Tron is a 1982 Walt Disney Productions science fiction movie starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn (and Clu), Bruce Boxleitner as Alan Bradley (and Tron) and Cindy Morgan as Lora (and Yori). David Warner plays the villain, Dillinger (and Sark, as well as the voice of the 'Master Control Program'). It was directed by Steven Lisberger . One of the first films to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style.

Plot

Flynn, a game programmer, is absorbed ("digitized") into a digital world tyrannically ruled by the "Master Control Program." In this world, programs are people whose faces look just like their creators; Flynn is initially mistaken for a program, "Clu", he had written. Flynn needs to find "Tron", a security program created by another programmer, Alan. Tron can help Flynn fight against the despotic MCP to free his company's mainframe and escape to the real world. Along the way he has to participate in several gladiatorial action games including "Light Cycles" and a kind of Jai-Alai.

The "Light Cycles" game is similar to an old computer game sometimes known as "Surround." The players are in constant motion on a playfield, creating a wall behind them as they move. If a player hits a wall either by accident or by having no more room to move, he is out of the game, and the last player wins. Tron depicts this game as being played by the humanoid programs in futuristic two-wheeled vehicles that resemble motorcycles which create walls of colored light. Countless versions of this game have been created since the release of the movie.

Technical

Tron was one of the first movies to use long computer-generated sequences. About thirty minutes of computer-generated animation (blended with the filmed characters) were used. Though the movie has been criticized for woodenness of acting and -- perhaps unjustly -- incoherence of plot, the movie is celebrated as a milestone of computer animation.

To be able to create the film, Disney acquired the Super Foonly F-1, the fastest PDP-10 ever made (and the only one of its kind).

The film, however, contains less computer-generated imagery than is generally supposed. Many of the effects that look like computer graphics were created using traditional optical effects. In a technique known as "backlit animation," the live-action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white, printed on large-format high-contrast film, then colorized with traditional photographic and rotoscopic techniques to give them a "technological" feel. The process was immensely labor-intensive, and would never be repeated for another feature film; with multiple layers of high-contrast large-format positives and negatives, it required truckloads of sheet film, and a workload greater than even that of a conventional cel-animated feature.

Legacy

Although the film was initially unsuccessful, it has retained a cult like status due to its use of CGI and its computer plot line. The movie also inspired several popular video games. The Tron arcade game earned more than the film's first release and made it a cult favorite. Disneyland featured the Tron SuperSpeed Tunnel in its PeopleMover attraction.

Tron 2.0, a computer game sequel, was released on August 25, 2003. In this first person shooter game, the player takes the part of Alan Bradley's son Jet, who is pulled into the computer world to fight a computer virus.

On January 13, 2005, Walt Disney Pictures announced a remake of Tron, with more emphasis on the Internet.

Music

The background music for Tron was written by Wendy Carlos, who is most well-known for her album, Switched On Bach and for the soundtrack to The Shining. The music featured a mix of (then) state-of-the-art synthesizers and pipe organs. Additional music was provided by the band Journey.

See also

• Perlin noise

External links

• Tron-Sector
• Article about the CGI in Tron
• KLOV entry on the Tron arcade game
• KLOV entry on the Discs Of Tron arcade game
• A fan's TRON Costume
• "Tron Guy" Jay Maynard's Tron-inspired costume
• GLtron and Armagetron - freeware, multi-platform games modeled after the movie's Light Cycle battles

Other uses

Tron can also refer to:

• A command for debugging BASIC: Trace On
• The handle of a well-known German hacker, Boris Floricic
• Some character encoding code, like ASCII or UNICODE
• Another operating system's kernel, TRON OS