1982 was the year of E.T – THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL, Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning success about an alien afraid, alone and three million light years from home, so the posters stated.
In the shadow of its’ success, films from the year that many claim was the most successful of all-time in cinema were lost in the release process, but which have since made their mark on cinematic progress.
Steven Lisberger’s TRON was one such example, a ground-breaker in terms of it’s setting and the early evolution of some of the computer effects that were created specially for the film. The video game that was based on the film actually proved to make the film more popular after its’ release. It is also a film that many of today’s generation of film-makers who were kids when the film first came out have cited as a key influence.
Jeff Bridges plays genius programmer Kevin Flynn, ousted by ENCOM, the company that is now run by Ed Dillinger (David Warner) who has claimed several video game programmes from Flynn’s imagination as his own and whom runs the company using a big program called the Master Control Program (MCP) an early form of AI that seems to want to claim every computer system in the world, including the Kremlin and Pentagon.
Flynn works at a local amusement arcade (for the younger readers, imagine one of your PS4 disc game compendiums with each individual game enclosed in a big cabinet sat in a corner, cos that’s how we used to play them!!) where the only money he gets from his video games which are out in public consumption is from the quarters inserted into the game.
With help from ENCOM employees Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora (Cindy Morgan) he sneaks into the building at night and then decides to access the MCP from inside, hoping to find the evidence proving his ownership of the games.
Lora has pioneered a new computerised laser system, which the MCP uses to transport Flynn into its’ system, where he places him on the ‘Game Grid’ where he fights to survive against the very programmes he has helped create…
This is truly a self-contained escapist world, with bright colours and a world apart which was truly jaw-dropping and visually stimulating on its’ original release. A sequel, TRON LEGACY followed in 2010, directed by one of the film’s admirers, Joseph Kosinski, who helms one of this year’s most eagerly anticipated sequels, TOP GUN: MAVERICK, moved to Christmas 2020 because of COVID-19.