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by Kevin Gaussoin, Editor-in-Chief

Greetings, programs! The original Tron has been hard to come by lately, but now it’s back in Blu-ray format alongside Tron Legacy in the Tron 5-Disc 2-Movie Collection!

TRON

“Won’t that be grand? The computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop.” -Dr Walter Gibbs

When Tron hit theaters in 1982 I was 9 years old. I had been raised on multiple viewings of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I had braved Disney’s previous live-action scifi adventure The Black Hole, and I spent countless hours watching classic scifi films on weekend afternoon TV. I was told that computers were the future, but I didn’t yet know anyone who had one. I diverted my dear stream of action figure acquisition from Star Wars to Tron that year and also got a couple of what were some of the best toys for a long time: The Light cycles.

That is one big door!

Tron tells the story of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges – Starman, The Big Lebowski, Iron Man, Crazy Heart, True Grit) a computer programmer who wrote a handful of great games, that were subsequently stolen by his rival Ed Dillinger (David Warner – Time Bandits, Star Trek VI, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lois and Clark, Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Superman, Batman Beyond) which results in Flynn leaving the business altogether and plotting to clear his name from the safe confines of his video arcade. Flynn’s data retrieval program CLU meets his demise in the grid, so Flynn recruits a couple of his friends who still work for Encom. Alan (Bruce Boxleitner – Bring ‘Em Back Alive, Babylon 5, Chuck, Heroes) and Lora (Cindy Morgan – Caddy Shack, Bring ‘Em Back Alive) sneak Flynn into Encom, but the Master Control Program (MCP) will have none of Flynn’s haxoring, and uses a laser to encode Flynn into the grid.

I can’t wait for the interwebs.

Keep in mind that while some would say such a thing is theoretically possible, the fact that this was in 1982 is what’s really amazing. The data storage alone for encoding all that is a human and their mind would be staggering by today’s standards even though we have disk storage prices down to about fifty dollars per terabyte. In 1982, a terabyte of storage would have cost about two hundred million US dollars, and that’s before all the cooling and racking and electrical and networking that would have been necessary to put all that storage in one place. Scientific American recently suggested that the memory capacity of the human brain is about 2.5 petabytes (today this is about a thousand high capacity hard drives), meaning the storage cost alone would be roughly half a trillion US dollars in 1982, meaning in todays dollars, it would cost over 1.1 trillion US dollars. …And that’s just the brain. The MCP digitized Flynn’s whole body, and clothing which would be roughly another fifty times that amount by weight, but may have significantly less data storage required per unit of weight or volume.

Pioneers in Computer Dating

Oh yeah, plot… So Flynn meets up with Tron and Yori (Alan and Lora’s avatars) and begins his hero’s quest to find the lost data, beat the MCP, and return home to the real world to right what was wrong. *SPOILERS* He succeeds.

Video

Tron is one of those films that shows us the future of the medium. Tron wasn’t allowed to run for an animation Oscar because at the time CGI was considered cheating. Most of the film was not actually animated, but the majority of the film, the part that takes place in the grid, was instead shot on black and white 65mm film and meticulously hand painted with color and even some effects. The real-world rest of the film was also shot on 65mm film, but color, so this is one of the cleanest transfers from film to Blu-ray we’re likely to see from this era.

Audio

As we’ve said before on ComicsOnline, Disney features are known for having the best quality audio, and Tron is no exception. What really stands out in Tron of course is the amazing score by Wendy Carlos (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny). No score since has matched a world more perfectly than Wendy Carlos’ Tron.  

Extras

• The Tron Phenomenon – Remember how awesome it was at Comic-Con 2010 when you checked out Flynn’s Arcade in person? Well I missed it! I was out of my mind that week doing other stuff and even though we had an invitation to attend (and skip the line!), I missed it. So this special feature was as saddening as it was awesome. I’m sure I was just a couple blocks from there, and probably not having half as much fun. This extra isn’t all about Comic-Con of course, it’s a broad Tron fan culture thing that seems to hit everything except Tron Guy.
• Over 5 hours of bonus features including pretty much everything you’d ever want to know about the making of Tron from just about everyone involved.

Overall

Tron is one of those films that attempts to show us the future and gets a lot of things eerily right. While we can’t yet enter the grid bodily, we certainly spend a ton of time interacting on the internet, often using avatars that resemble us. Tron tells us a simple story about morality, all wrapped up in a science fiction world where truths and predictions can be presented in a easy to accept manner, and isn’t that the best kind of story?

ComicsOnline gives Tron on Blu-ray 5 out of 5 light cycles.

TRON Legacy

“The Rules of the Road?” Awkward.

At the end of Tron, we find that Kevin Flynn is now CEO of Encom and things are good again for our hero. As Tron Legacy opens, we learn that Flynn had a son, who he’s told all about his adventures on the grid. Then one night in 1995, Kevin Flynn disappeared and never returned. His son Sam (Garrett Hedlund – Troy, Eragon) is all grown up in 2010 and while he owns controlling interest in Encom, he shows he is more inclined to prank the company he owns than try and run it himself.

Insert Coin to Continue

One night Alan (still Bruce Boxleitner) joins Sam at his home to say he’s been paged to Kevin Flynn’s old arcade. Sam bites and rides his motorcycle down to the arcade, which is still powered up despite not being used for 15 years and finds a secret passage behind the Tron game to his father’s secret office.

Who hasn’t had this dream?

Of course Sam is immediately zapped into the grid and taken hostage by the programs in charge, much as his father was almost thirty years previous. Sam meets his father and his father’s ruthless dictator of an avatar CLU (both still played by Jeff Bridges).  Sam plays in the arena games as his father did before him, and while he does even better at them, we really want even more arena game action. It’s pretty awesome.

Sam Flynn: Born to ride

Sam also meets the now aged Kevin Flynn’s adopted artificial life form Quorra (Olivia Wilde – House MD, Cowboys & Aliens) who plays both love interest for Sam and bad ass member of the Flynns’ quest to get home. Keep in mind that this is not your 1982 Disney: They might not make it.

…If they’re wearing red.

Video

While the original was lauded for using analog practical effects to achieve the look of a digital world, Tron Legacy is a 2010 Disney film, so you know it’s got the best CGI effects available and we are not disappointed in how the world of the grid has evolved in twenty-some years. Whether or not you’re taking advantage of the 3D Blu-ray, you’re going to enjoy seeing this in beautiful 1080p on your home theater system.

“Change the scheme! Alter the mood! Electrify the boys and girls if you’d be so kind.” -Castor

Audio

With 7.1 Digital Master Audio, Tron Legacy shows us how far audio technology has come since 1982 and brings us every boom and whisper and everything in between with balanced clarity. While Wendy Carlos’ score for the original movie was perfect, Tron Legacy is likewise appropriately audio-adorned with an ideally updated score by house duo Daft Punk. This is a soundtrack worth buying.

On the Discs

-Disc 1-
Tron Legacy 3D Blu-ray Feature – Requires a 3D TV, not just disposable glasses.

-Disc 2-
Tron Legacy 2D Blu-ray Feature and Bonus Features Including:

• The Next Day: Flynn Lives Revealed – This short film that includes several mocumentary clips bridges (pun intended) the gaps between Tron and Tron Legacy, while also strongly hinting that a third feature may be in the works as well. After the short ends, we are presented with a video game console high score screen that is waiting for us to input our initials. Any fan of the first film knows that Tron Legacy is filled with loads of easter eggs, and here so is the special features section. I’ll give you a CLU: it’s not RAM, so you may have to try them all.
• Like the recent Bambi release, Tron Legacy debuts as one of our first opportunities to glimpse the future: Disney Second Screen. This is yet another proof that we are living in the future! My flying car is still on back-order, but this is amazing. Start the movie with Second Screen enabled, then get out your iPad or laptop, point it to the URL disneysecondscreen.com and then enter your DisneyMovieRewards magic code. Your iPad or laptop will sync to the audio if it has an enabled microphone, then you’re watching the film, and getting interrupted by cool facts, original storyboards, and other stuff the whole time! It’s an ADD Disneyphile’s dream! If you’re the type that can’t even watch normal TV without IMDBing the actors to find out where else you’ve seen them, this is the sort of thing for you. My only complaint is that the iPad version required such a hefty pre-download that even after watching ALL the special features first, I still had to wait a bit before I could start the Second Screen simultaneously (so plan ahead!). Some day, every movie and TV show will come with futuristic extras, but for now: Tron Legacy Second Screen. Enjoy it.
• Music Video: “Derezzed” by Daft Punk – Not since Blade has a movie soundtrack been so house-tastic.
• Launching the Legacy – A very worthwhile making-of.
• Disc Roars – Yet another Comic-Con panel I missed (At least this was from the year I was standing outside in the press line and actually got some footage with Bridges). Hear how a bunch of lucky Congoers got to be a part of the movie.
• All the DVD Features

Second Screen on iPad

-Disc 3-

• Tron Legacy DVD Feature and Bonus Features including:
• First Look at Tron: Uprising, the upcoming Disney XD animated series – This looks very watchable.
• Visualizing Tron – A making-of from the design standpoint.
• Installing the Cast – Another making-of from the cast standpoint.

-Disc 4-
Tron Legacy Digital Copy – While it’s nice to have this come with a digital copy, I don’t know why it needs to be on a disc separate from the DVD. If they’re going to do that, they should offer the original film or at least special features via digital copy as well.

-Disc 5-
Tron the original classic feature plus the Extras mentioned above.

Overall

The ComicsOnline Podcast named Tron Legacy our Best Film of 2010, and for good reason. Tron Legacy is no remake but is instead the perfect homage of a sequel that gives us another exciting and heartwarming chapter in the lives of the Flynn family and the evolving Grid. We can’t wait for Tron 3–Which lucky for us is clearly on its way.

ComicsOnline gives Tron Legacy 5 out of 5 soul salvation shifts from red to blue.

ComicsOnline gives the Tron 5-Disc 2-Movie Collection 5 out of 5 multi-decade sequels.

Get your copy of the Tron 5-Disc 2-Movie Collection on Blu-ray at Amazon now!

“Sometimes life has a way of moving you past wants and hopes. …I’d have given it all up for one more day with you.” -Kevin Flynn, Tron Legacy
 

Greetings, programs! Keep spawning your avatar at ComicsOnline.com for more Blu-ray reviews, more awesome giveaways, and everything geek pop culture!

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