Watch out for the Master Control Program

Johnny J

jim norcal wrote:

I'm actually surprised you never saw Tron until now

I know, I just never saw it. I think it was due to a bad Disney experience with "The Black Hole" which came out a few years earlier. Apart from those movies, though, I really like Disney...

I'm not heavy - I'm KIDNAP RESISTANT...
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Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house...
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Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
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Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects - Will Rogers, September 7, 1924

xperroni

Johnny J. wrote:

How was the new Tron then?

I really enjoyed it. I particularly liked four things:

How it mingles early 80's and contemporary movie & design concepts in one trippy adventure;
The music, by my all-time techno favorites The Daft Punk, which sounds as if Vangelis went to a rave party;
The direction's care for small things - like in the scenes portraying command shells, where valid UNIX commands and syntax are always used. You see people actually using computers, not just standing in front of random screens with typing sound effects on the background. Such realism in an ostensibly fantastic movie was quite refreshing;
Last but not least, the characters. Clu is perhaps the best fantasy villain I've ever seen: not so much evil, but rather haunted by his own inner contradictions. He knows what he's doing is horrible, and he hates himself that he can't stop.

I've heard some people complain about an excess of "techno mumbo-jumbo"; don't know what they're talking about. There is a fair amount of technospeak in the movie, but it all sounded fairly tight and consistent to me, when you factor in the fact that Tron is a science fantasy story – it does not have the obligation to explain everything.

BrainiacV

I think it was due to a bad Disney experience with "The Black Hole" Or as the Japanese called it, "Brack Hore" At the end of it, I stated in a loud voice, "I'm glad I dropped acid, otherwise I wouldn't have understood the ending!"

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

Carlosian

jim norcal wrote:

(Colossus: The Forbin Project had me thinking about it for days after I watched it).

Upvote for "Colossus", very well done for its time, and sets the stage for many of the "machines take over the world" themed movies (see Wargames, Terminator *, Matrix). I find it especially eerie for how cold and plausible the progression is, and it's one of the only ones that show the control slipping away from the engineers in anything like a realistic manner. Plus the leading characters aren't your stereotyped geeks, they are more like real engineers. If anything, Charles Forbin is too cool, not too geeky. After watching Watson win Jeopardy I pulled the movie out so I can watch it again when I get some free time :) If any of you haven't seen it, do so! ** Whoa, just read on Wikipedia the Ron Howard is remaking it, with Will Smith as Dr. Forbin! Anyway, Tron was and is magical. As someone said earlier, it was indeed like nothing we had seen before. And it was the first movie made partly for "us". We loved the little in-jokes that only programmers would get :)

BrainiacV

I was vastly disappointed with it when I saw it. Best part for me was the sight gag of the unending cube farm at the beginning. The made up terminology drove me batty. Yes, most of the public wouldn't have understood all the in jokes and puns or real computer terminology, but eventually they would have. Instead the writers created technobabble nobody could understand. And once Flinn realized he was in a computer program, as a programmer he should have become akin to God. "Recursive memory wipe, take that MCP!" "Let's play with some pointers and bring this puppy down." Then end yielded a printed piece of paper? He could have typed that by hand, that was no proof. Sorry, while the graphics were interesting, I demand a story instead of just a lightshow.

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

glennPattonWork3

Mmmm. TRON, TRace ON, Mmmm, BBC Basic(Possibly Apple as well) I seem to remember from my Colledge days.....

Fabio Franco

It was so good it's the first movie I remember watching. I don't really know at what age I watched it, but it surely caused an impact on me. Come to think about it now... I should've known I was doomed to be a geek. :sigh:

SeattleC

The new tron was a boring rehash of the old one. Worth seeing (or renting) I guess, but nothing like it could have been. The old tron was awful too as a movie, but it was extremely geeky. I remember when I saw it in the theater, the audience was divided into two groups (geeky and non-geeky) that laughed in different places. How many times on BSD UNIX did I type a directory listing when I was trying to think of something to do next? And there it was in the movie, rendered first as some guy typing "DIR", and then in-world, as the same guy driving around in that tank thing. How many times did I delete a file. There it was in the movie, a guy typing "DEL" and then in-world, a little guy thrown down onto an electrified grid to be fried like a bug in a bug-zapper. I winced for six months every time I deleted a file after that. Even the whole "Do you believe in users?" thing was poignant in a geeky way. The new movie has far less really geeky stuff. It had prettier clothes and sharper graphics, but stuck almost exclusively to territory that had previously been covered. OMG I can't believe I'm waxing loquatious about the geekiness of a movie. Clearly I've been taken over by an alien pod of some sort.

MattPenner

I was only 6 when it hit the theaters so I didn't see it until it was released on VHS, however, I loved the movie and was instantly addicted. As one who was a part of the Tron generation it was quite good. I really don't know how I would react if I watched it for the first time among today's generation of movies. Many hot lazy summer days were spent watching it when it was 110+ outside. As many have pointed out most of the computer users at the time were early business professionals, academia or the developers themselves, so the initial target audience of geeks was very small. It did appeal to a wide range of Sci-Fi fans though. The effects were simply amazing at the time. If you watch the making of the movie, which is on the DVD, it's quite extraordinary how they did the effects. Some have pointed out the inaccuracies in the movie, however, I'm hard pressed to even think of one movie that was based on computers (or even attributed them) that didn't have inaccuracies. This one, being a complete fantasy world imagined inside the computer realm, I give it a high amount of artistic license. Given the absolute imagination of the movie and the story I pretty much let go any restrictions and just get totally engrossed into the film. Whereas romantic comedies I watch with my wife absolutely drive me nuts when some "nice guy" calls the leading lady on the phone, suddenly out of no where rains rose petals on her work computer screen and she thinks, "Oh, how cute!".

Flynn Arrowstarr Regular Schmoe

Given my user name, I think you might be able to guess my thoughts. I didn't see it until after it came out on VHS. I was probably 14 or so, and just getting into computers myself. My brother had a C=64 and I remember he and I spending hours typing in programs from magazines and him teaching me how to tweak them. I haven't seen the new one yet, but I'm looking forward to the Blu-Ray release later this year that will include the original as well. :) Flynn

H Brydon

A bunch of us from work went to see it as a group. We were interested in it because (besides being geeks) we were familiar with some of the technical details about how it was made, and used some of the techniques for our own technical and visualization projects. We had several water cooler discussions about the technical details before we went to see it. It had some familiarity to us since it was rendered on a Cray, and we were one of several companies in the world that also had a Cray (different corporate site, but still in the family). It was a groundbreaking movie in the technical details and we were not disappointed in that. We did not have high expectations of a glorious script and were also not disappointed subject to our lowered expectations. Personally that is pretty much what I thought about Avatar as well - a very well done highly technical masterpiece with a lame script. -- Harvey

Mark AJA

It was the best mix of live action and computer graphics film out, as it was the first and only one. The first colour film out was the best colour film until they made a few more. The first 3D film out was the best 3D one until they made a few more. When they release the first holographic film, I'm sure it will be the best holographic film out ever.