Series Review: Tron

This week I’m going to do a review on a series that has come to be one of my favorites.  Even though many people think them to be cheesy, unrealistic or just plain muddled, the two Tron movies and the short-lived Tron television series are now and forever on my top-hundred list of all time.  Every installment in this franchise brings the viewer into a uniquely atmospheric world filled with brilliant visual imagery.  As a kid I loved the original movie and now, more than 30 years later, I find myself just as easily enjoying not only that one, but everything they've produced in the last few years with the revival of the property.  Though the television series actually occurs between the two movies, it was released after the second film, thus I will include that last on this list.

Tron (1982) 

This first film was made way back in 1982; in a time when creating a franchise wasn't the main goal of film making.  Thus, it is one of those lost gems that could have easily been a trilogy but instead chose to rely on having a beginning, middle and end and keeping it all under two hours.

Tron follows the story of Flynn, a computer designer turned arcade (remember those?) owner and hacker.  While working for a company, his video games ideas are stolen by an evil rival who then uses them to gain clout at the company.  Flynn, in order to regain his properties, begins hacking into the company computers to find evidence of the theft.  Unfortunately for him, the Master Control Program (MPC) - a program that happens to be absorbing other programs and getting smarter - catches him and, by using a digital laser, transports him into the world of computers, AKA The Grid.  There, Flynn must participate in deadly games, make an escape and help a program by the name of Tron hack into and destroy the MPC to save the Grid.

Though it looks cheesy by today’s standards, the FX in the original Tron were absolutely great for 1982.  They used a mix of stylized computer graphics and real-life humans on green-screen to create unique imagery that became iconic with its simplicity.  The dark mood evokes a believable state that draws the viewer in, even 30 years later.  And though many of the computer concepts are very outdated compared to what we know today, it still holds water and presents an important social viewpoint about the probably of computers becoming smarter even as human beings get stupider.

Tron: Legacy (2010) 

In the second film, made more than 25 years after the first, we return to the Grid in the modern day.  Flynn is missing, nowhere to be found, so the role of man-trapped-in-machine falls to his son, Sam.  While looking for his father, Sam stumbles across a secret basement in Flynn’s old arcade.  There he finds a computer and - whoops - manages to transfer himself onto the Grid.

Since last we saw Tron and Flynn save the computer world, there have been a few changes.  Flynn wrote a program called CLU and put him in charge with the mission of making the Grid a better place.  But, in an effort to make it perfect, CLU decided that he needed to implement his own order and that dissenting programs had no place in his world.  Oh, and Tron has been turned evil.

The games are back on, though this time it’s Sam who has to take part, escape, go on a journey and eventually save the Grid from a hostile program.  During the course of the film, he manages to find his father and discover that the Grid has been spontaneously writing its own programs, self-aware entities called ISOs.  The presence of the ISOs is the main thing that sent CLU over the edge, and he purged them all in order to “cleanse” the Grid.  So, Sam must defeat Tron and CLU and save a girl that may very well be the last remaining ISO.

This is another typical action-journey story, but with a fair measure of philosophy added in.  Tron: Legacy touches on the nature of good and evil, and the nature of sentient life.  In my opinion, this film was nearly flawless.  Where it fell short is in catering to cliché amounts of action instead of focusing on the deeper aspects of the film.  If they could have chopped 10 minutes of action and added 20 minutes of character development, it would have been amazing.

Oh, and the movie is set to what has to be one of the best soundtracks ever made, courtesy of Daft Punk.  You should head over to this YouTube link right now and have a listen.

Tron: Uprising (2012) 

Tron: Uprising was a television series aired on the Disney XD channel. It ran 19 episodes and set up for a second season, but unfortunately the execs at Disney, for various reasons, decided to cancel it.  After watching the series, it isn't hard to tell why.  It deals with many concepts that are well above most children - the preferred audience for Disney’s programs (and marketing).

The story takes place between the two movies, during the time right after CLU began to take over the Grid.  It follows a program named Beck, a mechanic who ends up involved in a revolution against CLU.  His antics get him noticed by the still-good Tron.  He is asked to pretend he is Tron so that the legend will live on and people will continue to resist CLU’s rule.

In the end, this is mostly an action cartoon with a plot of revolution and redemption, but it is definitely more adult than most Disney products on TV.  In fact, I was kinda surprised it managed to get made at all, considering the undertones of domestic strife, terrorism, the nature of good and evil and the constant death of programs throughout the series.  If you’ve seen the two films, you already know how the revolution ends, but it’s still worth a watch. 

One issue was the animation, which is very stylistic and takes some time to get used to.  I honestly hated it at first, but it does grow on you after a while.  The biggest problem I had with it was the redesign of the Grid to look more like reality.  The presence of clouds and rocky landscapes, among other things, threw me off and ruined what I consider to be one of the greatest things about the Tron films - the unique, computer-generated world.

All-in-all, the entire series is fun and engaging, but falls just short of being on par with other atmospherically-focused universes such as Star Trek or Star Wars.  If they could have paid more attention to character, particularly in Legacy, they could have come out with something that would have survived for generations to come.  Still, Tron 3 is looking to be a distinct possibility, so we may yet see a tale of redemption for the franchise.

Tron Poster courtesy of collider.com

Tron: Uprising courtesy of sciencefiction.com

Tron: Legacy courtesy of collider.com