Drox
    (proud owner of an original 1982 Tron beach towel)
  • It's all too late. They'll probably make a sequel, and put in cute prequel material in the storyline.

    A prequel has merit, but why does the entertainment industry feel the need to make prequels when the sequel avenue looks weak?

    TRON could have an amazing sequel depending on your perspective. Sure, TRON's ending wrapped up alot of loose ends. Tron no longer has any conflicts, but previous posts mentioned the mystique of TRON's world in the 80's. Imagine how that world would have developed in 10 or 15 years?
    I'm sure it would probably follow the same pattern as a country town as it turns into a large city. The mainframe connects with the client server network. New programs (people) are created by the almighty users.
    Tron wasn't just fighting the MCP. He was fighting progress of a huge consolidated mainframe. 90's IT technology has would probably disrupt the harmony of TRON's world just as much as a MCP. Look at a certain software company's OS.
    If anything of TRON is to be done, it should be a sequel. Not a prequel or a remake. That requires too much risk and too many expectations from the cult followers and well wishers ala TPM. Plus you can never get the same actors for a remake, or make it feel new.
    This reminds me of the rumors in the early 90's about making a Highlander prequel that followed Ramirez.

  • TRON in the some of the Atari Basics 8-bit stood for "Trace On" as I recall. It would display at the top of the screen the line number and the BASIC statement of a program written in BASIC as it was executed as an debuging aid.

    In that case, the sequel should logically be called TROFF.


    I remember using this command with the TRS-80 as well...



  • Absolutely.

    Tron was good because it was far ahead of its time. Computers were strange and mysterious, computer games were for the underground. The whole idea of people inside logic was novel and clever.

    It's a film that can't be remade. Intel is a household name. People talk about API's and threading and hardware abstraction on the bus to work.

    If they tried to remake it you can bet on three things.

    1. They'd rave about how it took 10 billion Crays to render, and had models with 10000000 moving parts, so it must be good.

    2. It would have children and product placements in it, as well as cool in jokes about 'the industry', because everyone has heared of industry figures now

    3. It would suck
  • >Shake the ball...

    8-Balls aren't supposed to be shaken - it creates bubbles which obscure the answer.

  • No way (Score:5)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday July 24, 1999 @08:25AM (#1786400) Homepage Journal
    I don't work there any longer, an I sold off all of my Pixar stock, so I can say what I want now. I am not a Pixar spokesperson. With that said:

    No way.

    Pixar is not a special-effects house. Their specialty is telling good stories with 3-D computer-graphic character animation, but telling good stories comes first. They actually spend more time on the script than they do on production. Toy Story and A Bug's Life spent 3 or 4 years in writing. Not until we could like the movie when shown as 100 minutes of shots of black and white pencil-drawn storyboards, with dialogue read by people around the office, would we go into production.

    The problem with Tron is that the story isn't good enough - most people just are not interested in that story and the movie can not be saved by better special effects, not that any move can be saved this way. Nerdy folks like you and me might like it, but not a general audience. So, you might see a lesser studio give it a try, like the folks who did Small Soldiers.

    Pixar writes its movies in house. They aren't interested in recycling old garbage. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but they could not be as successful as they are if they operated differently.

    Again, I'm not a Pixar spokesperson, just someone who worked there for 12 years.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • A number of TRON cast members went onto work on Babylon-5

    And don't forget David Warner (Alduous Gaijic)!
    I tell you what, that man is everywhere.

    I'd rather see a sql than a remake. I'd thought this over a lot before, and my dad and I came to the agreement that this movie could get no better. That and they should NEVER make a sql to Bladerunner. That was another form of perfection. To re-do the sfx in Tron is to ruin it. You couldn't change everything. Just like the Star-wars re-relases.

  • > This didn't come accross in my message, oh well..

    ! :D

    > What I ment was that Tron was a rather complex
    >film full of jargon which at 1983 (or 82) when
    >it came out, very few people could relate to. a
    >lot of people who went to see it found it
    >boring.

    Funny, I never really thought of it that way...good point.

    The Tron games for the Intellivision were great fun...I'd kill to play "Tron Deadly Discs" again...or "Solar Sailer"...(not to mention the AD&D games). Sadly, the guys who put out the "Intelivision Lives!"(?) CD probably couldn't put it on the disc because of licensing problems...oh the agony. :/
  • We already know that Tron eliminates Sark/MCP and now the world is a Better Place because data flows freely... but what about before? Maybe to see how MCP/Sark gained power and slowly took over the system?

    There was also alot that was shown/not shown in the actual movie (remember Data Town?) that would be fascinating to explore - perhaps the story should not be related to the actual Tron plotline, but another story set within the main world(s).

    I guess the old arcade would be gone, replaced by networked computers running Quake... hrm... Quake in Tron-world... now THAT would be an interesting side story.
    --
  • I agree with the comment that they should do a prequel -- but they would have to try hard to maintain the original naivety of the film. It should go back to the early 80s style.. use retro-futurist elektro music (they should make the title track "Little Computer People" by Anthony Rother ("little computer people project")!!) See: show flynn starting up his arcade...

    the originally movie was miserable except for its cuteness value .. it had bad acting, horrible plot, but the look of the whole thing. yummy simple look to the whole thing. and the wendy carlos soundtrack was amazing.

    ahh memories of grade 2
  • especially if a "heart-warming" house could still ply their trade w/ tron's ascetic (but IMHO highly aesthetic) style.

    too bad disney doesn't have the balls to do anything that is not furry in some way. (perhaps disney could delegate this to touchstone...)

    (down w/ photorealism! i already got enough reality. bring back sparse-data planes and light cycles, yeah!)

  • oops: check out http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/psi49net/sou/lcp1_is dn_txt.ram
  • This is probably off topic, but it was something I was wondering. What was the name of the big evil corporation in Tron?
  • ROFL! =) or instead, "-v"
  • When Fantasia was first released it flopped.

    -what's a sig?
  • Actually, if you look at all the movies Hollywood seems to release, they're mostly all based on the same few plot lines. I suspect they use a book called "Standardized Hollywood Plots" to make the next movie.

    Seems most movies now are just glorified ads with sfx and little more (movie advertising, the most subtle of ads. Except for james bond films, which have glaringly obvious ads...)

  • That ZDNN report seems wrong (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "A spokesperson for Pixar in Richmond, Calif., said she was not aware of any Tron projects, but if it were to happen, it would likely be led by Disney. Disney owns 50 percent of Pixar. The company did not return calls by press time. "

    I checked Pixar's latest SEC filings and Disney owns 2,500,100 shares, or 5.2%. They might be taking about the Disney/Pixar agreement to share half the rights/cost/revenue of the pictures they make together.
  • > The Tron games for the Intellivision were great > fun...I'd kill to play "Tron Deadly Discs" > again...or "Solar Sailer".

    The one dud in the bunch was the Maze-A-Tron game...pointless, boring, and tedious only begin to describe it.

    Dav2.718
  • Don't get me wrong, I liked Tron when I saw it as a kid, but it did terribly in terms of box office (I remember the theater being almost completely empty). And companies like Disney don't remake movies when the original lost money.

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