Review of Tron

Video

If you haven`t ever caught this film on the box, or didn`t see it when you were a kid then you`ll have very little idea what its about. Basically, we are talking little computer people here, living out their world in a miniature circuit board of light. When modern films stand up and claim they used X minutes of CGI footage and you sound amazed, bear in mind that 3/4 of this film is almost entirely CGI. Ground breaking considering this was 1982, and way ahead of its time.

The film makers of Tron were clearly over ambitious, the overlay of live action onto the CGI backgrounds is dated, a real shame that the facilities and advances of today weren`t available back then. But it doesn`t spoil the film. Maybe if this wasn`t such a well directed and written piece it might have, but its not. There are noticeably no pans when mixing the real footage with the computer stuff, technology wasn`t advanced enough back in the early eighties to achieve this.

Anamorphic? Nope, boo hiss! Although the actual image quality of the original master is so bad I`m left clutching at straws as to why Disney should bother giving it the 16x9 enhanced treatment. The picture is so grainy, there are loads of scratches, this wouldn`t be the transfer you`d show of your system off to friends with, even if it was anamorphic.

Audio

The sound is surprisingly good, even without considering its age. There is some good atmospheric surround information here, the effects are pretty good. The light cycles are great too, really giving you the impression these things are travelling at speed. Tanks and the bigger vehicles all have great synthesised bass hums, it all fits brilliantly with the idea that this all goes on during real life computer games.

Music is mostly classically driven, but its all minor chords and keys, mixed with the odd synthesiser to give it a futuristic technology quality.

Features

Wahaay, you get the original theatrical trailer! Oh, that`s it.

Conclusion

This is a classic film with an incredibly original storyline. Its essentially a weird mix of grown up style SciFi and family entertainment. Jeff Bridges sits easily in his role as programmer and general all round anti-geek computer bod, although his characters disbelief could easily be his own at the silly costumes they wear.

Bruce Boxleitner does a good job as Tron, providing just the right sort of Luke Skywalker type innocence. Yes Babylon 5 fans, he looks very young in this. Also David Warner makes an excellent bad guy, this is up there with his nasty character in Titanic.

The script is very clever, anyone who understands computers will appreciate it, although this is far from necessary as the story is pretty easy to follow. The one thing I still haven`t managed to work out is why the blue guys are in the yellow light cycles and the yellow guys are in the blue cycles. I`m sure there is a reasonable explanation somewhere.

It`s a shame that due to the techniques used to make this film in the first place, no amount of digital remastering could improve its appearance to a satisfactory degree without spending loads of dosh. Not likely to happen really is it. This is still a very good SciFi film which will appeal to kids and adults alike, let down marginally by its dated special effects and featureless disc.