Movie Review: Tron

I hadn't actually heard of "Tron" until the character and his world appeared in "Kingdom Hearts 2"; it looked fun, so I decided to check out the original.

And... well, it is fun. Flawed, but fun.

There's a bit of repetition throughout the movie, though I tend to wonder if that's part of the point (ie: the interactions between the MCP and Sark follow the same patterns over and over again, but they're programs, what else could they do?). The plot's also a touch on the simple side; it might have worked out better had the "real world" been ignored completely, thus making Tron the actual protagonist of the story. One of my favorite television series, "Reboot", did just that, and you never really knew if the "Users" existed, or what kind of entities they were. Here, the programs' quasi-religious belief in their creators is deflated because we see them, and we know they're only human. At the same time, Flynn's presence does create an interesting parallel between the real world and the digital world - as he tells Tron and Yori, things aren't really much better where he's from. The MCP is just another tyrant who wants everything to go his way, a human creation exhibiting human traits.

I think I was actually more impressed with the computer effects here than in something like "The Matrix" - for a film produced in 1982, "Tron" manages to do much with relatively little resources. Oh, I suppose it's crude by today's standards, but there's an aesthetic quality to the way the digital world was designed that still holds up today.

It's not a cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination; that said, it's enjoyable in its own way.