Review of Tron (1982) by Ben L — 22 Feb 2012

As a child of the 80s I definitely see what it is that so many people loved about this film. The entire idea of using a computer to animate entire scenes of a movie was so unbelievable at the time that the result was bound to draw in some loyal followers. I used to get really excited about watching this movie too. The video games based on the games in the movie were also amazing at the time. But, as you can see I've mentioned the past a lot already. The flaw in this movie is that it doesn't age well.

Now I still enjoy and am thoroughly entertained by certain scenes in this film. The action sequences are great. It's also neat how they make comparisons to real life. In particular how people who believe in a creator are often chastised for being religious nuts. Part of the problem, though, is that there is a lot of unnecessary scenes that really slow the tempo of this film. It's like they had this new toy (CGI) and they wanted to play with it more so they'd just add a random scene of robotic bugs or a ship disappearing.

Not to mention the entire plot line of a human existing in a computer and relating to other programs as if they were people is just ludicrous. I know it's just a movie and expecting it all to make logical sense is wrong, but it feels like they're trying to set it up as something that could really happen and then they take it too far. As I said I still enjoy parts of the movie. However when you take away the novelty of the first use of CGI, suddenly you have a flawed movie with which anyone not from the 80s will have a hard time relating.