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July 12, 2022 7:00 AM Subscribe
Forty years ago, one of Disney's weirdest failures started changing movies forever. TRON stumbled, so that Neo could be the One and Ralph could break the Internet.
A movie that brought to life a world within a computer, one that's undergone a fascistic takeover from the self-declared Master Control, and the fight against it when a human is transported into the computer. (spoiler alert: he helps them win.) The technology used to make it was new, and it was the first movie that merged computer-generated effects with filmed people. Due to the rendering capabilities of the time, most of it was filmed on empty stages to minimize the work that was needed. Some of the images, including the lightcycles (designed by noted designer and futurist Syd Mead) and the driving duel that they are in, remain iconic today. The soundtrack, by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos (and a couple of tracks by Journey, who agreed after Supertramp pulled out), was also groundbreaking for the time. Unfortunately, the movie was so groundbreaking that it was reportedly snubbed for a special effects Academy Award for "cheating".
There were also people wondering why a "serious" actor like Jeff Bridges (who at the time had two Oscar nominations) would go for such a "silly" movie, to which he replied, "I took the film seriously because I saw that it was breaking new ground."
--
Disney created a series of related videogames in following years, including one where a character's son is pulled into a computer to fight against the same forces, and appearances in other series, such as Kingdom Hearts.
Despite a sequel, TRON: Legacy, it seems that from the point of view of at least one of the stars, there's probably not going to be a TRON 3 due to delays with the script and story.
There was an animated series, with the voices of Boxleither and Elijah Wood, TRON: Uprising, which continued some of the themes from Legacy.
Disney is also opening a TRON-themed ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom in the near future.
--
People still want to own the lightcycles outside of the Grid.
My name is Tron. I fight for the users.
A movie that brought to life a world within a computer, one that's undergone a fascistic takeover from the self-declared Master Control, and the fight against it when a human is transported into the computer. (spoiler alert: he helps them win.) The technology used to make it was new, and it was the first movie that merged computer-generated effects with filmed people. Due to the rendering capabilities of the time, most of it was filmed on empty stages to minimize the work that was needed. Some of the images, including the lightcycles (designed by noted designer and futurist Syd Mead) and the driving duel that they are in, remain iconic today. The soundtrack, by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos (and a couple of tracks by Journey, who agreed after Supertramp pulled out), was also groundbreaking for the time. Unfortunately, the movie was so groundbreaking that it was reportedly snubbed for a special effects Academy Award for "cheating".
There were also people wondering why a "serious" actor like Jeff Bridges (who at the time had two Oscar nominations) would go for such a "silly" movie, to which he replied, "I took the film seriously because I saw that it was breaking new ground."
--
Disney created a series of related videogames in following years, including one where a character's son is pulled into a computer to fight against the same forces, and appearances in other series, such as Kingdom Hearts.
Despite a sequel, TRON: Legacy, it seems that from the point of view of at least one of the stars, there's probably not going to be a TRON 3 due to delays with the script and story.
There was an animated series, with the voices of Boxleither and Elijah Wood, TRON: Uprising, which continued some of the themes from Legacy.
Disney is also opening a TRON-themed ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom in the near future.
--
People still want to own the lightcycles outside of the Grid.
My name is Tron. I fight for the users.
Very often now, I hear about movies that were failures at the time, and yet, all my friends saw them at the time. And we saw very few movies at the time. I don't know if we all just had weird tastes or if these articles are taking seriously Hollywood accounting by which nearly everything is a failure or what.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2022 [41 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2022 [41 favorites]
One bit of "society marches on" that amused me - in the first movie, since most people had little interaction with computers, the interfaces shown on screen had...a lot of creative licence applied. Skip several decades forward to Legacy, and when we see an ENCOM terminal of the same vintage as the ones in the first movie, we see it running...bog-standard Unix, because people today do use computers.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:14 AM on July 12, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:14 AM on July 12, 2022 [14 favorites]
TRON may not be my favorite move but I think it is the move that is most important to me.
posted by charred husk at 7:18 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by charred husk at 7:18 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I watched Free Guy recently and noted that the motivation for the protagonists is the same (yer took mah code!)
posted by credulous at 7:22 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by credulous at 7:22 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
TRON, Firefox, The Thing, Blade Runner, The Wrath of Khan, Fast Times At Ridgemont High (I was too young for that), E.T., Mad Max 2, The Challenge (missed it the first time around but I love this one on cable) . . . rich pickins that summer!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:27 AM on July 12, 2022 [21 favorites]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:27 AM on July 12, 2022 [21 favorites]
The Tron: Uprising animated series was really good. Very stylish and an interesting exploration of that universe. It's a shame it only lasted for a very short run.
Really really felt like Tron: Legacy entirely missed the point of the original movie and while it was also interesting, I didn't really feel like it was a sequel.
posted by hippybear at 7:31 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
Really really felt like Tron: Legacy entirely missed the point of the original movie and while it was also interesting, I didn't really feel like it was a sequel.
posted by hippybear at 7:31 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
Oh my goodness credulous--a number of the basic plot elements of Tron are in Free Guy.
posted by eye of newt at 7:31 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by eye of newt at 7:31 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I saw Tron with my programming group back in college. Of course the villain is the Master Control Program! And we hooted when the MCP ordered up the Logic Probes to attack. There was this one shining moment when being a nerd was OK and this was it.
posted by SPrintF at 7:42 AM on July 12, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 7:42 AM on July 12, 2022 [12 favorites]
I always figured that I was one of the few people who, when Bruce Boxleitner was cast in Babylon 5, said "Hey, it's that guy from Tron!"
Also a tip of the hat to David Warner, who always makes a good movie villain but in this film made two.
posted by Gelatin at 7:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
Also a tip of the hat to David Warner, who always makes a good movie villain but in this film made two.
posted by Gelatin at 7:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
Even though it I know (now) that it would be a nightmare to actually use, I still really want Dillinger's desk.
posted by Ickster at 7:45 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Ickster at 7:45 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
I actually really loved Tron: Legacy. It's not a rehash of the first movie at all, but an update about a very different point in the history of computing. It's about a young idealist hacker in conflict with an old idealist hacker who has been poisoned by power and success... And the soundtrack is fscking phenomenal.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:51 AM on July 12, 2022 [28 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 7:51 AM on July 12, 2022 [28 favorites]
The animated logo for Lisberger Studios features a prototype disc-wielding character -- named "Tron" but who is much more beefy and golden than the Bruce Boxleitner character.
The slime didn't even change the names, man!
posted by credulous at 7:52 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
The slime didn't even change the names, man!
posted by credulous at 7:52 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
As I recall, I was pretty high when I saw Tron way back when (first theatrical run) and being at best bemused by the drama and related hijinks. It just wasn't that good.
But, because I was just old enough to not have gotten any computer science related grounding in my education, I found it fascinating in terms of getting an insight into how things actually worked in the digital realm, even with the inevitable melodramatic extrapolations.
posted by philip-random at 7:54 AM on July 12, 2022
But, because I was just old enough to not have gotten any computer science related grounding in my education, I found it fascinating in terms of getting an insight into how things actually worked in the digital realm, even with the inevitable melodramatic extrapolations.
posted by philip-random at 7:54 AM on July 12, 2022
That "real-life lightcycle" looks cool as hell and also incredibly uncomfortable.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:59 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 7:59 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was 11 when this came out, and my lasting memory isn't so much with the movie but with the video game. My local arcade "Land of Oz", which I frequented A LOT, had a TRON game front-and-center as you entered. Unlike the rest of the vids in the place, this one had two screens, one for the player and one affixed on top of the machine to accommodate maximum spectators.
There were four main challenges in TRON: Lightcycles, Grid Bugs, Tanks, and the MPC Cone. Beat them all and move to the next level, where you go through a slightly harder version of the same four challenges.
What set this game apart for me though was that it had a networked high score board, so you were playing against everyone everywhere and not just the greasy kids you could see. Considering it was a decade or so before the internet began to really take hold, this was pretty mind-blowing. The game play was pretty janky and I was terrible at it, but the thought of being "nationally ranked," well that was mighty cool.
A couple years later there was an eerily similar but hilariously sillier game called Journey, that was like TRON, only with the members of Journey and they used guitars as guns and stuff.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:01 AM on July 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
There were four main challenges in TRON: Lightcycles, Grid Bugs, Tanks, and the MPC Cone. Beat them all and move to the next level, where you go through a slightly harder version of the same four challenges.
What set this game apart for me though was that it had a networked high score board, so you were playing against everyone everywhere and not just the greasy kids you could see. Considering it was a decade or so before the internet began to really take hold, this was pretty mind-blowing. The game play was pretty janky and I was terrible at it, but the thought of being "nationally ranked," well that was mighty cool.
A couple years later there was an eerily similar but hilariously sillier game called Journey, that was like TRON, only with the members of Journey and they used guitars as guns and stuff.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:01 AM on July 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
How was the scoreboard implemented? Did each arcade have to have a voice line for each TRON machine to dial into a central mainframe through or something?
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on July 12, 2022
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on July 12, 2022
Just unlocked a memory of playing the TRON arcade game. Whenever I cleared a level, I’d spin the joystick dial so that TRON’s arm would spin around during the transition to the next level. I picked up that habit from watching someone else, and a friend of mine picked it up from me. I wonder how many people did that…
posted by darkstar at 8:13 AM on July 12, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by darkstar at 8:13 AM on July 12, 2022 [17 favorites]
Very often now, I hear about movies that were failures at the time, and yet, all my friends saw them at the time. And we saw very few movies at the time.
I feel like this has to be Hollywood Accounting (tm). Tron was not a *huge* movie, like E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it was still the 26th biggest box office movie of 1982. Maybe it underperformed given its marketing budget?
But definitely for a certain kind of kid, like me, who was dying absolutely dying for an Atari, Tron (on the blockbuster shelves when I got my hands on it), was a revelation.
posted by dis_integration at 8:15 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I feel like this has to be Hollywood Accounting (tm). Tron was not a *huge* movie, like E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it was still the 26th biggest box office movie of 1982. Maybe it underperformed given its marketing budget?
But definitely for a certain kind of kid, like me, who was dying absolutely dying for an Atari, Tron (on the blockbuster shelves when I got my hands on it), was a revelation.
posted by dis_integration at 8:15 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of the really surprising things about TRON is actually how few digital animations or effects there are in total in the movie.
If I'm remembering correctly it's well under about 15 minutes of the total runtime. And even many of those being counted as pure or hybrid digital shots were rendered in black and white and colored in with airbrushing or optical rotoscoping.
This can be seen clearly in the lightcycle and tank scenes. Those aren't shaded and colored by computer and almost all of the color and shading in those scenes is airbrushing, which is why it has that weird glow and flicker happening.
Everything else is all traditional optical effects, composites, hand animation and rotoscoping. Most of the "sets" in the Grid scenes were matte paintings and hybrids traditional optical effects and processing, notably the "backlit animation" style that was increasingly popular at the time.
Another weird effect they used was filming the live actors in black and white and using blacklights or retro-reflective elements in their on-set Grid costumes which was later rotoscoped and composited to the bright video game colors you see in the film, IE the blue colors for the characters/programs free of MCP control and red for everything and everyone else. This is why the live action characters flicker so much and parts of them will sort of clip in and out of existence.
posted by loquacious at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [23 favorites]
If I'm remembering correctly it's well under about 15 minutes of the total runtime. And even many of those being counted as pure or hybrid digital shots were rendered in black and white and colored in with airbrushing or optical rotoscoping.
This can be seen clearly in the lightcycle and tank scenes. Those aren't shaded and colored by computer and almost all of the color and shading in those scenes is airbrushing, which is why it has that weird glow and flicker happening.
Everything else is all traditional optical effects, composites, hand animation and rotoscoping. Most of the "sets" in the Grid scenes were matte paintings and hybrids traditional optical effects and processing, notably the "backlit animation" style that was increasingly popular at the time.
Another weird effect they used was filming the live actors in black and white and using blacklights or retro-reflective elements in their on-set Grid costumes which was later rotoscoped and composited to the bright video game colors you see in the film, IE the blue colors for the characters/programs free of MCP control and red for everything and everyone else. This is why the live action characters flicker so much and parts of them will sort of clip in and out of existence.
posted by loquacious at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [23 favorites]
Tron, aside from being one of my favorite movies ever (and a solid film about faith and doubt in the concept of a prime mover or creator) is responsible for one of my favorite Simpsons jokes ever, from the Homer in 3D episode where Homer gets sucked into the terrifying, hypothetical “third dimension.” When asked what it looks like, he asks if anyone has ever seen that old movie Tron, and everyone in the room does the no/no/no/yes thing, and Wiggum, who said yes, looks sheepish and immediately says “I mean no.”
posted by Ghidorah at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [21 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [21 favorites]
How was the scoreboard implemented?
I wish I knew, at the time it felt like magic.
Best guess is that it was a phone line dial-up, and I'd guess that in no way was the board actually giving real-time updates. Like, maybe they got the networked high score list each night or something and submitted their own scores at that time?
darkstar: I totally did the arm spin thing with the dial.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I wish I knew, at the time it felt like magic.
Best guess is that it was a phone line dial-up, and I'd guess that in no way was the board actually giving real-time updates. Like, maybe they got the networked high score list each night or something and submitted their own scores at that time?
darkstar: I totally did the arm spin thing with the dial.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:19 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also darkstar: the competing arcade to Land of OZ in my childhood town was called...DarkStar
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:25 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:25 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Tron: Deadly Discs and Tron: Solar Sailor were great on the Intellivision. The latter had speech "synthesis" (not really synthesis.
posted by emelenjr at 8:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 8:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Everyone spun the dial on the TRON arcade game.
It went bink-bink-bink and that's a fun sound.
Hot take that burns me every time: the TRON Legacy soundtrack is the only decent music Daft Punk ever made.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:38 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
It went bink-bink-bink and that's a fun sound.
Hot take that burns me every time: the TRON Legacy soundtrack is the only decent music Daft Punk ever made.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:38 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
Disney is also opening a TRON-themed ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom in the near future.
It's a duplicate of the one in Shanghai so you can see the finished attraction. The ride itself is nothing groundbreaking but the theming of the ride just looks incredible. The whole TRON asthetic hasn't aged at all.
If you appreciate the video game, there's a bunch of stuff from Midway that wound up in my hands in the 2000s and I handed off to some arcade bloggers. The conversations between Midway and Disney were...interesting.
Disney also planned for a TRON arcade at EPCOT Center and even had signage up at the opening of the park. I remember trying to peek past the plywood and seeing if anything was going on inside the building but apparently it never got past the planning stage.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:42 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's a duplicate of the one in Shanghai so you can see the finished attraction. The ride itself is nothing groundbreaking but the theming of the ride just looks incredible. The whole TRON asthetic hasn't aged at all.
If you appreciate the video game, there's a bunch of stuff from Midway that wound up in my hands in the 2000s and I handed off to some arcade bloggers. The conversations between Midway and Disney were...interesting.
Disney also planned for a TRON arcade at EPCOT Center and even had signage up at the opening of the park. I remember trying to peek past the plywood and seeing if anything was going on inside the building but apparently it never got past the planning stage.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:42 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Just unlocked a memory of playing the TRON arcade game. Whenever I cleared a level, I’d spin the joystick dial so that TRON’s arm would spin around during the transition to the next level. I picked up that habit from watching someone else, and a friend of mine picked it up from me. I wonder how many people did that…
I either spun in around or wiggled it back and forth so he waved.
posted by BlueDuke at 8:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I either spun in around or wiggled it back and forth so he waved.
posted by BlueDuke at 8:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I saw Tron back when it first came out. Dropped a purple microdot before going. It was...amazing. The big MCP reveal was insane. Even without chemical augmentation, it's a great bit of visual fun. Highly underrated, IMHO.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:44 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 8:44 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I liked the movie well enough, but I was fascinated by the arcade game, because of the metatextual aspect of an arcade game about an arcade game that you could actually enter. I played it a lot in college, and probably would have played it more--and, given the chance, would have preferred to have been in the game, MCP or no, because the first two years of college were kind of rough for me--except that I used to get shooting pains in my arm, like some sort if rapid-onset RSI, from jerking the joystick during the lightcycle phase.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
In the rural Irish backwater where I grew up a computer and SFX-obsessed kid, it could take six months for a film to arrive at our local fleapit. I pored over every picture and clip of TRON I could find in computer magazines and on television. We played lightcycles on graph paper in school. And then it arrived and a lot of it went over my head. I still love it though, and I love the sequel more every time I see it.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:53 AM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:53 AM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
This can be seen clearly in the lightcycle and tank scenes. Those aren't shaded and colored by computer and almost all of the color and shading in those scenes is airbrushing, which is why it has that weird glow and flicker happening.
It's possible they just didn't use that capacity for some reason, but the lightcycles and tanks were done by MAGi Synthavision, and their system was certainly capable of color and at least simple shading.
Synthavision was neat because it didn't use wireframes or external polygons -- to build an object, you used a set of solid primitives and then added and subtracted them from each other with boolean operators.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:56 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's possible they just didn't use that capacity for some reason, but the lightcycles and tanks were done by MAGi Synthavision, and their system was certainly capable of color and at least simple shading.
Synthavision was neat because it didn't use wireframes or external polygons -- to build an object, you used a set of solid primitives and then added and subtracted them from each other with boolean operators.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:56 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Tron is what prompted Ken Perlin to create Perlin Noise, which if you’ve done anything in either realtime graphics (not just games but absolutely anything that needs a good noise function that can be performantly updated frame to frame) OR procedural content… is basically everywhere. Perlin noise (and its descendants) is what initially generates the landscape contours of Minecraft and nearly all similar infinite world voxel implementations, and is frequently the basis for multi-layered “texture” fine details on surfaces when the camera gets too close to a wall in a 3D game.
It’s part of the mathematical bedrock of modern games but also any field semi-adjacent to them, and the hardware limitations facing the team behind Tron’s embryonic CGI is why we have it. Doesn’t hurt he left the original implementation unpatented (thank heaven the studio never noticed), and was very open-handed with the richer simplex noise algorithm that works better for volumetrics.
posted by Ryvar at 8:58 AM on July 12, 2022 [34 favorites]
It’s part of the mathematical bedrock of modern games but also any field semi-adjacent to them, and the hardware limitations facing the team behind Tron’s embryonic CGI is why we have it. Doesn’t hurt he left the original implementation unpatented (thank heaven the studio never noticed), and was very open-handed with the richer simplex noise algorithm that works better for volumetrics.
posted by Ryvar at 8:58 AM on July 12, 2022 [34 favorites]
I remember Tron for its relevance to the computer field as much as for the movie itself.
When they say the VFX work was groundbreaking, they don't just mean it was artistically novel. No, it required a whole new generation of computer hardware to make it happen. This is years before E&S or Pixar re-made the 1980s 3d graphics industry as we remember it today.
Tron and Flight of the Navigator both relied on machines from Dave Poole's company. Poole was a former Stanford AI Lab contributor who developed a series of 36 bit super-minis based on his SAIL work, culminating in the Foonly F-1. The "super minis" occupied a weird space in between small and slow minicomputers (e.g. PDP-8, PDP-11), and enormously complicated mainframes (e.g. S/370)
Poole's 36-bit PDP-10 derivatives were big, hot, expensive machines but they were fast -- tens of times faster than the microprocessors of that era. This blog post contains links to most of the publicly available material, but I have copy-pasted the relevant links just in case the blog disappears some day.
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:05 AM on July 12, 2022 [22 favorites]
When they say the VFX work was groundbreaking, they don't just mean it was artistically novel. No, it required a whole new generation of computer hardware to make it happen. This is years before E&S or Pixar re-made the 1980s 3d graphics industry as we remember it today.
Tron and Flight of the Navigator both relied on machines from Dave Poole's company. Poole was a former Stanford AI Lab contributor who developed a series of 36 bit super-minis based on his SAIL work, culminating in the Foonly F-1. The "super minis" occupied a weird space in between small and slow minicomputers (e.g. PDP-8, PDP-11), and enormously complicated mainframes (e.g. S/370)
Poole's 36-bit PDP-10 derivatives were big, hot, expensive machines but they were fast -- tens of times faster than the microprocessors of that era. This blog post contains links to most of the publicly available material, but I have copy-pasted the relevant links just in case the blog disappears some day.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Foonly_F-1
- http://bitsavers.org/pdf/foonly/
- http://bitsavers.org/pdf/foonly/Foonly_Product_Overview.pdf
- http://dave.zfx.com/f1.html(check out the pictures!)
- http://pdp10.nocrew.org/cpu/processors.html
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:05 AM on July 12, 2022 [22 favorites]
You're telling me the movie TRON was released to the public FIRST???? I always assumed it was a movie based on an already popular arcade game. This is some real trans-media megatext stuff.
posted by subdee at 9:20 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by subdee at 9:20 AM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
The trailer for Tron blew my ten-year old mind.
The movie couldn't possibly live up to it, and it didn't.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 9:38 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
The movie couldn't possibly live up to it, and it didn't.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 9:38 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Very often now, I hear about movies that were failures at the time, and yet, all my friends saw them at the time. And we saw very few movies at the time. I don't know if we all just had weird tastes or if these articles are taking seriously Hollywood accounting by which nearly everything is a failure or what.
It was only a couple of years ago that I learned that Labyrinth wasn't a huge hit on initial release. Everybody I knew was crazy about it. I'm rarely one to wax nostalgic about the past, but there were some good things about not instantly knowing the world's opinion about everything.
The one year I was on student council in high school, one of our jobs was to rent the feature film for the end-of-the-year movie day, when they parked the entire student body in the auditorium for six hours instead of just giving us an extra day of summer vacation. We requested Tron from the catalog, but the distribution company sent us some Jerry Lewis movie instead. So embarrassing.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:45 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
It was only a couple of years ago that I learned that Labyrinth wasn't a huge hit on initial release. Everybody I knew was crazy about it. I'm rarely one to wax nostalgic about the past, but there were some good things about not instantly knowing the world's opinion about everything.
The one year I was on student council in high school, one of our jobs was to rent the feature film for the end-of-the-year movie day, when they parked the entire student body in the auditorium for six hours instead of just giving us an extra day of summer vacation. We requested Tron from the catalog, but the distribution company sent us some Jerry Lewis movie instead. So embarrassing.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:45 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
Tron and Flight of the Navigator both relied on machines from Dave Poole's company. Poole was a former Stanford AI Lab contributor who developed a series of 36 bit super-minis based on his SAIL work, culminating in the Foonly F-1.
Eponyfavosterical!
posted by foonly at 9:47 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
Eponyfavosterical!
posted by foonly at 9:47 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
The always-fun Corridor Digital crew did a great overview of the original SFX and challenged themselves to remake the Lightcycle stuff in a day. What they cranked out was remarkably similar to the original.
posted by rp at 10:00 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by rp at 10:00 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
It was only a couple of years ago that I learned that Labyrinth wasn't a huge hit on initial release. Everybody I knew was crazy about it. I'm rarely one to wax nostalgic about the past, but there were some good things about not instantly knowing the world's opinion about everything.
Conversely, not a lot of Trekkies had a lot of good things to say about Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the time (some liked it, but it's still a bit of a surprise to hear from people who loved it--I'm talking about the original theatrical release, not the eventual Director's Cut that significantly improved it), but it did well enough in theaters to justify Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is regarded by many if not most as the best of the Trek movies, but grossed less than TMP.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Conversely, not a lot of Trekkies had a lot of good things to say about Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the time (some liked it, but it's still a bit of a surprise to hear from people who loved it--I'm talking about the original theatrical release, not the eventual Director's Cut that significantly improved it), but it did well enough in theaters to justify Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is regarded by many if not most as the best of the Trek movies, but grossed less than TMP.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Another weird effect they used was filming the live actors in black and white and using blacklights or retro-reflective elements in their on-set Grid costumes which was later rotoscoped and composited to the bright video game colors you see in the film
I found some footage of this in the Blu-ray bonus stuff. It's incredibly clever work, but was all done painstakingly by hand. What's neat is that the B/W footage looks to be done in a very grainy fashion which added that video/rezzed look to the actors when put back into the film.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:36 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I found some footage of this in the Blu-ray bonus stuff. It's incredibly clever work, but was all done painstakingly by hand. What's neat is that the B/W footage looks to be done in a very grainy fashion which added that video/rezzed look to the actors when put back into the film.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:36 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a person who saw it at the time and watched as it, and its contents and ideas, became a part of the culture-space, none of us saw it as a failure. Not sure where that idea comes from.
posted by spincycle at 10:37 AM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by spincycle at 10:37 AM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Seeing Tron was one of or maybe the only time I've seen a movie totally by myself in the theater. Went in to a matinee in a tiny theater in Wayneboro, PA and sat down and they ran the movie for just me and the projectionist.
posted by octothorpe at 10:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 10:43 AM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
The Tron arcade game is a true classic. But I'd submit that Discs of Tron is even better, particularly the standup model that was a little booth. The gameplay replicates the jai-alai-like game from the movie, or rather jai alai if it was a duel to the death with blobs of light. Great stuff.
I also really enjoyed Tron 2.0, the 2003 FPS game. It did a nice job translating the original Tron world into an explorable game world. And the bloom effects and production design looked fresh and exciting, particularly in an era before shaders made this kind of thing easy.
I bristle at seeing the Tron movie characterized as a "failure". It was so wildly creative and fun. And fantastic effects, almost entirely practical. The movie still looks fresh today. The plot's a bit of a mess with a terrible pointless 80s romance thing. (Would love to see a queer edit with the love affair being between Tron and Ram.) I guess it didn't make enough money.
But it has been hugely influential; it wasn't until years later that Johnny Mnemonic and Lawnmower Man advanced the cyberspace idea. Mind you, Tron was cyberspace of its own kind, released the same year Gibson coined the word.
posted by Nelson at 10:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I also really enjoyed Tron 2.0, the 2003 FPS game. It did a nice job translating the original Tron world into an explorable game world. And the bloom effects and production design looked fresh and exciting, particularly in an era before shaders made this kind of thing easy.
I bristle at seeing the Tron movie characterized as a "failure". It was so wildly creative and fun. And fantastic effects, almost entirely practical. The movie still looks fresh today. The plot's a bit of a mess with a terrible pointless 80s romance thing. (Would love to see a queer edit with the love affair being between Tron and Ram.) I guess it didn't make enough money.
But it has been hugely influential; it wasn't until years later that Johnny Mnemonic and Lawnmower Man advanced the cyberspace idea. Mind you, Tron was cyberspace of its own kind, released the same year Gibson coined the word.
posted by Nelson at 10:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
That whole era of early 80s "failure" movies is fascinating to me. Blade Runner, Brazil, Labyrinth, Tron... there's probably a few others in that list of movies that are considered utterly iconic now that were not popular in the theaters but found a life on the then-new VHS rental stores.
posted by hippybear at 10:51 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 10:51 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
The TRON arcade game was the first one with stereo sound (dual AY-3 chips) -- and those detuned squarewaves hit pretty hard in 1982.
(Some say that Marble Madness was the first "true stereo" arcade game, but TRON had two analog sound channels going to separate speakers.)
The movie soundtrack had some mix level issues but was also pretty spiffy. Personally though, I prefer Stemage's take on the score in PRIORITY ONE: THE Music of TRON. (And speaking of Marble Madness, there's also the excellent Where Good Marbles Go To Die.)
posted by Foosnark at 10:57 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
(Some say that Marble Madness was the first "true stereo" arcade game, but TRON had two analog sound channels going to separate speakers.)
The movie soundtrack had some mix level issues but was also pretty spiffy. Personally though, I prefer Stemage's take on the score in PRIORITY ONE: THE Music of TRON. (And speaking of Marble Madness, there's also the excellent Where Good Marbles Go To Die.)
posted by Foosnark at 10:57 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's fascinating to me as well, because it seems like a nearly impossible task to market a film like TRON in 1982. Hollywood was fixed in their ways of promoting films and with an odd bird like this (or Blade Runner, or Brazil, etc) how do you convince viewers to go see it? You really hoped for word of mouth and repeat viewings. There's a reason why Star Wars was in theatres for over a year.
My family was the kind where we went to the movies every Saturday night and we saw whatever was playing. I really don't believe I would have seen TRON back then if it wasn't for that.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:58 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
My family was the kind where we went to the movies every Saturday night and we saw whatever was playing. I really don't believe I would have seen TRON back then if it wasn't for that.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:58 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
That whole era of early 80s "failure" movies is fascinating to me. Blade Runner, Brazil, Labyrinth, Tron... there's probably a few others in that list of movies that are considered utterly iconic now that were not popular in the theaters but found a life on the then-new VHS rental stores.
The Thing was a total box-office bomb.
posted by octothorpe at 11:05 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Thing was a total box-office bomb.
posted by octothorpe at 11:05 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
TRON is one of my more biting parental failures, because my kids HATED it so much that I lost major street cred on movie selection. Years later they still say “that movie was bad, but not TRON bad.”
Also, fun personal anecdote- when I was an intern architect building models in NY, we subleased space to Joseph Kosinski and his then partner that co-owned a design visualization studio called KDLAB that did ad work and weird little design videos like this one for Nike. He was a graduate of the Columbia architecture program in a period where computational design and rendering work were heavily stressed, to the point where many students found it easier to get jobs in CGI than in architecture firms post tech bubble in 2001. You can see a straight aesthetic line from his early work to TRON: Legacy.
posted by q*ben at 11:17 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also, fun personal anecdote- when I was an intern architect building models in NY, we subleased space to Joseph Kosinski and his then partner that co-owned a design visualization studio called KDLAB that did ad work and weird little design videos like this one for Nike. He was a graduate of the Columbia architecture program in a period where computational design and rendering work were heavily stressed, to the point where many students found it easier to get jobs in CGI than in architecture firms post tech bubble in 2001. You can see a straight aesthetic line from his early work to TRON: Legacy.
posted by q*ben at 11:17 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Gelatin: I always figured that I was one of the few people who, when Bruce Boxleitner was cast in Babylon 5, said "Hey, it's that guy from Tron!"
Amusing trivia: the "accounting program" you see getting herded to the game grid is played by Peter "Londo Mollari" Jurasik.
Apparently TRON made its cost back in domestic showings, but not much more than that, due to the cost of the making (which probably also included the cost of buying the Foonlys and the software), so some beancounter somewhere decided "made the most money of a live action movie since Pete's Dragon" wasn't good enough, for which I think Hollywood Accounting is the kind of thing that gets one dispatched to a special level of Hell.
posted by mephron at 11:26 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
Amusing trivia: the "accounting program" you see getting herded to the game grid is played by Peter "Londo Mollari" Jurasik.
Apparently TRON made its cost back in domestic showings, but not much more than that, due to the cost of the making (which probably also included the cost of buying the Foonlys and the software), so some beancounter somewhere decided "made the most money of a live action movie since Pete's Dragon" wasn't good enough, for which I think Hollywood Accounting is the kind of thing that gets one dispatched to a special level of Hell.
posted by mephron at 11:26 AM on July 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
That whole era of early 80s "failure" movies is fascinating to me. Blade Runner, Brazil, Labyrinth, Tron... there's probably a few others in that list of movies that are considered utterly iconic now that were not popular in the theaters but found a life on the then-new VHS rental stores.
The Thing was a total box-office bomb.
Heck, The Princess Bride was a bomb until people discovered it on VHS.
The Wizard of Oz flopped when it first came out, but that was way before the 80s. It wasn't VHS that resurrected it, but the invention of Television.
posted by eye of newt at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
The Thing was a total box-office bomb.
Heck, The Princess Bride was a bomb until people discovered it on VHS.
The Wizard of Oz flopped when it first came out, but that was way before the 80s. It wasn't VHS that resurrected it, but the invention of Television.
posted by eye of newt at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Mead's design docs for the lightcycle are here.
posted by mhoye at 11:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 11:35 AM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
But I'd submit that Discs of Tron is even better, particularly the standup model that was a little booth.
One of my only memories from visiting Walt Disney World in 1986 (1987?) was playing this in the Polynesian Resort's arcade. My father sat on that little half-seat in the back of the standup cabinet and I stood on his knees. I remember being quite good at it, but for all I know we were just watching the attract mode demo.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of my only memories from visiting Walt Disney World in 1986 (1987?) was playing this in the Polynesian Resort's arcade. My father sat on that little half-seat in the back of the standup cabinet and I stood on his knees. I remember being quite good at it, but for all I know we were just watching the attract mode demo.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:48 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's possible they just didn't use that capacity for some reason, but the lightcycles and tanks were done by MAGi Synthavision, and their system was certainly capable of color and at least simple shading.
As I recall it was a mix. Major parts of the lightcycle scenes in particular were rendered and used as is, but with compositing and then retouched as needed, other parts were manually shaded and airbrushed using rendered frames as guides. When you see stuff in Tron that looks like ray tracing or rendered shading it's likely that at a minimum they airbrushed over it and used the digital rendered keyframes as a guide.
Granted I'm basing this based on some very old "making of" footage I saw many years ago but there were definitely airbrushed cels happening for the lightcycle and tank scenes where they were basically re-doing the rendered frames with airbrushing for smoother shading and brighter colors.
Something to remember is they didn't really have a way to digitally print directly to film or cels back then, much less even try to play back pre-rendered digital video files at film speeds. As I understand it, everything you see as rendered as digital had to pass through a CRT which was then captured photographically.
You could do all of the in-computer rendering and shading you wanted to do and wait for but it still had to pass through the resolution of a CRT being photographed by a camera.
Trying to do all of those digital scenes and elements purely as a CRT+photo process would have left some really strange and interesting artifacts and noise from the much lower resolution CRT pixels and would be nearly impossible to use for composites without getting destructive amounts of Moire interference.
What's neat is that the B/W footage looks to be done in a very grainy fashion which added that video/rezzed look to the actors when put back into the film.
Something else I just now learned from the wikipedia article about the production notes was that for major parts of the live character acting they used large format Kodalith film, which is effectively high contrast black and white graphic arts film that was batch graded and sorted into numbered boxes and runs so they could keep a more consistent contrast and film speed between shots - but the production team initially didn't use the film in sequence as intended by Kodak so this lead to some of the glitches in contrast you see in certain segments of the film.
Curiously Kodalith is the same kind or class of large format high contrast film you might use to make the initial masks and layouts that would be reduced to the glass masters used for etching computer chips. (Or screen printing, or offset printing, etc.)
Tron and Flight of the Navigator both relied on machines from Dave Poole's company. Poole was a former Stanford AI Lab contributor who developed a series of 36 bit super-minis based on his SAIL work, culminating in the Foonly F-1. The "super minis" occupied a weird space in between small and slow minicomputers (e.g. PDP-8, PDP-11), and enormously complicated mainframes (e.g. S/370)
I was hoping someone would talk about the Foonly F-1.
I can't help but notice that the logo for Foonly is a dead ringer for the ENCOM logo. That has to be an intentional thing a a bit of an Easter egg.
Also I'm realizing I have never, ever seen the original optical print for TRON in the theater. About the closest I've come is watching it on the early 1990s LaserDisc release on a really big Sony Trinitron.
posted by loquacious at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
As I recall it was a mix. Major parts of the lightcycle scenes in particular were rendered and used as is, but with compositing and then retouched as needed, other parts were manually shaded and airbrushed using rendered frames as guides. When you see stuff in Tron that looks like ray tracing or rendered shading it's likely that at a minimum they airbrushed over it and used the digital rendered keyframes as a guide.
Granted I'm basing this based on some very old "making of" footage I saw many years ago but there were definitely airbrushed cels happening for the lightcycle and tank scenes where they were basically re-doing the rendered frames with airbrushing for smoother shading and brighter colors.
Something to remember is they didn't really have a way to digitally print directly to film or cels back then, much less even try to play back pre-rendered digital video files at film speeds. As I understand it, everything you see as rendered as digital had to pass through a CRT which was then captured photographically.
You could do all of the in-computer rendering and shading you wanted to do and wait for but it still had to pass through the resolution of a CRT being photographed by a camera.
Trying to do all of those digital scenes and elements purely as a CRT+photo process would have left some really strange and interesting artifacts and noise from the much lower resolution CRT pixels and would be nearly impossible to use for composites without getting destructive amounts of Moire interference.
What's neat is that the B/W footage looks to be done in a very grainy fashion which added that video/rezzed look to the actors when put back into the film.
Something else I just now learned from the wikipedia article about the production notes was that for major parts of the live character acting they used large format Kodalith film, which is effectively high contrast black and white graphic arts film that was batch graded and sorted into numbered boxes and runs so they could keep a more consistent contrast and film speed between shots - but the production team initially didn't use the film in sequence as intended by Kodak so this lead to some of the glitches in contrast you see in certain segments of the film.
Curiously Kodalith is the same kind or class of large format high contrast film you might use to make the initial masks and layouts that would be reduced to the glass masters used for etching computer chips. (Or screen printing, or offset printing, etc.)
Tron and Flight of the Navigator both relied on machines from Dave Poole's company. Poole was a former Stanford AI Lab contributor who developed a series of 36 bit super-minis based on his SAIL work, culminating in the Foonly F-1. The "super minis" occupied a weird space in between small and slow minicomputers (e.g. PDP-8, PDP-11), and enormously complicated mainframes (e.g. S/370)
I was hoping someone would talk about the Foonly F-1.
I can't help but notice that the logo for Foonly is a dead ringer for the ENCOM logo. That has to be an intentional thing a a bit of an Easter egg.
Also I'm realizing I have never, ever seen the original optical print for TRON in the theater. About the closest I've come is watching it on the early 1990s LaserDisc release on a really big Sony Trinitron.
posted by loquacious at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I can't find any reference to this on the web but I swear I read business articles during the early eighties talking about rumors that Disney was going to quit making movies all together and just concentrate on theme parks and merchandise licensing.
posted by octothorpe at 12:12 PM on July 12, 2022
posted by octothorpe at 12:12 PM on July 12, 2022
It’s only a failure because it failed to deliver money back to its producers. Otherwise, it’s a pretty great series that spawned so many descendants. I would love to see a third part with a revival for Bruce Boxleitner, a terribly underrated actor.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:14 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:14 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
As I understand it, everything you see as rendered as digital had to pass through a CRT which was then captured photographically.
I'm not sure this is quite the case. I have some 8x10 prints that Disney mailed to Midway to use as reference for the video game and they are much clearer and richer than anything captured off of a CRT. Was there a way to expose 35mm slide film off a CRT directly? I don't think laser recording to film was fully fleshed out in 1982 but it was close.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:14 PM on July 12, 2022
I'm not sure this is quite the case. I have some 8x10 prints that Disney mailed to Midway to use as reference for the video game and they are much clearer and richer than anything captured off of a CRT. Was there a way to expose 35mm slide film off a CRT directly? I don't think laser recording to film was fully fleshed out in 1982 but it was close.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:14 PM on July 12, 2022
Also, someone may actually know the answer to this very apocryphal point of Tron, or maybe it'll inspire someone out there to investigate it:
So there are a number known Easter Eggs in Tron, notably the Pac Man graphics behind Sark in a certain scene, as well as a "hidden Mickey" in at least one of the landscapes.
So, in many of the animated landscape and set pieces where there are circuit traces all over the structures in the scene there are blips of light that run along the circuit traces, representing electricity or bits moving through the circuits.
These moving bits of light were likely produced by using an optical mask photo process and the backlit animation style they were using. So you have your primary mask for the circuit traces, then you'd have a secondary mask of some arbitrary shape that was either being manually moved or mechanically stepped like a multiplane animation camera so that the arbitrary shape allowed light passing through it to follow along the circuit traces of the primary mask.
You can see evidence of this if you pay attention to how the bits of light follow the traces around corners and curves and how they'll speed up or slow down based on the angles involved. Example, let's say you have an L shaped piece of circuitry in your primary mask and then the secondary mask is just a straight line that's mostly perpendicular to one part of the L shape and then move it frame by frame at a constant velocity, and then the bit of light will look like it accelerates around the corner and "moves" much faster when it gets to the part of the L that's more parallel and less perpendicular to the L.
You can see this effect all over the place in Tron where the bits move slower or faster depending on this incident angle between the primary and secondary masks.
This is a known trick and technique not just in animation but in graphic arts and is similar to how one creates halftones for process color printing, or adding textures to a given graphical mask, IE, using layers with translation movements or angles to create a third print that combines the two graphics.
Based on watching the Laser Disc release of Tron while in, uh, altered states I'm almost certain there are some Easter eggs hidden there in those secondary masks that have not been decoded or noticed even today.
I think if you did some long exposure or frame stacking techniques of the kind used for astrophotography or time lapse effects you might be able to reconstruct what graphics they actually used for those secondary masks creating the bits of light following the traces.
You could all kinds of line work or graphics in those secondary masks, like a hidden Mickey silhouette or even whole words or symbols and they'd be almost impossible to decipher accurately with the naked eye.
posted by loquacious at 12:15 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
So there are a number known Easter Eggs in Tron, notably the Pac Man graphics behind Sark in a certain scene, as well as a "hidden Mickey" in at least one of the landscapes.
So, in many of the animated landscape and set pieces where there are circuit traces all over the structures in the scene there are blips of light that run along the circuit traces, representing electricity or bits moving through the circuits.
These moving bits of light were likely produced by using an optical mask photo process and the backlit animation style they were using. So you have your primary mask for the circuit traces, then you'd have a secondary mask of some arbitrary shape that was either being manually moved or mechanically stepped like a multiplane animation camera so that the arbitrary shape allowed light passing through it to follow along the circuit traces of the primary mask.
You can see evidence of this if you pay attention to how the bits of light follow the traces around corners and curves and how they'll speed up or slow down based on the angles involved. Example, let's say you have an L shaped piece of circuitry in your primary mask and then the secondary mask is just a straight line that's mostly perpendicular to one part of the L shape and then move it frame by frame at a constant velocity, and then the bit of light will look like it accelerates around the corner and "moves" much faster when it gets to the part of the L that's more parallel and less perpendicular to the L.
You can see this effect all over the place in Tron where the bits move slower or faster depending on this incident angle between the primary and secondary masks.
This is a known trick and technique not just in animation but in graphic arts and is similar to how one creates halftones for process color printing, or adding textures to a given graphical mask, IE, using layers with translation movements or angles to create a third print that combines the two graphics.
Based on watching the Laser Disc release of Tron while in, uh, altered states I'm almost certain there are some Easter eggs hidden there in those secondary masks that have not been decoded or noticed even today.
I think if you did some long exposure or frame stacking techniques of the kind used for astrophotography or time lapse effects you might be able to reconstruct what graphics they actually used for those secondary masks creating the bits of light following the traces.
You could all kinds of line work or graphics in those secondary masks, like a hidden Mickey silhouette or even whole words or symbols and they'd be almost impossible to decipher accurately with the naked eye.
posted by loquacious at 12:15 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
PRIORITY ONE: THE Music of TRON.
Whatever you think of Tron Legacy (I love it), the Daft Punk score kicks ass.
Solar Sailer
Derezzed (as heard in the movie, and official)
End of Line
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Whatever you think of Tron Legacy (I love it), the Daft Punk score kicks ass.
Solar Sailer
Derezzed (as heard in the movie, and official)
End of Line
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Whatever you think of Tron Legacy (I love it), the Daft Punk score kicks ass.
I was bored silly by that movie but played the hell out of that soundtrack for years.
posted by octothorpe at 12:20 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was bored silly by that movie but played the hell out of that soundtrack for years.
posted by octothorpe at 12:20 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Heck, The Princess Bride was a bomb until people discovered it on VHS.
I think there's some misunderstanding of what was a "bomb" back then, also influenced by the very different movie making economics of today being projected back onto a simpler time.
Princess Bride made $35 million on a $16 million budget. It was only released on 800 screens, which means the studio wasn't putting their full weight behind it. It was a super well reviewed, very profitable movie and everyone was happy about it and I doubt anyone thought it could have done more. The cult following and VHS sales was a plus.
Tron had very similar numbers--grossed a tad bit less, cost a tad bit more--but also got more of a studio push. More screens at release, but also the PR department got all these articles and magazine covers hyping it. So while it wasn't really a bomb either, there was more room to be disappointed with its performance.
posted by mark k at 12:25 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think there's some misunderstanding of what was a "bomb" back then, also influenced by the very different movie making economics of today being projected back onto a simpler time.
Princess Bride made $35 million on a $16 million budget. It was only released on 800 screens, which means the studio wasn't putting their full weight behind it. It was a super well reviewed, very profitable movie and everyone was happy about it and I doubt anyone thought it could have done more. The cult following and VHS sales was a plus.
Tron had very similar numbers--grossed a tad bit less, cost a tad bit more--but also got more of a studio push. More screens at release, but also the PR department got all these articles and magazine covers hyping it. So while it wasn't really a bomb either, there was more room to be disappointed with its performance.
posted by mark k at 12:25 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I went to a very low-key art-house sized industry sneak of Princess Bride. I recall everyone loving it, which was rather different than the much flashier one I went to for The Wizard.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2022
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2022
It was only released on 800 screens
I don't know exactly what the total screen count might have been back when The Princess Bride was released, but for the mid-80s, 800 screens sounds like a very wide release. The whole giant mall multiscreen cinema thing was only just beginning to be developed at that time.
posted by hippybear at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2022
I don't know exactly what the total screen count might have been back when The Princess Bride was released, but for the mid-80s, 800 screens sounds like a very wide release. The whole giant mall multiscreen cinema thing was only just beginning to be developed at that time.
posted by hippybear at 12:30 PM on July 12, 2022
Was there a way to expose 35mm slide film off a CRT directly?
Yes, this is exactly what I'm implying and how they captured all of the digital shots or frames for Tron, and what I mean when saying the CRT was the only way they could output rendered graphics to film.
This is how they did screen captures and photographic records even before Tron going back to the 1950s and is known as a film recorder or CRT film recorder.
You also used to be able to get film recorders for scientific devices like oscilloscopes. It was just a long pyramid shaped box that matched the focal width and depth of a camera. One end bolted on your CRT and on the other end you had a film camera, often a Polaroid for instant results for scientific logging and records.
Using vector CRTs was another way to get even higher resolution output and considering the use of the Foonly-F1 they may have used storage tube vector CRTs for the primary output path for monochrome digital to film transfers, and you could even conceivably do multi-pass prints to render to color film stock using color filters and doing one color at a time or doing multi-channel compositing.
The opposite of this is a Telecine.
A lot of early examples of computer art and animation used special higher resolution CRTs with a film camera pointed at them from within a light box or baffle. As far as I know people used this technique well into the 90s because it was more available and still cheaper than color film laser output.
posted by loquacious at 12:32 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yes, this is exactly what I'm implying and how they captured all of the digital shots or frames for Tron, and what I mean when saying the CRT was the only way they could output rendered graphics to film.
This is how they did screen captures and photographic records even before Tron going back to the 1950s and is known as a film recorder or CRT film recorder.
You also used to be able to get film recorders for scientific devices like oscilloscopes. It was just a long pyramid shaped box that matched the focal width and depth of a camera. One end bolted on your CRT and on the other end you had a film camera, often a Polaroid for instant results for scientific logging and records.
Using vector CRTs was another way to get even higher resolution output and considering the use of the Foonly-F1 they may have used storage tube vector CRTs for the primary output path for monochrome digital to film transfers, and you could even conceivably do multi-pass prints to render to color film stock using color filters and doing one color at a time or doing multi-channel compositing.
The opposite of this is a Telecine.
A lot of early examples of computer art and animation used special higher resolution CRTs with a film camera pointed at them from within a light box or baffle. As far as I know people used this technique well into the 90s because it was more available and still cheaper than color film laser output.
posted by loquacious at 12:32 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
for the mid-80s, 800 screens sounds like a very wide release
Quite. Dances With Wolves national release was ~800 screens in 1990.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:35 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Quite. Dances With Wolves national release was ~800 screens in 1990.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:35 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Don't forget that it would have been 800 screens for weeks and weeks. No one cared about the first weekend back then; films would run all summer.
posted by octothorpe at 12:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 12:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
I remember Star Wars and I think Raiders Of The Lost Ark both running in my city for like 2 years each. The movie cycle was different then. (We also only had 4 or later 8 screens in my entire city of over 50K people at the time, so yes, very different.)
posted by hippybear at 12:39 PM on July 12, 2022
posted by hippybear at 12:39 PM on July 12, 2022
Heck, The Princess Bride was a bomb until people discovered it on VHS.
I think there's some misunderstanding of what was a "bomb" back then, also influenced by the very different movie making economics of today being projected back onto a simpler time.
Princess Bride made $35 million on a $16 million budget....I doubt anyone thought it could have done more. The cult following and VHS sales was a plus.....
Tron had very similar numbers--grossed a tad bit less, cost a tad bit more
--mark k
Okay, maybe not flops, but both movies were very definitely expected to do much better and were considered disappointments. Princes Bride director Rob Reiner himself said so in a 2010 interview.
posted by eye of newt at 12:55 PM on July 12, 2022
I think there's some misunderstanding of what was a "bomb" back then, also influenced by the very different movie making economics of today being projected back onto a simpler time.
Princess Bride made $35 million on a $16 million budget....I doubt anyone thought it could have done more. The cult following and VHS sales was a plus.....
Tron had very similar numbers--grossed a tad bit less, cost a tad bit more
--mark k
Okay, maybe not flops, but both movies were very definitely expected to do much better and were considered disappointments. Princes Bride director Rob Reiner himself said so in a 2010 interview.
posted by eye of newt at 12:55 PM on July 12, 2022
Moebius was one of TRON’s character designers.
posted by Eikonaut at 1:11 PM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Eikonaut at 1:11 PM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
Also: anyone remember the Airtight Garage, designed by Moebius, in the Metreon, San Francisco, in the early 2000’s? That arcade definitely had some TRON vibes even if the networked games weren’t great.
posted by Eikonaut at 1:15 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Eikonaut at 1:15 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you want a game with an amazing lightcycle vibe, as influenced by Moebius, I highly recommend playing "Sable", a wonderful atmospheric single-player game with a moody soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast.
posted by scolbath at 1:29 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by scolbath at 1:29 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't know exactly what the total screen count might have been back when The Princess Bride was released, but for the mid-80s, 800 screens sounds like a very wide release
I you follow my link, 800 was definitely on the low side. Definitely a studio distribution but also definitely not something the studio was pushing on theaters. The typical commercial flick had 1100 to 1300, with quite a few (including "Police Academy 4") hitting twice as many screens as the Princess Bride.
In fact, no higher grossing movie was on fewer screens. It was on the same number of screens as Tin Men, which was a fun but not exactly commercial Barry Levinson entry that mostly played in arthouses and indie theaters.
Indeed, I remember a piece in the press from back then that Tin Men was specifically pitched to Touchstone as a cheap-to-make quality movie with good talent that was willing to work for cheap. It was the same niche as Princess Bride, made less money, and was so far from a "bomb" that everyone involved (Levinson, Dreyfuss, DeVito, Hershey) were immediately getting offers for higher profile movies.
posted by mark k at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I you follow my link, 800 was definitely on the low side. Definitely a studio distribution but also definitely not something the studio was pushing on theaters. The typical commercial flick had 1100 to 1300, with quite a few (including "Police Academy 4") hitting twice as many screens as the Princess Bride.
In fact, no higher grossing movie was on fewer screens. It was on the same number of screens as Tin Men, which was a fun but not exactly commercial Barry Levinson entry that mostly played in arthouses and indie theaters.
Indeed, I remember a piece in the press from back then that Tin Men was specifically pitched to Touchstone as a cheap-to-make quality movie with good talent that was willing to work for cheap. It was the same niche as Princess Bride, made less money, and was so far from a "bomb" that everyone involved (Levinson, Dreyfuss, DeVito, Hershey) were immediately getting offers for higher profile movies.
posted by mark k at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you want a game with an amazing lightcycle vibe
I'm struggling to find it or remember the proper name of it because they had to obfuscate the name away from anything resembling "Light Cycle" but I remember there was a really good indie and online 3D multiplayer version of the Lightcycles game that was crazy fast and twitchy. It wasn't a Steam or web based game but a traditional app you had to download and I *think* was cross platform and free/open source software.
I went through a phase of playing the hell out of that game to the point I was competitive and consistently placing on the leader boards enough that regular and established players were incredulous or even openly irritated that I was playing on an old laptop on WiFi and still managing to be competitive with relatively high ping times.
The gameplay was so fast and twitchy it was one of those games where you really had to think ahead and use your intuition and timing like you were using The Force or something. It wasn't uncommon that matches between 8 players would last mere seconds because the competition was so brutal and the gameplay was so fast and twitchy.
posted by loquacious at 2:27 PM on July 12, 2022
I'm struggling to find it or remember the proper name of it because they had to obfuscate the name away from anything resembling "Light Cycle" but I remember there was a really good indie and online 3D multiplayer version of the Lightcycles game that was crazy fast and twitchy. It wasn't a Steam or web based game but a traditional app you had to download and I *think* was cross platform and free/open source software.
I went through a phase of playing the hell out of that game to the point I was competitive and consistently placing on the leader boards enough that regular and established players were incredulous or even openly irritated that I was playing on an old laptop on WiFi and still managing to be competitive with relatively high ping times.
The gameplay was so fast and twitchy it was one of those games where you really had to think ahead and use your intuition and timing like you were using The Force or something. It wasn't uncommon that matches between 8 players would last mere seconds because the competition was so brutal and the gameplay was so fast and twitchy.
posted by loquacious at 2:27 PM on July 12, 2022
I'm a bit confused as to when I saw Tron in the cinema, as I'm almost 100% sure I saw it in a double-bill with Something Wicked This Way Comes, which didn't come out until 1983.
→
Agreed. A great actor, and he made all of our packages less heavy.
posted by scruss at 2:41 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
→
a revival for Bruce Boxleitner, a terribly underrated actor
Agreed. A great actor, and he made all of our packages less heavy.
posted by scruss at 2:41 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I got distracted by Hollywood box office discussion but I do want everyone to know that I programmed a light cycle game on an IBM PC with an 8086 processor my family had gotten that year. You'd sit with a friend at different sides of the keyboard, make 90 degree turns with a key press, and try to box the other guy in. I remember it being kind of fun!
I was 12 years old and thought it would be really cool to program games commercially, but it's still the only game I've ever completed. Peaked just a little too early in that particular career path.
posted by mark k at 2:47 PM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
I was 12 years old and thought it would be really cool to program games commercially, but it's still the only game I've ever completed. Peaked just a little too early in that particular career path.
posted by mark k at 2:47 PM on July 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
a really good indie and online 3D multiplayer version of the Lightcycles game that was crazy fast and twitchy
Armagetron, perhaps?
There were a few indie attempts at lightcycle games (as well as a smaller but non-zero number of attempts of the disc game) but I recall this being the preferred flavour in my university computer labs.
posted by entity447b at 2:52 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Armagetron, perhaps?
There were a few indie attempts at lightcycle games (as well as a smaller but non-zero number of attempts of the disc game) but I recall this being the preferred flavour in my university computer labs.
posted by entity447b at 2:52 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
One of the weird very forgotten Tron after-results was the very short-lived television series Automan, which was about a Tron-ish cop who could materialize into the real world. One "joke" that was used on every episode was how his car could make 90 degree turns at speed (like a lightcycle) but anyone else had to deal with physics and would crash. It was not a well-developed show.
posted by hippybear at 3:06 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:06 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
I tried to play Sable.
I am generally tolerant when it comes to framerates, but this has to be the worst optimized game I ever played. Literal slideshow on an Xbone S.
And with fairly low-poly cell-shaded graphics (or perhaps faked up to look like that with a bunch of computationally expensive filters).
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:09 PM on July 12, 2022
I am generally tolerant when it comes to framerates, but this has to be the worst optimized game I ever played. Literal slideshow on an Xbone S.
And with fairly low-poly cell-shaded graphics (or perhaps faked up to look like that with a bunch of computationally expensive filters).
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:09 PM on July 12, 2022
I remember Automan. My young-boy self thought it was cool, in the same ways as Airwolf and Misfits Of Science.
posted by acb at 3:53 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by acb at 3:53 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm a fan of the shorts, Tron Reboot.
A lot of fan love there.
posted by chromecow at 3:59 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
A lot of fan love there.
posted by chromecow at 3:59 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
You're telling me the movie TRON was released to the public FIRST???? I always assumed it was a movie based on an already popular arcade game. This is some real trans-media megatext stuff.
In a similar vein: I found out about Tron when I noticed a new book by Brian Daley (who's trilogy of Star Wars tie in novels I loved and still love) and read it, thinking, "Wow, how cool for him that his new book has already been made into a movie!" It was only later that I learned about movie novelizations. (In my defense, my previous experience with movie novelizations was the one for Star Wars, which came out like six months before the movie in late 1976, and so gave the impression that the book had come before the movie.)
posted by The Tensor at 4:13 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
In a similar vein: I found out about Tron when I noticed a new book by Brian Daley (who's trilogy of Star Wars tie in novels I loved and still love) and read it, thinking, "Wow, how cool for him that his new book has already been made into a movie!" It was only later that I learned about movie novelizations. (In my defense, my previous experience with movie novelizations was the one for Star Wars, which came out like six months before the movie in late 1976, and so gave the impression that the book had come before the movie.)
posted by The Tensor at 4:13 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's the fact that I was so stoned in the cinema that it took me ten minutes to realise that my 3D glasses weren't working, but I thought Tron: Legacy looked and sounded fantastic. They should have gone all-in and made it a feature-length music video.
posted by kersplunk at 4:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by kersplunk at 4:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
There were also people wondering why a "serious" actor like Jeff Bridges (who at the time had two Oscar nominations) would go for such a "silly" movie, to which he replied, "I took the film seriously because I saw that it was breaking new ground."
Hmm...maybe. Or, as Michael Caine said of Jaws: The Revenge, "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
posted by kirkaracha at 5:05 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Hmm...maybe. Or, as Michael Caine said of Jaws: The Revenge, "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
posted by kirkaracha at 5:05 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Maybe it's the fact that I was so stoned in the cinema that it took me ten minutes to realise that my 3D glasses weren't working,
I had a similar experience watching Jaws 3-D except I wasn't stoned, I took my glasses off because the movie sucked. It didn't help.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:06 PM on July 12, 2022
I had a similar experience watching Jaws 3-D except I wasn't stoned, I took my glasses off because the movie sucked. It didn't help.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:06 PM on July 12, 2022
The other day I went down a fabulous rabbit hole learning about Wendy Carlos, who composed the music for TRON (and Clockwork Orange). There was a decent post about her a while back here.
posted by salishsea at 5:48 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by salishsea at 5:48 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
I have really vivid, clear recollections of going to see TRON when it came out when I was only 9. In my hometown, it was playing at the Coronado, a bona fide atmospheric movie palace from the '20s that had been relegated during slow times to nothing but playing Disney films for kids on the weekends. I had previously seen HERBIE GOES BANANAS and THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG RIDES AGAIN there. (Note that it had only been two years between 1980's HERBIE GOES BANANAS and TRON in 1982.)
On the weekends, parents could just drop off their kids with a pocket of change to see a movie in this failed but majestic theater, so this was something like a private screening in a 2300-seat movie palace for me and perhaps 50 other random kids from in the city in front of one of the largest screens I've ever seen in my life (and I've been to any number of classic cinemas). Walking through the lobby, a TRON arcade machine sat front and center, ready for play, an imposing, dramatic, futuristic introduction.
During the opening credits, the Wendy Carlos soundtrack engulfed us; the early computer graphics and animation astounded. But when actors were on-screen, the optical effects looked cheap and grainy, a bizarre and somewhat sleazy disappointment. Aesthetic decisions that look fine today on a TV looked downright bizarre on film projected on one of the largest screens you had ever seen in your life. But still, the light cycles? They looked amazing. The light tanks? Incredible.
Despite loving computers, I never quite connected with the actual movie. But that screening resonated with me throughout my life, this bizarre and not fully-formed vision of the future superimposed before me in a sparsely-attended, fading 1920s movie palace. I kind of wish I could go back and watch it there again.
posted by eschatfische at 6:58 PM on July 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
On the weekends, parents could just drop off their kids with a pocket of change to see a movie in this failed but majestic theater, so this was something like a private screening in a 2300-seat movie palace for me and perhaps 50 other random kids from in the city in front of one of the largest screens I've ever seen in my life (and I've been to any number of classic cinemas). Walking through the lobby, a TRON arcade machine sat front and center, ready for play, an imposing, dramatic, futuristic introduction.
During the opening credits, the Wendy Carlos soundtrack engulfed us; the early computer graphics and animation astounded. But when actors were on-screen, the optical effects looked cheap and grainy, a bizarre and somewhat sleazy disappointment. Aesthetic decisions that look fine today on a TV looked downright bizarre on film projected on one of the largest screens you had ever seen in your life. But still, the light cycles? They looked amazing. The light tanks? Incredible.
Despite loving computers, I never quite connected with the actual movie. But that screening resonated with me throughout my life, this bizarre and not fully-formed vision of the future superimposed before me in a sparsely-attended, fading 1920s movie palace. I kind of wish I could go back and watch it there again.
posted by eschatfische at 6:58 PM on July 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
I was just a kid when Tron came out, but I'd already played video games at every single opportunity. I loved the movie. It was a vision that related to the future that we saw. (And, in the "damn, we had it good at times" department... the nearby theater was running Tron and Wrath of Khan as a double feature. Saw it three times in one week.) When it came out on DVD I had to snag it. Over the years, the video gaming world changed, first to multi-player games at the arcades, and more immersive first person stuff such as Afterburner and Hard Drivin'. Then came the home gaming revolution. Yes, Atari and others had been in homes for years, but they were still a far cry from what you got on the corner. Then Nintendo shook everything up with the NES, then SNES, Genesis came along, Playstation, and it kept going. PCs were becoming incredible gaming machines as well. Over the years, I often thought it would be awesome if they did another Tron movie, but with modern graphics to reflect what the computing and gaming world had become.
Then in 2009, this trailer dropped at Comic-Con. I don't know how many times I watched it, but it was a LOT. I downloaded the HD version immediately when I got to work since the connection was so fast there. I was at the theater opening night, even went for the 3-D version, which I pretty much never do. And I loved it. I didn't expect a transcendant, Oscar-worthy film. If that's what you went into either Tron movie expecting, well, you were going to be disappointed. What I expected was a lot of digital eye candy. That's what I got. And the soundtrack... I wasn't really any sort of big Daft Punk fan, but the soundtrack was soooooooo good. (They seemed to learn a lot from it, because Random Access Memories was such a great album, so much richer than what they'd done before.) I would think this is end-of-line for any more Tron films, because they'd have to really bring something special to the table; they aren't going to be able to pull off the kind of visual update that they did between 1982 and 2010, because while graphics have definitely improved, it's not the kind of massive change we got between these two movies. The other reason I'd bet against another Tron film is because Daft Punk broke up, and let's face it, people who wanted another Tron flick mostly just wanted a new Daft Punk album with a bonus movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
posted by azpenguin at 7:04 PM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Then in 2009, this trailer dropped at Comic-Con. I don't know how many times I watched it, but it was a LOT. I downloaded the HD version immediately when I got to work since the connection was so fast there. I was at the theater opening night, even went for the 3-D version, which I pretty much never do. And I loved it. I didn't expect a transcendant, Oscar-worthy film. If that's what you went into either Tron movie expecting, well, you were going to be disappointed. What I expected was a lot of digital eye candy. That's what I got. And the soundtrack... I wasn't really any sort of big Daft Punk fan, but the soundtrack was soooooooo good. (They seemed to learn a lot from it, because Random Access Memories was such a great album, so much richer than what they'd done before.) I would think this is end-of-line for any more Tron films, because they'd have to really bring something special to the table; they aren't going to be able to pull off the kind of visual update that they did between 1982 and 2010, because while graphics have definitely improved, it's not the kind of massive change we got between these two movies. The other reason I'd bet against another Tron film is because Daft Punk broke up, and let's face it, people who wanted another Tron flick mostly just wanted a new Daft Punk album with a bonus movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
posted by azpenguin at 7:04 PM on July 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
One wonders if actor Bruce B. is related to the Australian inventor of genital-safe hair bleach / dye products. We all remember the jingle...
If you're in 'Straya
and you want blonde pubes
Who ya gonna call?
Box-leitner!
posted by bartleby at 7:21 PM on July 12, 2022
If you're in 'Straya
and you want blonde pubes
Who ya gonna call?
Box-leitner!
posted by bartleby at 7:21 PM on July 12, 2022
Loved Boxleitner in Babylon 5, but also in Scarecrow and Mrs. King and Bring ‘em Back Alive. Pretty versatile actor, as far as crossing genres goes.
I can’t really remember where I first saw Tron. Probably at the drive-in, as the second feature on Family Night? That’s usually where I saw Disney movies before they started being regularly rereleased on VHS.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I can’t really remember where I first saw Tron. Probably at the drive-in, as the second feature on Family Night? That’s usually where I saw Disney movies before they started being regularly rereleased on VHS.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Loved Boxleitner in Babylon 5, but also in Scarecrow and Mrs. King
I'll admit I yelled "Scarecrow!" when he first appeared in Babylon V.
Also, "Tron: Legacy" isn't my favorite movie, but it's the best Daft Punk music video I've ever seen. I still listen to that soundtrack.
posted by mmoncur at 9:11 PM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'll admit I yelled "Scarecrow!" when he first appeared in Babylon V.
Also, "Tron: Legacy" isn't my favorite movie, but it's the best Daft Punk music video I've ever seen. I still listen to that soundtrack.
posted by mmoncur at 9:11 PM on July 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
*checks ipod*
Why, I haven't listened to the Tron: Legacy soundtrack in ... over a week! Let me correct that
posted by Pronoiac at 10:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Why, I haven't listened to the Tron: Legacy soundtrack in ... over a week! Let me correct that
posted by Pronoiac at 10:37 PM on July 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
My orthodontist had the arcade game. And a centipede and Donkey Kong and some pinball machine. All dentists seem to have some distraction toys to try to make people forget they're at the dentist (I say as a dentist's son. I grew up with it). Some had consoles and some had only Highlights magazines but there always had to be something. And I played the shit out of that machine. Almost worth the mouth molds that sometimes made me vomit.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:26 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:26 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I spun the wheel on the Tron game, too, darkstar. And my closest friend and I, 40 years, later, still occasionally greet each other with "Greetings, Programs!"
posted by Chanther at 1:09 AM on July 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Chanther at 1:09 AM on July 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
`ah yes - one of my favorite movies of all time. Thanks for sharing this!
posted by rebent at 5:41 AM on July 13, 2022
posted by rebent at 5:41 AM on July 13, 2022
So my first introduction to TRON was not the movie. Or the game. Or the soundtrack.
Nope. It was the Peoplemover.
And that was it for a good long while. Like, I didn't need to see the movie, because I knew what happened, there were light cycles, there were great big machines, you were in the grid, what more did there need to be? Maybe a peoplemover or something similar, 'cause, y'know, the Peoplemover is the greatest ride ever, but it wasn't like I needed a movie to tell me that.
Then we saw TRON Legacy and wooo boy did I fall hard. I fell hard for the look. I fell hard for the music. I fell hard for Michael Sheen giving me those David Bowie vibes. I fell hard for Jeff Bridges being the finest mojo in the grid. Hell, I even fell hard for Bruce Boxleitner, and I was a staunch Babylon 5 anti-John Sheridan internet warrior.
I watched the original shortly after that. And I'm a goddamned TRON fan now. Cover me in el-wire and reflective ribbon because it's time to fight for the user.
posted by Katemonkey at 5:56 AM on July 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
Nope. It was the Peoplemover.
And that was it for a good long while. Like, I didn't need to see the movie, because I knew what happened, there were light cycles, there were great big machines, you were in the grid, what more did there need to be? Maybe a peoplemover or something similar, 'cause, y'know, the Peoplemover is the greatest ride ever, but it wasn't like I needed a movie to tell me that.
Then we saw TRON Legacy and wooo boy did I fall hard. I fell hard for the look. I fell hard for the music. I fell hard for Michael Sheen giving me those David Bowie vibes. I fell hard for Jeff Bridges being the finest mojo in the grid. Hell, I even fell hard for Bruce Boxleitner, and I was a staunch Babylon 5 anti-John Sheridan internet warrior.
I watched the original shortly after that. And I'm a goddamned TRON fan now. Cover me in el-wire and reflective ribbon because it's time to fight for the user.
posted by Katemonkey at 5:56 AM on July 13, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm a Boxleitner fan too. He was recently a guest performer on the Star Trek fanfic The Orville, playing President Alcuzan. It's a full body costume so it's not clear at first it's him. But there's still some visible resemblance and it's a speaking part so the voice comes through clear. Wikipedia says he's had an OK career playing small parts in the last few years but it's been awhile since he had a proper lead.
posted by Nelson at 7:08 AM on July 13, 2022
posted by Nelson at 7:08 AM on July 13, 2022
Nope. It was the Peoplemover.
AKA the Peoplemaker!
The California Disneyland version of that ride was super weird and - so I've heard - not as cool as the linear induction motor system used at Epcot/Magic Kingdom in Florida.
I mean it was this slow, pokey, bumpy thing powered by moving tires like a glorified conveyor belt.
But the TRON parts were cool. You went into a dark room with full surround projections screens in the middle of the lightcycle footage, there were some fans to move air faster and give the illusion of more speed and it seemed so fast even though it was maybe going 8 miles an hour. I think there may have been a slight bump in the speed and acceleration in that segment to help the illusion of speed.
I definitely remember hopping on that ride when there was no line just to view the TRON scenes, escape the California heat in the air conditioned buildings it passed through, and, erm, sometimes make out with someone. But never during the TRON parts.
Being able to pass through the Space Mountain and Starcade buildings was fun, too, and later, parts of the Star Tours indoor line area with all the robots and spaceport stuff.
posted by loquacious at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
AKA the Peoplemaker!
The California Disneyland version of that ride was super weird and - so I've heard - not as cool as the linear induction motor system used at Epcot/Magic Kingdom in Florida.
I mean it was this slow, pokey, bumpy thing powered by moving tires like a glorified conveyor belt.
But the TRON parts were cool. You went into a dark room with full surround projections screens in the middle of the lightcycle footage, there were some fans to move air faster and give the illusion of more speed and it seemed so fast even though it was maybe going 8 miles an hour. I think there may have been a slight bump in the speed and acceleration in that segment to help the illusion of speed.
I definitely remember hopping on that ride when there was no line just to view the TRON scenes, escape the California heat in the air conditioned buildings it passed through, and, erm, sometimes make out with someone. But never during the TRON parts.
Being able to pass through the Space Mountain and Starcade buildings was fun, too, and later, parts of the Star Tours indoor line area with all the robots and spaceport stuff.
posted by loquacious at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
I you follow my link, 800 was definitely on the low side. Definitely a studio distribution but also definitely not something the studio was pushing on theaters. The typical commercial flick had 1100 to 1300, with quite a few (including "Police Academy 4") hitting twice as many screens as the Princess Bride.
I dunno....from AFI:
(I also remain sad about the Californian PeopleMover's decommissioning.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:50 PM on July 13, 2022
I dunno....from AFI:
[Dances With Wolves] opened in limited release on 9 Nov 1990 in nine cities, including Los Angeles; Chicago, IL; San Francisco, CA; Toronto, Canada; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, WA; Dallas, TX; and New York City. A nationwide release followed on 21 Nov 1990, expanding to 750-800 screens, according to various contemporary sources including the 5 Nov 1990 HR.It won Best Picture. The 'typical commerical' 80s film had a wider release than that? Over what time frame? For years in second-run theaters?
Both a critical and box-office success, Dances with Wolves marked the first time that a film starring Kevin Costner reached the $100 million mark in domestic box-office grosses, as stated in the 19 Mar 1991 LAT. On 8 Apr 1991, Var reported that the cumulative box-office earnings had reached $147 million, surpassing Platoon (1986, see entry) to become Orion’s highest-grossing film to that time. The 11 Feb 1991 DV stated that the earnings were even more impressive because the picture’s three-hour length limited its number of daily showings to three or four per day instead of five or six.
(I also remain sad about the Californian PeopleMover's decommissioning.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:50 PM on July 13, 2022
So I'm apologizing for continuing the derail, but no, Dances with Wolves was not treated as a big commercial movie when it was released!
The late '80s and '90s was when I was watching a ton of movies, and I was also in Southern California reading the LA Times getting all the film coverage. So I remember the stories about the move--3 hours long with subtitles in a passe genre--getting called Kevin's Gate right before release. The fact that it took six months to hit the $100 million mark and as it was about to clean up at the Oscars makes that point. It was awards bait gamble, a long shot that paid off. A lot of insiders were ready to quickly walk away if it didn't work.
This is in fact a lot like Princess Bride, in that people are looking back on it and it's post-release reputation and assuming this means something about it's pre-release expectations. They're both cases where that will steer you very wrong.
Princess Bride just didn't have high expectations. It wasn't being hyped by insiders. Why would it? It was a quirky movie with no stars. I mean Peter Falk, Christopher Guest and Wallace Shawn are great but not really anchoring a commercial movie. I can't even name who the most bankable star would have been. A 10 minute cameo by a pre-Harry/Sally Billy Crystal, with only Running Scared under his belt? Or Rob Reiner, hot off the movie The Sure Thing with its . . . $18 million gross? When you see Rob Reiner or Cary Elwes say they were disappointed in the outcome, because "no one knew how to market the movie," that is just another way of saying that the studios didn't believe in it.
posted by mark k at 9:13 PM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
The late '80s and '90s was when I was watching a ton of movies, and I was also in Southern California reading the LA Times getting all the film coverage. So I remember the stories about the move--3 hours long with subtitles in a passe genre--getting called Kevin's Gate right before release. The fact that it took six months to hit the $100 million mark and as it was about to clean up at the Oscars makes that point. It was awards bait gamble, a long shot that paid off. A lot of insiders were ready to quickly walk away if it didn't work.
This is in fact a lot like Princess Bride, in that people are looking back on it and it's post-release reputation and assuming this means something about it's pre-release expectations. They're both cases where that will steer you very wrong.
Princess Bride just didn't have high expectations. It wasn't being hyped by insiders. Why would it? It was a quirky movie with no stars. I mean Peter Falk, Christopher Guest and Wallace Shawn are great but not really anchoring a commercial movie. I can't even name who the most bankable star would have been. A 10 minute cameo by a pre-Harry/Sally Billy Crystal, with only Running Scared under his belt? Or Rob Reiner, hot off the movie The Sure Thing with its . . . $18 million gross? When you see Rob Reiner or Cary Elwes say they were disappointed in the outcome, because "no one knew how to market the movie," that is just another way of saying that the studios didn't believe in it.
posted by mark k at 9:13 PM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Princess Bride just didn't have high expectations. It wasn't being hyped by insiders. Why would it? It was a quirky movie with no stars.
This was definitely the vibe at the sneak I went to -- more stars in the audience than on the screen. It was kinda weird even as a kid; so I guess I can accept the notion that it won the Oscar without as much exposure as the tentpole films of the era. (Still *feels* kinda wrong, but I guess that's how feels work.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:35 AM on July 14, 2022
This was definitely the vibe at the sneak I went to -- more stars in the audience than on the screen. It was kinda weird even as a kid; so I guess I can accept the notion that it won the Oscar without as much exposure as the tentpole films of the era. (Still *feels* kinda wrong, but I guess that's how feels work.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:35 AM on July 14, 2022
When I was growing up, you could see the movies expected to have the widest appeal as the second feature at the small-town drive-ins. Then there were movies you'd have to drive an hour to the mall in the nearby small city to see, and anything remotely arty or genre-y, you'd have to drive into the big city or one of its suburbs for. (I remember going into the big city to see Star Trek VI even though I still had a high fever a week after minor surgery.) Dances with Wolves only played in the big city. We decided we'd either wait until it showed up as the opening feature at the drive-in or came out on VHS. (I saw it for the first time in 2021.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:44 AM on July 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:44 AM on July 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
The biggest name star in Princess Bride was clearly Andre the Giant
posted by Jacen at 1:40 AM on July 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 1:40 AM on July 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
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