Review of Tron (1982) by Kendall I — 10 Aug 2012

This is a true nerd's film: brilliant special effects, '80s cheese, and a video-gaming plot, all in the early ages of gaming.

PLOT:This film takes place in a dystopian-type town where the major science and technology lab, ENCOM, is ruled by a computer named the Master Control Program (MCP) that has a mind of his own and a want to take control away from the humans, all watched over by the senior exec, Ed Dillinger (David Warner). Things start to get tense when Dillinger finds out that a former employee named Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who also runs an arcade downtown, has been trying to hack his way in and steal back the file of the video game he created and Dillinger stole. Also, a current employee named Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) has developed a security program named TRON which can run indepedantly and even watch over the supreme mind of the MCP. That's what sends the MCP into his want to take control. Both the hacker and employee team up with the laser scientist, Lora (Cindy Morgan), to break in, run the TRON program, steal back the game file, and crash the MCP. However, things go awry when Flynn tries to hack into the mainframe and instead gets sucked into the electronics themselves. Now, in this world where the programs are personified and martyred against their will of believing in the users to fight in the video game division, Flynn must find TRON and stop the MCP. It's a very well thought-out plot executed pretty well.

ACTING:The acting in here was pretty great. Jeff Bridges owned the role as Flynn and put a lot of his personality into his character. Nobody was truly brilliant in here, but the shiners were Bruce Boxleitner as Adam/TRON, Cindy Morgan as Lora/Yori, Barnard Hughes as Dr. Gibbs/Dumont, Dan Shor as Ram, David Warner as Dillinger/Sark, and Jack Manning as the Bit.

SCORE:The score was mainly just cheesy '80s music combined with a video game-sounding score. It was just ok.

EFFECTS:This film was a special effects marvel for its time. The colorful set and digital-looking lights made it look like you were literally in a video game, sci-fi world. For the time being, they were truly a landmark.

OTHER CONTENT:This film is good mainly for its plot idea and brilliant effects, as well as its great lead by Jeff Bridges, but it does fail a bit. The plot execution is a little uneven and the film comes off as cheesy after a while. However, this film can relate to the real world in terms of being martyred for your beliefs (the programs belief in the users) and it does seem like a kind of techno-Oz with how the characters in real life are also resembled by certain characters in the game. It's a true nerd's movie!

OVERALL,a great sci-fi with a well thought-out plot, great acting, ok score, brilliant effects, relation to real-life religion, and the effect of being a techno-Oz, but the plot execution is a little uneven and it comes off as a bit cheesy.