RIP, David Warner, Bernard Hughes and now Cindy Morgan. This movie got snubbed at the Oscars because the Academy refused to accept Computer Visual Effects as the next best thing until THE ABYSS was released, and everything changed from then on. It finally received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Effects in 1992, 10 years after its release.
both great movies! The CGI doesn't hold up quite so much in The Last Starfighter, but yeah, it was groundbreaking in the 80's and is still fun to watch.
Jeff Bridges has range. Another great, but odd sci-fi flick that he starred in in the early 80s is Starman. His character in that could not be more different than Flynn.
“Tron” was definitely a groundbreaking film when it was being produced. Unlike now where you can see the CGI models as you animate them, they basically had to type everything in the computer, then wait as it rendered and hoped it worked out. The film was also animated like a cartoon. The actors were filmed on an all black set. The backgrounds were painted just like an animated movie but made to look like it was CG. Each single frame of the movie set in the Grid was then blown up and reshot like an animation cell. And they would have to do this up to seventeen times for each frame. And there are twenty-four frames for each second of film. They would have a light with a blue or red gel under the frame that would show through the black lines on the costumes. They’d shoot that. Then they’d have to do a pass for the eyes and teeth and then a color tint and just all sorts of stuff. And there were mistakes made when printing out the cells causing what would look like a flickering effect. So they just added some light effects, like a zinger flying by. Disney animators refused to work on this movie as they felt threatened by the use of computers. The Oscar folks didn’t even allow Tron to be nominated as they felt it was cheating using computers. How the times have changed.
Loved your comment. I have the 25th Anniversary Tron DVD. They have an interview with Bruce Boxleitner. Bruce told a great story about why he chose to do Iron. He was primarily known for Westerns at the time. Bruce saw that Jeff Bridges an "A" list actor had signed on. Bruce figured he must know something I don't! The interview then cuts to Jeff Bridges saying, "I get sucked into a computer? Cool!" It's amazing how our favorite movies get made.
@@horseshoe2blah201 I have that DVD as well. When this movie came out I was ALL about it! I had the action figures and the yellow light cycle. I used to use a little flashlight to make Sark glow when he was mad. The translucent plastic was kind of cheap though and the butts would crack at the waist sometimes and fall off. Then the legs would pop out. I also had the table top arcade game made by Tomy. I played the crap out of it. Still have it but it doesn’t work anymore. The arcade game is one that I would ALWAYS play whenever I saw it (and provided I had a quarter). The video store we rented our movies from had a Tron cab and they were selling it for $2000. This is in 1984 money, so yeah, it was a lot. But I begged my dad to buy it. I was nine years old, I had no idea how much two grand was. I didn’t even KNOW you could OWN an arcade cabinet! Obviously my dad didn’t buy it but I had made up my mind that one day I would own a Tron cab. Fast forward thirteen years and I’m in San Francisco touring with The Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus! I had a day off and wound up at an arcade by the Fisherman’s Wharf. There they had a Tron cab. It was beat up, the trans light for the artwork didn’t work and the graphics were peeling, but the game played fine. And the arcade was selling it for $200! And I had the money to get it! Sadly I couldn’t because, traveling with the circus, I lived on a train. It’s impossible to get an arcade cab on the train! And trying to ship it home would cost more than the cab itself. Had to let it go🙁 When I left the show and came home I heard of a website called eBay (gotta remember, this was ‘97, early days). Tried bidding on Tron cabs but always lost out. I finally got one two years ago just a couple of months after my fiancée passed away. I like to think it was her way of sending me a Christmas present from Heaven! I also happen to own my other dream cabs, Pacman, Star Wars and Dragon’s Lair. I also have Mortal Kombat and Asteroids, which I was on my way to pick up when I got the news about my fiancée. Fixing that Asteroids cab up really helped me get through that first week.
@@Clownboy15 Sorry, I replied with a link on how to get your Tron game. It was at the bottom of a post about the cultural significance of this movie. Unless you grew up in this time, an age where the internet was a spooky word spoken by the two friends you knew had a computer, this, the computer world, was a mysterious forbidden realm. How many kids were inspired by this movie remains unquantified.
The updated tools are really something. The "Corridor Crew" channel recently were able to re-create a near perfect match of the lightcycle battle using off-the-shelf animation software in an afternoon. I wonder how this new Sora AI would do with it?
Saw this movie in the theater as a 16 yr old. It's what inspired me to have pursue a career in IT/programming. 45 years later and I'm still at it. This movie was GROUNDBREAKING in 1982. It literally changed my life.
TRON later becomes Lee Stetson in Scarecrow and Mrs King, and Captain John Sheridan in Babylon 5. The accountant, CROM, becomes an informant on Hill Street Blues, and Ambassador Londo Mollari in Babylon 5.
They were definitely Channeling Jeff Bridges’s Dude persona in the sequel! Also check him out in the remake of “True Grit” The movie has Hailee Steinfeld’s breakthrough performance for which she received an Oscar nomination.
People talking about Jeff Bridges and the movies he's been in, the guy is from a family of great actors, but the first time I saw him was in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. It might have been his debut big part, and he is brilliant alongside that other film legend, Clint Eastwood. You have to watch Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Otherwise, you are making a big mistake.
Minds blown? Try watching those light cycles at age 15 then leaving the cinema on a 10 speed bicycle. I am *_soooooooo_* lucky to still be breathing! 🤣🤣
Yup... I was about the same age when the movie came out. It just blew everyone's mind. I was learning electronics and computers and was able to keep up with the movie's tech-speak.. But you get the gist if you don't. The folks here did really good. It's a lot of stuff. Whoever thought up the movie must live in some alternative reality. I mean, how do you think of all the graphics and design? And then to film it the way they did. Disney can make an amazing movie when it wants to. The Black Hole made by Disney in 1979 is another fantastic Disney movie with some seriously scary scenes in it.
@@ricardorgomez That was the first movie I saw in the theatres (The Black Hole), but I slept thru it. (I was 4) A great Disney movie from that time that doesn't get a lot of love is Condorman. It's not an effects movie (at least not a sci-fi effects kind of thing) It's more James Bond than sci-fi. But the gadgets were cool, and unlike James Bond, it was clean (with no immorality)
YAY!! You did Tron; I knew you guys were going to do Tron in 2024. Love the 80’s. Don’t forget The Last Starfighter directed by Nick Castle, the first CGI movie ever.
Great movie the last starfighter. It wasn't the first . If you look it up it says it vertigo that was first to use CGI. I only know because I looked it up just now
This was Matrix before The Matrix. I wish they would bring back arcades so much. But part of the draw was the newness of that machine world and the wonder we all felt playing them. You recognize his voice Jay cause, he's The Dude! Yes, they made a Tron video game after this movie.
The movie was so far ahead of its time.. The bosses desk being not only a touch screen, but a HUGE flat screen computer monitor that could display video.. The design of the motorcycles, etc. -- I think we see now that life, ends up imitating art...
The TRON arcade game was a blast too, for 1982 anyway. It had four separate parts: tank battle, spiders, breaking the MCP, and the light cycles. The light cycles were the coolest part.
@@Sledg0matic I much preferred Discs of Tron to Tron. Not least of which because I could actually last a while in a game of Discs, but always got my a$$ kicked in the original Tron.
I’m laughing my butt off right now. Just got to the part where you said that Flynn’s voice sounds familiar like he was in a cartoon. And I’m laughing because you have is picture right there on the wall!😂
@@danguzman3458 I’m wondering if they ever figured it out. But it can be like that. I was watching Tron: Legacy last year when I suddenly realized that Jarvis was James Frain! Movie was fourteen years old and finally realized it! Of course no one has ever accused me of being Sherlock Holmes either!
If you're willing to give a long, old, silent movie a chance (rated 8.3 out of 10 on IMDB), the original, 1927 Metropolis (Criterion Collection, not Kino or the other butchered releases) is amazing. Even today, almost 100 years later, it has an incredible following of fans who appreciate what an achievement Metropolis was that early in cinematic history.
I don't think they'll do silent movies. It takes a special cinephile to appreciate them. But if they were to watch it, they would recognize the scenes used in Radio Gaga by Queen. Speaking of Queen, when are they gonna watch Flash Gordon?
Hard to say. If they're willing to go back to the likes of Louis Prima or the Andrew Sisters on their music-reaction channel, they could surprise us with Metropolis. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or M would probably be more difficult. Then again, it could be possible to generate some interest in the Lon Chaney, 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera.
@@DavidBrown-ly6lp True, but it takes a special type to appreciate it. A lot of imagery and if you're not paying attention to the visuals, since there is no dialogue to assist your interpretation, it's easy to miss out on the message.
It's hard to put into words just how mind blowing this movie was to us 80's kids. Before this computer graphics were the blocky 8 bit stuff you would see on a Commodore 64 or Atari. This wasn't a new level, it was a hundred new levels above that. It inspired a lot of us who in the IT industry to pursue this career path as well, and the whole AI/hacking/cybercrime stuff in the movie was spot on then and now too. Wendy Carlos's score was amazing and I had the record. For a long time it looked like it would never come out on CD because the master tapes absorbed too much moisture, but eventually the technology to recover it was found and the CD was released.
Then you'd place your quarter on the machine to signal next player in hopes to take them down. Many good times on Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat that was.
I had many occasions of crowds around me on games like robotron, Stargate, 1942, after being on the game for an hour or more on one quarter with my score well into 8 digits.
Ah, 1982. Tron was cutting edge when it was released. For those of us that got to watch it on the big screen it was mind blowing. Yes, there was an actual Tron arcade game, based on the movie, where you were on the light cycle grid, fighting the spiders, defeating the MCP, and more. As for the computers of the day, the PC as we know it was in its early infancy. We're talking Apple 2e's, Comodore 64's, etc. Microsoft had just released MS-DOS 1.0 in 1981. Large businesses like ENCOM were using mainframe systems. The mainframe did all the processing and had all the storage, while the users were accessing the mainframe via a dumb terminal that had no processing or storage by itself. Your home computer that you're using for your videos is many times more powerful than those early 80's mainframes. There is a 2nd movie as you mentioned, Tron Legacy, which came out in 2010. I highly recommend you watch it, if anything to see the difference in almost 30 years of computer graphics improvement.
Yeah... I live in one of the smaller major cities in Canada and I was involved in video documenting the move of our province's power company's computer system from one floor to another and these giant mainframes literally took up an entire floor of the building which it's footprint took up half a block of city space ! And the accounts department literally looked like about half that vast sea of cubicles too !
I still used a dumb terminal at a mortgage company I worked at up in to 1998. I had had PC's at home for years and had worked other places with computers on the desks, but the terminals were still around for a long time.
My first exposure to computers, even before the Apple 2's, was a teletype that my father had in his office at school. He used it to connect to the university mainframe that was about an hour away from our small town. He'd dial up the university system with the old rotary phone, listen for the tones, and then place the handset on an acoustic coupler (ancient modem) that would transfer data at 75 bits per second. It was all text back then but I was absolutely amazed. I actually got to go with him to the computer department at the university one time to see the mainframe. It took up almost the whole floor. It has been over 45 years since then and now I'm the teacher, trying to pass on my knowledge, passion, and amazement of how these computers have evolved.
The movie came first but there was an arcade game based on it. Unlike most previous arcade games that actually had several different games you could choose from, which was really cool.
And it was actually lots of fun. There's a PC game called TRON 2.0 , still available on Steam, and it's excellent. Lightcycle grid, disc games, everything.
I was born in 75. We had an arcade with a Tron game. But, I honestly thought the game came out first. Could just be my aging brain though. I remember this game very well. There was the tanks, the spiders, the light bikes, and the hive thing with the data stream. The arcade game was unique for the times. They used a lot of neon lights and music with loud speakers. It was one of the first games I can remember having music within the game while you played. There was a lot going on, like a pinball machine.
4:21: This actor, David Warner, plays 3 different characters. Ed Dillinger, Sark and the Master Control Program. You may also recognize him as the bodyguard/valet antagonist in "Titanic".
He also played the photographer in The Omen (1976), Jack The Ripper in Time After Time (1979), the wax museum owner in Waxwork (1988), St. John Tablet in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), The TGRI scientist in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret Of The Ooze (1991) as well as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country (1991) & the mental hospital doctor in John Carpenter's: In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)...
Saw this movie when it released. I was 13 the Summer going into the Freshman year of High School. Saw this at the $1.00 matinee, then saw it about 15 times after that throughout the summer. Great memories. I would like to suggest Rock Star a movie based on 1980's Heavy Metal Band, Steel Dragon, with Mark Walhberg and Jennifer Anniston with members of Black Label Society, Slaughter, and Styx and introducting John Bohnam's song Jason in his first movie role, based on a true story. Ref: Tim Ripper Owens and his replacing Rob Halford of Judas Priest. IF you want to see Jay and Amber watch Rockstar, hit that thumbs up button!
Yep, 2 bits was called a ‘crumb’, 4 bits was a ‘nibble’ ( Which always gave me a laugh to think about ), while 8 bits is a ‘byte’. Beyond that you had ‘words’, though that’s generally defined by the number of registers the CPU had, so for example it could be 32bits or today 64 bits.
0 & 1 to this day represent off and on, used universally for some things electrical and/or electronic as a 1 superimposed over half of a 0. basically, back in the day, decades even before Tron came out and computer circuits were first conceived, all of it was represented with an on and off switch. if something was true, = on, and false, = off, what is referred to as binary language.
When this came out I was a little kid in the very early 80' in the golden age of arcade games. we didn't even have a vcr remember renting one and watching this over and over. the cgi techniques combined with backlit and hand draw animation still holds up today
This was an actual arcade video game in a dedicated cabinet. The cabinet was so big you could actually get inside it. I used to be an engineer for gaming machines back in the 80s and 90s. We got all the latest arcade games which I used to love testing before they hit the arcades. Tron was a really cool game, felt just like the movie.
1:15 Hey Jay and Amber, the actress that played Lori/Yori was Cindy Morgan, the same actress who played Lacey Underall, Judge Smails niece,.in the movie "Caddyshack" Sadly, she'd passed away back in December 2023
Saw this the summer of 1982 when it came out, I was 11. And yes my mind was blown. The summer of 1982 had a lot of great movies; Tron, ET, Star Trek II, Bladerunner, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Blue Thunder, Conan and The Thing. Growing up in the 80s was awesome! And yes there was an arcade game based on the movie.
I remember as a kid of the 80s, how much the look of this film, with the laser style glowing lines around objects/ppl, was so futuristic and amazing to me. There was a TV show called "Automan" that I really loved, that had a similar effect for the holograms.
@@gustonzimasheen Never saw it. (I don't watch rated R movies) I always think of Misfits as being a B Team X-Men (or a Z team if you want to be mean-hehe)
Back in the 1970's, folks had to write their own programs (apps), and in a business setting, they usually had to write them on the fly for whatever presentation/stats/graphs/etc. they needed. This is why the programs resemble the users. TRON & TROFF were BASIC computer language for TRacer ON & TRacer OFF- basically they were there to monitor a program problem by tracing the issue (the program stopped on the line of code where an issue lay & returned the line number). This movie was hand-drawn & rotoscoped, so there (ironically) was no CGI- the TRON world was hand animated.
It might be fair to say some sequences were computer rendered. But the rendering had to happen over night and they did not know how the scenes would turn out until they came to work the next morning. There were no computers powerful enough to render any of the scenes on-the-fly in real time.
There was tons of CGI! You can tell the difference between the practical sets with hand drawn animation, and the many CGI sequences, like the lightbikes and the laser-sailboat-thingie.
They filmed the actors in black and white to get the effect as programs. I was in junior high school when this came out. When I was a senior in 1985, the powers that be decided computers were something we should learn about so for TWO WEEKS prior to graduations we were shown programming diagrams (not practical in real world applications). You mentioned how big the computers were. Big didn't mean the same thing as now. Think about it: cell phones and even watches these days have more computing power than they had to put a man on the moon. Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) was one of my crushes back then. Loved him in How the West Was Won. He had GREAT 70s hair. 😍
There were a couple of TRON arcade games made after the movie. The first was based closely on the movie events. The second, "Discs of TRON" just focused on the frisbee throwing combat.
@@brianmcmaster5112 really? Let’s see. 89. Let’s break that down. That’ll be an 8 plus a 9 which together equal 89. Not 90. Btw Brian Mister 89 isn’t exactly 80s, 9 plus a 0 is 90. That’ll be a different decade for us usual people. But 89 IS still in the 80s being at the very end BUT still 80s nonetheless. 🤦🏻♂️ There’s always one that gotta. Always one. 🤣 Anything else you need an explanation for there Brian? If not I’ll let you get back to your coloring book my boy. Ok ttyl. 👋🏼
There’s so much I can say about this movie, mainly I’ll just say this film changed my life. I was a kid of the 80s, graduated high school class of 1989. I grew up with the “new thing”, home computers, including the TRS-80 (affectionally known as “The Trash 80”), VIC-20, and C-64. I would stay up all night typing in programs published in the rare computer magazines. My name is Alan, and Tron’s user is Alan; that was a big deal for an 11 year old programmer kid! I imagined fantastic worlds inside of the computers, and dreamed of what the future would bring. Now, I’m a retired software engineer who worked in the industry for 35 years and I still can’t take my hands of computers. Every day I look at the technology around me, and marvel that I live in the future. Some things I imagined years ago, others I could have never imagined. I just smile sometimes seeing people take it all in as mundane, staring at their cell phones which are a veritable miracle. Look at the file size of a Microsoft Word file, then realize that the C-64 had 64 kilobytes of total memory. Tron means so much to me, I only wish it was recognized more as the technically groundbreaking and visionary film that it is. Sure in many ways it seems hokey today, but boy do I love it.
16:33 - Hi Jay, the sport is called "Jai Alai" (pronounced "Hi - A - Lie"). It was a very popular sport in the U.S. During the 80s. Not so much anymore.
13:59 Flynn was played by a then-early-30's Jeff Bridges. The man's been acting for half a century: it may be easier to ask, what DON'T you know him from?
@23:46 the weird glowing glass thing looks like an old vacuum tube. If you’re old enough, which y’all are not, tube TV’s took several seconds to warm up. Vacuum tubes were eventually replaced by transistors.
Yes, Tron was a video arcade game. Very popular. All the games you see in this movie were a part of the Tron game. The Racer Bikes, the Battle Tanks, the "Frisbee Game", the one with the Scoops (FYI the game you are thinking of Jay is Jai Alai). You could pick one and if you beat it, you picked another until you beat all of them then you moved onto the next level.
You kinda need to look at this through 1982 eyes. The general population had no idea how computers really worked. Home computers were just starting to come out and few families had them. I was 9 and we got a second hand Atari 400 it did good to play tennis (fancy pong)
All of the main actors play 2 roles... Jeff Bridges aka The Dude: Kevin Flynn/Clu....yeah, Jay, the answer was on the wall behind you, dude!!! Bruce Boxleitner: Alan Bradley/Tron Cindy Morgan: Lora/Yori Bernard Hughes: Walter/Dumont Dan Shor: Roy/Ram (Roy is the guy in the ENCOM offices who asked Alan if he could have some popcorn). David Warner: Ed Dillinger/Sark...and the voice of the MCP - 15:59 - Fun fact: The actor playing Crom was Peter Jurasik. In the 1990s, both Jurasik and Bruce Boxleitner (Tron) were in the main cast of a groundbreaking sci-fi series called Babylon 5, which was a test bed for using extensive CGI to bring down special effects costs. Babylon 5 is beloved by many people, as it also told an amazing story over 5 years with a beginning, middle and end like a novel for television before anybody else in American TV was doing it. It is well worth the time if you decide to start doing TV series. -The way the video game world was filmed was in black and white film stock, with all "sets" in black, and all costumes in white, with black electrical tape marking out sections. Then the film went through a reverse value process where everything black became white, and everything white was black, with shades of gray throughout. Each frame was blown up to the size of a piece of paper (or slightly larger), and handpainted. Sometimes each frame had individual layers that were painted separately. Set, costume, skin, eyes, teeth, etc...each had to be painted separately and then put back together. The film was rotoscoped one frame at a time so that basically what they ended up with was a live-action animated film. The flares in color are due to imperfections in the film stock, so they add a level of cool to the look. There were several early stage CGI shots, but less than most people believe. Mainly because rendering such things were intesely complicated, and computering power at the time, even for "supercomputers" was much less than it is today. But they are there. But the film itself was in many ways right up Disney's alley using a lot of old school techniques in different ways. - The sequel Tron: Legacy brings back Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, and is directed by Jospeh Kosinski (who also directed Top Gun: Maverick). The amazing score is by Daft Punk.
Now you have to watch the sequel, Tron Legacy, from 2010. There’s a slight upgrade in graphics ;). When Tron came out, it was mind blowing to us. It was unlike anything that had ever been made, and the computer graphics used were the first time they were used so extensively. Yes, they are rudimentary compared to today’s standards, but don’t forget that the computers that took up entire rooms when Tron was made now fit in your pocket. Your smart phone is infinitely faster than the room sized computers of the early 80s. And yes, there is an Arcade game called Tron where you could play the disc game, light cycle racing and other games in the movie as well as fight the MCP where you had to get your disc into the middle like Tron did.
The actor playing Flynn... His picture is on the wall behind you. It's Jeff Bridges, The Big Labowski.. Also see him in Star Man (1972) and the non sci-fi movie Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974). Another dystopic sci-fi movie is Colosseum: The Forbin Project (1970).
His brother Beau and his father Lloyd also act. They’ve seen the father in Airplane. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. They’ve almost certainly seen Beau in something. He has done hundreds of TV shows and movies. But the first movie that came to mind was Swashbuckler. I doubt the movie holds up very well after all these years, but it was entertaining then, (long before Pirates Of tTe Caribbean) and has some very well-known actors when they were much much younger.
One of those things that you have to have lived in the 80's to be able to fully relate to it. Some of the things that you might have missed are: 1. TRON - is a short computer command meaning Trace On; 2. Bit - is the smallest unit of information either 1 or 0 that also answers yes or no that accompanied Flynn when he was driving after Ram was erased; 3. RAM - Random Access Memory 4. Dumont - the guardian of the I/O (input/Output) tower who represents the partner of Laura with the Laser Project; 5. Zark's ship design is the front panel and coin slot for arcade games; 6. Identity disc are the equivalent of a floppy disk where all information is stored; and yes, Zark is DIllinger... Also, great eye on seeing Pacman... I am so looking forward to your reaction video with TRON Legacy which I'm sure you will fully appreciate... ❤🤓
TRON was definitely one of my favorite films as a kid! And yes, the summer of 1982 a TRON arcade game was released that was so much fun to play. From light cycles to tank wars!
I was a kid when this film came out and loved every minute. We all went to the arcade to play the Tron video game. The Lightcycle mini game was the game very loved and would become the basis for so many copycat games. I have the 25th anniversary copy of this movie.
Brainstorm was rated PG, so my dad took me to see it, thinking it'd be "safe." He was pretty embarrassed after that full frontal sex scene. 10-yr old me found it to be very educational, though....
c. 15:49: Most of the actors were dual cast. Jeff Bridges plays both Flynn and Clu; David Warner portrays Dillinger and Sark; Bruce Boxleitner plays both Tron and Alan, and so on. Programs, you might say, are made in the images of their users.
I was a teenager when Tron came out. Back then the movie made more sense to us computer geeks as the "language' of computers was very different to what it is today. Back then most programs were written in "basic" which had code that read as "If" "Then" or "Yes" "no" . Very binary type of coding that anyone using computers knew as you had to write all your own programs or enter them manually from a script. You wouldn't by a computer game you would buy the program that you entered into your own computer manally.
Or... you bought Zaxxon on cassette and spent 30 to 45 minutes loading into memory on your Atari 800 computer using your cassette drive... and you only ever did that once. 😉
I LOVED Tron back in the day... I was 12 and it made a huge impression on me. I LOVED videogames... the OG's Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missile Command, and Pac Man and dozens of others... and then the Atari 2600 came out and within the first year our family got one... right around the same time all the boys in the neighborhood did and it was just a revolution... no more running 2 miles down to the nearest videogame arcade every Saturday afternoon, spending all my allowance in quarters, running home to search the couch cushions for change, collecting all the house's bottles and returning them for a few dollars more in change, another couple of hours at the arcade then back home another way through the woods looking for beer bottles from the older kids partying in the woods, cashing THEM in and back to the arcade all because I KNEW I sooo close to getting through that one more level in the game... And then the actual Tron videogame came out and that was really quite an incredibly well realized adaption of the movie's computer land world. But WOW did the lightcycles AI difficulty really ramp up in the third wave ! Could never beat them ! So Tron... back in the day... well definitely Top 5... now still Top 20 for me...
This 1982 film was the first time that CGI (Computer Graphics Imaginery) was used extencively in a movie. It was a technological breakthru, nevertheless, many scenes were filmed using traditional optical efects (that's why the image quallity is not always consistent). In 2010 a continuation was made: Tron Legacy (Daft punk original sound track).
The best part of this movie is how it takes us back to a time when computers were new to the world and people weren't as familiar with them or how they worked. It put forward an imaginative picture of how to conceptualize what was happening inside a computer with processes and programs, written by users with tasks and objectives.
I was completely blown away when I saw this as a kid in the mid 80’s. It was the movie that sparked my interest in computers and gaming which remains my hobby to this day. I love the movie and even have a framed Tron poster hanging in my living room.
OMG I am freaking out… one of my favorites of all time. Used to go to sleep to this movie atleast 300x my game room is Tron themed and I have a Tron Arcade gane and the Tron Oinball. Will watch this in a couple of hours THANK YOU. 💙💙💙💙
Cindy Morgan who plays Lora/ Yori in this movie just recently passed away not that long ago RIP. She also is the one who played Lacey underall in Caddyshack
Anyone else remember the Tron games on the old Intellivision console? Awesome console games. From IMDB: The state-of-the-art computer used for the film's key special effects had only 2MB of memory and 330MB of storage.
@@jkbowers56 100%....It just seemed like they didn't really love this movie and I think that Tron Legacy is a lot better, and they both would be missing out if they never checked it out. Legacy is a very good movie IMO.
TRON was envisioned as a game tie-in to the movie and it was a set of minigames emulating the games shown in the movie. There were also console ports of the minigames, but not bundled as a whole collection on one cartridge, due to size limitations of ROM chips back then. I still remember my favorite part of the game as a kid were the light cycles. TRON was The Matrix before The Matrix. TRON came out at a time when computers were barely starting to become mainstays in offices. There was still so much to know about the capabilities in 1982 that we take for granted in 2024. In comparison, the computers used to send men to the Moon are crude compared to the computer we all have in our pockets. And I still can't get over you didn't recognize Flynn was played by Jeff Bridges aka, The DUDE.
Flynn was played by Jeff Bridges. This movie was incredibly successful in its day. Upon its release, the standing video game of the same name was added to arcades and movie theater lobbies everywhere. Internet and WiFi were concepts, but remote control televisions, call-waiting and microwave ovens were still very new to households at that time. If you've seen Free Guy, you'll notice that it has the same premise as Tron, but from the perspective of an NPC within the game.
I was thirteen when this came out. Blew me away. Played the arcade game a TON back in the day. The future of computing in movies was showcased right here
This came out a good decade before the internet gained popularity, so the take on computers and what they can do is given a more quaint mystique here. Seeing it in the theater when I was 10, though, blew my mind. 1982 was a banner year for sci-fi/ fantasy/ horror. Just game-changer after game-changer (pun partially intended)- this movie, ET, Poltergeist, The Thing, Conan The Barbarian, The Dark Crystal, Beastmaster, Blade Runner, etc. And the game with the ball and hand scoops is a Brazilian sport called jai alai.
There was a Tron arcade game released after the movie that included the lightcycles and other contests from the film. There was also a short-lived, underrated TV series called "Automan" about a Tron-like character who became a superhero in the real world.
The fact that this movie got made at all is pretty amazing. The work that went in to it was massive. All the live action scenes that take place inside the computer were basically treated like an animated movie. There's a 90 minute making-of documentary that was included in the 25th Anniversary DVD set. I wouldn't be shocked if it's been posted to UA-cam by someone. FYI, Jeff Bridges, who played Flynn, besides playing The Dude, was also the bad guy of the first Iron Man movie, Obadiah Stane.
Tron was also a huge hit in arcades back in the day. For you young kids who may not be aware of what a arcade is. It's the building where all the video games were kept and you could play for just a quarter. A place to go with your friends and spend that weeks allowance.
Jay trying to figure out who Flynn is while he's hanging on the wall right behind him 🤣
How do you get to comment 2 hrs before the video posted ? Honestly curious ✌️
Hmmm@@andymageen5308 hacker?
I was thinking the same thing! For shame - how do you not recognize The Dude when he’s right in front of you? lol
If only there was a way to know who's voice that was..... :)
@@andymageen5308I'm a Patron 😊
The Last Starfighter is another 80's gem that needs more love.
yes please watch the last starfighter. that is a movie that every 80s kid grew up loving and watching over and over
The last Star fighter is better than Tron in my opinion
Love The Last Starfighter.
YESSSSSS!
YES YES YES.
RIP, David Warner, Bernard Hughes and now Cindy Morgan.
This movie got snubbed at the Oscars because the Academy refused to accept Computer Visual Effects as the next best thing until THE ABYSS was released, and everything changed from then on.
It finally received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Effects in 1992, 10 years after its release.
Holy crap! When did Cindy Morgan die?
@@Clownboy15 December 2023
The academy actually called it cheating. LOL
@Clownboy15
Yeah, she'd died back in December
@@karlsmith2570 that one really flew under the radar for me.
"The Last Starfighter" AND "The Flight of the Navigator" are a couple of groundbreaking movies of the 80's. And I thought, very fun.
both great movies! The CGI doesn't hold up quite so much in The Last Starfighter, but yeah, it was groundbreaking in the 80's and is still fun to watch.
"Explorers" really hits that spot as well.
Yes to all three suggestions!! I loved all 3 of those movies! Starfighter, Navigator, amd Explorers were all regular go to movies for me!
Tron Legacy is a worthwhile sequel; more modern graphics with great music
Damn, did my ears perk up when I heard the first song come on, only regret is not seeing Legacy in the theater.
Seriously!!! The soundtrack to that is stellar. Daft Punk did an amazing job on it.
Jeff Bridges has range. Another great, but odd sci-fi flick that he starred in in the early 80s is Starman. His character in that could not be more different than Flynn.
Starman (1984) is very heartwarming for a sci-fi movie & directed by John Carpenter no less 😁
I love the movie Starman. Great movie to react to for sure.
"Red light, stop. Green light, go. Yellow light, go very fast."
Yep - and Jeff Bridges was nominated for an Oscar for Starman.
@@tracithomas6543 deservedly so. If anyone says that Bridges just plays variations of the same character, show them Starman.
This movie entered completely new territory for special effects, computer animation, ans story line. It was groundbreaking.
David Warner was always an excellent villain. A must watch with him is "Time Bandits".
This
Oh I would love to see them react to time bandits!
Titanic
He was also Jack the Ripper in Time after Time with Malcolm McDowel....great movie!
And a very good Jack the Ripper in "Time After Time"!
“Tron” was definitely a groundbreaking film when it was being produced. Unlike now where you can see the CGI models as you animate them, they basically had to type everything in the computer, then wait as it rendered and hoped it worked out. The film was also animated like a cartoon. The actors were filmed on an all black set. The backgrounds were painted just like an animated movie but made to look like it was CG. Each single frame of the movie set in the Grid was then blown up and reshot like an animation cell. And they would have to do this up to seventeen times for each frame. And there are twenty-four frames for each second of film. They would have a light with a blue or red gel under the frame that would show through the black lines on the costumes. They’d shoot that. Then they’d have to do a pass for the eyes and teeth and then a color tint and just all sorts of stuff. And there were mistakes made when printing out the cells causing what would look like a flickering effect. So they just added some light effects, like a zinger flying by. Disney animators refused to work on this movie as they felt threatened by the use of computers. The Oscar folks didn’t even allow Tron to be nominated as they felt it was cheating using computers. How the times have changed.
Loved your comment. I have the 25th Anniversary Tron DVD. They have an interview with Bruce Boxleitner. Bruce told a great story about why he chose to do Iron. He was primarily known for Westerns at the time. Bruce saw that Jeff Bridges an "A" list actor had signed on. Bruce figured he must know something I don't! The interview then cuts to Jeff Bridges saying, "I get sucked into a computer? Cool!" It's amazing how our favorite movies get made.
@@horseshoe2blah201 I have that DVD as well. When this movie came out I was ALL about it! I had the action figures and the yellow light cycle. I used to use a little flashlight to make Sark glow when he was mad. The translucent plastic was kind of cheap though and the butts would crack at the waist sometimes and fall off. Then the legs would pop out. I also had the table top arcade game made by Tomy. I played the crap out of it. Still have it but it doesn’t work anymore. The arcade game is one that I would ALWAYS play whenever I saw it (and provided I had a quarter). The video store we rented our movies from had a Tron cab and they were selling it for $2000. This is in 1984 money, so yeah, it was a lot. But I begged my dad to buy it. I was nine years old, I had no idea how much two grand was. I didn’t even KNOW you could OWN an arcade cabinet! Obviously my dad didn’t buy it but I had made up my mind that one day I would own a Tron cab. Fast forward thirteen years and I’m in San Francisco touring with The Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus! I had a day off and wound up at an arcade by the Fisherman’s Wharf. There they had a Tron cab. It was beat up, the trans light for the artwork didn’t work and the graphics were peeling, but the game played fine. And the arcade was selling it for $200! And I had the money to get it! Sadly I couldn’t because, traveling with the circus, I lived on a train. It’s impossible to get an arcade cab on the train! And trying to ship it home would cost more than the cab itself. Had to let it go🙁 When I left the show and came home I heard of a website called eBay (gotta remember, this was ‘97, early days). Tried bidding on Tron cabs but always lost out. I finally got one two years ago just a couple of months after my fiancée passed away. I like to think it was her way of sending me a Christmas present from Heaven! I also happen to own my other dream cabs, Pacman, Star Wars and Dragon’s Lair. I also have Mortal Kombat and Asteroids, which I was on my way to pick up when I got the news about my fiancée. Fixing that Asteroids cab up really helped me get through that first week.
I am not a vendor, I am a vidiot.
@@Clownboy15 Sorry, I replied with a link on how to get your
Tron game. It was at the bottom of a post about the cultural significance of this movie. Unless you grew up in this time, an age where the internet was a spooky word spoken by the two friends you knew had a computer, this, the computer world, was a mysterious forbidden realm. How many kids were inspired by this movie remains unquantified.
The updated tools are really something. The "Corridor Crew" channel recently were able to re-create a near perfect match of the lightcycle battle using off-the-shelf animation software in an afternoon. I wonder how this new Sora AI would do with it?
Saw this movie in the theater as a 16 yr old. It's what inspired me to have pursue a career in IT/programming. 45 years later and I'm still at it. This movie was GROUNDBREAKING in 1982. It literally changed my life.
Too funny, I was 15 and have been a systems/software engineer my whole career due to influences like this as well.
The guy who plays Flynn is Lebowski in the Big Lebowski. He was the Dude
TRON later becomes Lee Stetson in Scarecrow and Mrs King, and Captain John Sheridan in Babylon 5.
The accountant, CROM, becomes an informant on Hill Street Blues, and Ambassador Londo Mollari in Babylon 5.
He still IS the dude 😉
He's also Obidiah Stane in "Ironman"
They were definitely Channeling Jeff Bridges’s Dude persona in the sequel! Also check him out in the remake of “True Grit” The movie has Hailee Steinfeld’s breakthrough performance for which she received an Oscar nomination.
People talking about Jeff Bridges and the movies he's been in, the guy is from a family of great actors, but the first time I saw him was in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. It might have been his debut big part, and he is brilliant alongside that other film legend, Clint Eastwood. You have to watch Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Otherwise, you are making a big mistake.
The hidden Mickey Mouse at 29:45 is such a gem. Great catch, Amber!
Minds blown? Try watching those light cycles at age 15 then leaving the cinema on a 10 speed bicycle. I am *_soooooooo_* lucky to still be breathing! 🤣🤣
I have to admit, we used to play X-Wings with our bikes, but light cycles would be cool too!
Yup... I was about the same age when the movie came out. It just blew everyone's mind. I was learning electronics and computers and was able to keep up with the movie's tech-speak.. But you get the gist if you don't. The folks here did really good. It's a lot of stuff.
Whoever thought up the movie must live in some alternative reality. I mean, how do you think of all the graphics and design? And then to film it the way they did. Disney can make an amazing movie when it wants to. The Black Hole made by Disney in 1979 is another fantastic Disney movie with some seriously scary scenes in it.
@@ricardorgomez That was the first movie I saw in the theatres (The Black Hole), but I slept thru it. (I was 4) A great Disney movie from that time that doesn't get a lot of love is Condorman. It's not an effects movie (at least not a sci-fi effects kind of thing) It's more James Bond than sci-fi. But the gadgets were cool, and unlike James Bond, it was clean (with no immorality)
Glow in the dark Frisbee fight!
13:58 The irony of the picture behind him.....Thanks for another fun vid, guys. 👍👍
"His voice reminds me of something" ....
Poster on the wall on Jays right: PSSSST. Jay, its me....the Dude!
I miss those days crowding around an arcade machine .
YAY!! You did Tron; I knew you guys were going to do Tron in 2024. Love the 80’s. Don’t forget The Last Starfighter directed by Nick Castle, the first CGI movie ever.
Yes! The Last Starfighter is a great one.
Great movie the last starfighter. It wasn't the first . If you look it up it says it vertigo that was first to use CGI. I only know because I looked it up just now
Yeah mate, good call!
Um, this is the first CGI movie ever-not the Last Starfighter (unless you mean CGI depictions of something other than a computer)
@@SJHFoto Oh, it was exclusively use CGI effects. My Bad!!
Lmaooooooo kills me!!! Bruh the "dude" is literally hanging on your wall lol Rolf 😆 😂 🤣 💀
🤣🤣🤣🤣That's so funny!
@confucius12012 I was literally looking at him on the wall when he said that 😂😂😂
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension, you'll love it
This was Matrix before The Matrix. I wish they would bring back arcades so much. But part of the draw was the newness of that machine world and the wonder we all felt playing them.
You recognize his voice Jay cause, he's The Dude!
Yes, they made a Tron video game after this movie.
This was also Free Guy before Free Guy. TRON is a pioneer film on many levels.
A lot of cities have old school arcade places opening up. I'm in Kansas City and we have 2. They are awesome.
The movie was so far ahead of its time.. The bosses desk being not only a touch screen, but a HUGE flat screen computer monitor that could display video.. The design of the motorcycles, etc. -- I think we see now that life, ends up imitating art...
Jay, Flynn is right behind you hanging on your wall.
Well done, Amber, for spotting the hidden Mickey 🔎
Yeah most people miss that including myself who only found out from watching reactions lol.
Don't forget pac man makes an appearance
Watch tron legacy next, its really cool.
Yes! Need to watch Tron: Legacy next!!👍🏼
The Dude, Jay The Dude
The TRON arcade game was a blast too, for 1982 anyway. It had four separate parts: tank battle, spiders, breaking the MCP, and the light cycles. The light cycles were the coolest part.
The standing arcade game stands up today. It wasn't easy to play either. Dumped a good amount of quarters into that one.
I was never good at Tron.
And the second game, Discs of Tron, was no slouch either.
@@Sledg0matic I much preferred Discs of Tron to Tron. Not least of which because I could actually last a while in a game of Discs, but always got my a$$ kicked in the original Tron.
Its hilarious because Jeff Bridges plays Flynn and hes also THE DUDE which is right behind on you
I’m laughing my butt off right now. Just got to the part where you said that Flynn’s voice sounds familiar like he was in a cartoon. And I’m laughing because you have is picture right there on the wall!😂
I noticed that too, so funny. The Dude abides
@@danguzman3458 I’m wondering if they ever figured it out. But it can be like that. I was watching Tron: Legacy last year when I suddenly realized that Jarvis was James Frain! Movie was fourteen years old and finally realized it! Of course no one has ever accused me of being Sherlock Holmes either!
@@Clownboy15 Jarvis used to work for Sherlock Holmes. 😉
If you're willing to give a long, old, silent movie a chance (rated 8.3 out of 10 on IMDB), the original, 1927 Metropolis (Criterion Collection, not Kino or the other butchered releases) is amazing. Even today, almost 100 years later, it has an incredible following of fans who appreciate what an achievement Metropolis was that early in cinematic history.
I don't think they'll do silent movies. It takes a special cinephile to appreciate them. But if they were to watch it, they would recognize the scenes used in Radio Gaga by Queen. Speaking of Queen, when are they gonna watch Flash Gordon?
I love Metropolis, but that's a tough sell for a reaction video.
Hard to say. If they're willing to go back to the likes of Louis Prima or the Andrew Sisters on their music-reaction channel, they could surprise us with Metropolis. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or M would probably be more difficult. Then again, it could be possible to generate some interest in the Lon Chaney, 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera.
Metropolis is public domain, should be okay to show it whole.
@@DavidBrown-ly6lp True, but it takes a special type to appreciate it. A lot of imagery and if you're not paying attention to the visuals, since there is no dialogue to assist your interpretation, it's easy to miss out on the message.
It's hard to put into words just how mind blowing this movie was to us 80's kids. Before this computer graphics were the blocky 8 bit stuff you would see on a Commodore 64 or Atari. This wasn't a new level, it was a hundred new levels above that. It inspired a lot of us who in the IT industry to pursue this career path as well, and the whole AI/hacking/cybercrime stuff in the movie was spot on then and now too. Wendy Carlos's score was amazing and I had the record. For a long time it looked like it would never come out on CD because the master tapes absorbed too much moisture, but eventually the technology to recover it was found and the CD was released.
Love the score for this film. I still listen to it.
People did use to gather around someone doing really good on an arcade game. Funny to remember.
Then you'd place your quarter on the machine to signal next player in hopes to take them down. Many good times on Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat that was.
I had many occasions of crowds around me on games like robotron, Stargate, 1942, after being on the game for an hour or more on one quarter with my score well into 8 digits.
Ah, 1982. Tron was cutting edge when it was released. For those of us that got to watch it on the big screen it was mind blowing. Yes, there was an actual Tron arcade game, based on the movie, where you were on the light cycle grid, fighting the spiders, defeating the MCP, and more.
As for the computers of the day, the PC as we know it was in its early infancy. We're talking Apple 2e's, Comodore 64's, etc. Microsoft had just released MS-DOS 1.0 in 1981. Large businesses like ENCOM were using mainframe systems. The mainframe did all the processing and had all the storage, while the users were accessing the mainframe via a dumb terminal that had no processing or storage by itself. Your home computer that you're using for your videos is many times more powerful than those early 80's mainframes.
There is a 2nd movie as you mentioned, Tron Legacy, which came out in 2010. I highly recommend you watch it, if anything to see the difference in almost 30 years of computer graphics improvement.
Yeah... I live in one of the smaller major cities in Canada and I was involved in video documenting the move of our province's power company's computer system from one floor to another and these giant mainframes literally took up an entire floor of the building which it's footprint took up half a block of city space ! And the accounts department literally looked like about half that vast sea of cubicles too !
I still used a dumb terminal at a mortgage company I worked at up in to 1998. I had had PC's at home for years and had worked other places with computers on the desks, but the terminals were still around for a long time.
My first exposure to computers, even before the Apple 2's, was a teletype that my father had in his office at school. He used it to connect to the university mainframe that was about an hour away from our small town. He'd dial up the university system with the old rotary phone, listen for the tones, and then place the handset on an acoustic coupler (ancient modem) that would transfer data at 75 bits per second. It was all text back then but I was absolutely amazed. I actually got to go with him to the computer department at the university one time to see the mainframe. It took up almost the whole floor. It has been over 45 years since then and now I'm the teacher, trying to pass on my knowledge, passion, and amazement of how these computers have evolved.
The movie came first but there was an arcade game based on it. Unlike most previous arcade games that actually had several different games you could choose from, which was really cool.
And it was actually lots of fun. There's a PC game called TRON 2.0 , still available on Steam, and it's excellent. Lightcycle grid, disc games, everything.
They came out at the same time, I remember playing the game at Disneyland a few months after the movie came out
I was born in 75. We had an arcade with a Tron game. But, I honestly thought the game came out first. Could just be my aging brain though.
I remember this game very well. There was the tanks, the spiders, the light bikes, and the hive thing with the data stream. The arcade game was unique for the times. They used a lot of neon lights and music with loud speakers. It was one of the first games I can remember having music within the game while you played. There was a lot going on, like a pinball machine.
4:21: This actor, David Warner, plays 3 different characters. Ed Dillinger, Sark and the Master Control Program. You may also recognize him as the bodyguard/valet antagonist in "Titanic".
He also played the photographer in The Omen (1976), Jack The Ripper in Time After Time (1979), the wax museum owner in Waxwork (1988), St. John Tablet in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), The TGRI scientist in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret Of The Ooze (1991) as well as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country (1991) & the mental hospital doctor in John Carpenter's: In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)...
@@MLJ7956 I hope they get to see all these movies if they haven't already
@@MLJ7956 Also remember he played Bob Cratchett in A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott (I think that was the best version!)
Saw this movie when it released. I was 13 the Summer going into the Freshman year of High School. Saw this at the $1.00 matinee, then saw it about 15 times after that throughout the summer. Great memories. I would like to suggest Rock Star a movie based on 1980's Heavy Metal Band, Steel Dragon, with Mark Walhberg and Jennifer Anniston with members of Black Label Society, Slaughter, and Styx and introducting John Bohnam's song Jason in his first movie role, based on a true story. Ref: Tim Ripper Owens and his replacing Rob Halford of Judas Priest. IF you want to see Jay and Amber watch Rockstar, hit that thumbs up button!
There was a very popular video game based on the movie too.
The small floating thing is called a "bit". it represents a binary digit in computerese. It can be either 0 or 1 (no or yes).
*yes*
Yep, 2 bits was called a ‘crumb’, 4 bits was a ‘nibble’ ( Which always gave me a laugh to think about ), while 8 bits is a ‘byte’. Beyond that you had ‘words’, though that’s generally defined by the number of registers the CPU had, so for example it could be 32bits or today 64 bits.
@@noisecrime 2 bits will also get you a shave and a haircut.
0 & 1 to this day represent off and on, used universally for some things electrical and/or electronic as a 1 superimposed over half of a 0.
basically, back in the day, decades even before Tron came out and computer circuits were first conceived, all of it was represented with an on and off switch. if something was true, = on, and false, = off, what is referred to as binary language.
The sport is Jai Alai
Correct. And it's a game originating in Mesoamerica by the Aztecs or Mayans.
When this movie came out nothing else was like it. It was beyond state of the art .
When this came out I was a little kid in the very early 80' in the golden age of arcade games. we didn't even have a vcr remember renting one and watching this over and over. the cgi techniques combined with backlit and hand draw animation still holds up today
This was an actual arcade video game in a dedicated cabinet. The cabinet was so big you could actually get inside it. I used to be an engineer for gaming machines back in the 80s and 90s. We got all the latest arcade games which I used to love testing before they hit the arcades. Tron was a really cool game, felt just like the movie.
Wait until you see TRON: Legacy and hear its soundtrack. AMAZING.
Back when Disney actually tried new things.
This was way too new. LoL
1:15
Hey Jay and Amber, the actress that played Lori/Yori was Cindy Morgan, the same actress who played Lacey Underall, Judge Smails niece,.in the movie "Caddyshack"
Sadly, she'd passed away back in December 2023
Saw this the summer of 1982 when it came out, I was 11. And yes my mind was blown. The summer of 1982 had a lot of great movies; Tron, ET, Star Trek II, Bladerunner, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Blue Thunder, Conan and The Thing. Growing up in the 80s was awesome! And yes there was an arcade game based on the movie.
I remember as a kid of the 80s, how much the look of this film, with the laser style glowing lines around objects/ppl, was so futuristic and amazing to me. There was a TV show called "Automan" that I really loved, that had a similar effect for the holograms.
Dude!!!!
Automan was cool! It came on at a time when I was busy so I missed a lot of it on first run. I also liked Misfits of Science-remember that one?
@@SJHFoto Yes! Great time for TV. Misfits of Science with Kevin Peter Hall, before I found out he played the Predator.
@@gustonzimasheen Never saw it. (I don't watch rated R movies) I always think of Misfits as being a B Team X-Men (or a Z team if you want to be mean-hehe)
Back in the 1970's, folks had to write their own programs (apps), and in a business setting, they usually had to write them on the fly for whatever presentation/stats/graphs/etc. they needed. This is why the programs resemble the users.
TRON & TROFF were BASIC computer language for TRacer ON & TRacer OFF- basically they were there to monitor a program problem by tracing the issue (the program stopped on the line of code where an issue lay & returned the line number).
This movie was hand-drawn & rotoscoped, so there (ironically) was no CGI- the TRON world was hand animated.
It might be fair to say some sequences were computer rendered. But the rendering had to happen over night and they did not know how the scenes would turn out until they came to work the next morning. There were no computers powerful enough to render any of the scenes on-the-fly in real time.
I still do computing like that today. Sometimes even BASIC
There was tons of CGI! You can tell the difference between the practical sets with hand drawn animation, and the many CGI sequences, like the lightbikes and the laser-sailboat-thingie.
Making of TRON documentary:
48:57 - ua-cam.com/video/sbgHMrLPQrE/v-deo.html@@dereknolin5986
They filmed the actors in black and white to get the effect as programs. I was in junior high school when this came out. When I was a senior in 1985, the powers that be decided computers were something we should learn about so for TWO WEEKS prior to graduations we were shown programming diagrams (not practical in real world applications). You mentioned how big the computers were. Big didn't mean the same thing as now. Think about it: cell phones and even watches these days have more computing power than they had to put a man on the moon. Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) was one of my crushes back then. Loved him in How the West Was Won. He had GREAT 70s hair. 😍
There were a couple of TRON arcade games made after the movie. The first was based closely on the movie events. The second, "Discs of TRON" just focused on the frisbee throwing combat.
You know what else was made in the 80s? Roadhouse starring Patrick Swayze! Ahem!
I wholeheartedly second that, it's eighties gold.. Not so looking forward to finding out how bad the remake sucks.
Peter Griffin approves.
Summer 1989..not exactly an 80's staple. Lol
@@brianmcmaster5112 really? Let’s see. 89. Let’s break that down. That’ll be an 8 plus a 9 which together equal 89. Not 90. Btw Brian Mister 89 isn’t exactly 80s, 9 plus a 0 is 90. That’ll be a different decade for us usual people. But 89 IS still in the 80s being at the very end BUT still 80s nonetheless. 🤦🏻♂️ There’s always one that gotta. Always one. 🤣 Anything else you need an explanation for there Brian? If not I’ll let you get back to your coloring book my boy. Ok ttyl. 👋🏼
@@90hatter90 Sure,bud
Tron was my go to game. Along with Sinistar and Robotron
Run coward run.
Sinistar is the loudest game ever
@@plutoniumcore yeah, I could hear the roar and run coward run from outside the gameroom
One of my favorite movies!
There’s so much I can say about this movie, mainly I’ll just say this film changed my life. I was a kid of the 80s, graduated high school class of 1989. I grew up with the “new thing”, home computers, including the TRS-80 (affectionally known as “The Trash 80”), VIC-20, and C-64. I would stay up all night typing in programs published in the rare computer magazines. My name is Alan, and Tron’s user is Alan; that was a big deal for an 11 year old programmer kid! I imagined fantastic worlds inside of the computers, and dreamed of what the future would bring. Now, I’m a retired software engineer who worked in the industry for 35 years and I still can’t take my hands of computers. Every day I look at the technology around me, and marvel that I live in the future. Some things I imagined years ago, others I could have never imagined. I just smile sometimes seeing people take it all in as mundane, staring at their cell phones which are a veritable miracle. Look at the file size of a Microsoft Word file, then realize that the C-64 had 64 kilobytes of total memory. Tron means so much to me, I only wish it was recognized more as the technically groundbreaking and visionary film that it is. Sure in many ways it seems hokey today, but boy do I love it.
16:33 - Hi Jay, the sport is called "Jai Alai" (pronounced "Hi - A - Lie"). It was a very popular sport in the U.S. During the 80s. Not so much anymore.
13:59 Flynn was played by a then-early-30's Jeff Bridges. The man's been acting for half a century: it may be easier to ask, what DON'T you know him from?
I first saw him in the 70s version of King Kong, but he actually was in a show with his Dad (Lloyd) and brother (Beau) as a kid
Bruce Boxleitner who played Tron also went on to play John Sheridan in Babylon 5.
I’m lucky enough to own a number of pieces and artwork used to make TRON, a movie I adore 42 years after it came out.
@23:46 the weird glowing glass thing looks like an old vacuum tube. If you’re old enough, which y’all are not, tube TV’s took several seconds to warm up. Vacuum tubes were eventually replaced by transistors.
Yes, Tron was a video arcade game. Very popular. All the games you see in this movie were a part of the Tron game. The Racer Bikes, the Battle Tanks, the "Frisbee Game", the one with the Scoops (FYI the game you are thinking of Jay is Jai Alai). You could pick one and if you beat it, you picked another until you beat all of them then you moved onto the next level.
Amber: Enthralled in the movie and following every bit of the story.
Jay: Falling asleep and confused.
LMAO!!! "His voice just sounds familiar" and you're sitting right in front of a picture of him! I can't stop laughing 🤣
You kinda need to look at this through 1982 eyes. The general population had no idea how computers really worked. Home computers were just starting to come out and few families had them. I was 9 and we got a second hand Atari 400 it did good to play tennis (fancy pong)
All of the main actors play 2 roles...
Jeff Bridges aka The Dude: Kevin Flynn/Clu....yeah, Jay, the answer was on the wall behind you, dude!!!
Bruce Boxleitner: Alan Bradley/Tron
Cindy Morgan: Lora/Yori
Bernard Hughes: Walter/Dumont
Dan Shor: Roy/Ram (Roy is the guy in the ENCOM offices who asked Alan if he could have some popcorn).
David Warner: Ed Dillinger/Sark...and the voice of the MCP
- 15:59 - Fun fact: The actor playing Crom was Peter Jurasik. In the 1990s, both Jurasik and Bruce Boxleitner (Tron) were in the main cast of a groundbreaking sci-fi series called Babylon 5, which was a test bed for using extensive CGI to bring down special effects costs. Babylon 5 is beloved by many people, as it also told an amazing story over 5 years with a beginning, middle and end like a novel for television before anybody else in American TV was doing it. It is well worth the time if you decide to start doing TV series.
-The way the video game world was filmed was in black and white film stock, with all "sets" in black, and all costumes in white, with black electrical tape marking out sections.
Then the film went through a reverse value process where everything black became white, and everything white was black, with shades of gray throughout.
Each frame was blown up to the size of a piece of paper (or slightly larger), and handpainted. Sometimes each frame had individual layers that were painted separately. Set, costume, skin, eyes, teeth, etc...each had to be painted separately and then put back together.
The film was rotoscoped one frame at a time so that basically what they ended up with was a live-action animated film. The flares in color are due to imperfections in the film stock, so they add a level of cool to the look. There were several early stage CGI shots, but less than most people believe. Mainly because rendering such things were intesely complicated, and computering power at the time, even for "supercomputers" was much less than it is today. But they are there. But the film itself was in many ways right up Disney's alley using a lot of old school techniques in different ways.
- The sequel Tron: Legacy brings back Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, and is directed by Jospeh Kosinski (who also directed Top Gun: Maverick). The amazing score is by Daft Punk.
Now you have to watch the sequel, Tron Legacy, from 2010. There’s a slight upgrade in graphics ;).
When Tron came out, it was mind blowing to us. It was unlike anything that had ever been made, and the computer graphics used were the first time they were used so extensively. Yes, they are rudimentary compared to today’s standards, but don’t forget that the computers that took up entire rooms when Tron was made now fit in your pocket. Your smart phone is infinitely faster than the room sized computers of the early 80s.
And yes, there is an Arcade game called Tron where you could play the disc game, light cycle racing and other games in the movie as well as fight the MCP where you had to get your disc into the middle like Tron did.
I read TR3N is on the way as well.
The actor playing Flynn... His picture is on the wall behind you. It's Jeff Bridges, The Big Labowski.. Also see him in Star Man (1972) and the non sci-fi movie Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974).
Another dystopic sci-fi movie is Colosseum: The Forbin Project (1970).
Big Trouble in Little China
Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors of all time, and in the 1980s, he was all over the place. A very bankable actor.
Two of my favorites with him are:
"Thunderbolt & Lightfoot" and "The Men Who Stare At Goats"
His brother Beau and his father Lloyd also act. They’ve seen the father in Airplane. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. They’ve almost certainly seen Beau in something. He has done hundreds of TV shows and movies. But the first movie that came to mind was Swashbuckler. I doubt the movie holds up very well after all these years, but it was entertaining then, (long before Pirates Of tTe Caribbean) and has some very well-known actors when they were much much younger.
One of those things that you have to have lived in the 80's to be able to fully relate to it. Some of the things that you might have missed are:
1. TRON - is a short computer command meaning Trace On;
2. Bit - is the smallest unit of information either 1 or 0 that also answers yes or no that accompanied Flynn when he was driving after Ram was erased;
3. RAM - Random Access Memory
4. Dumont - the guardian of the I/O (input/Output) tower who represents the partner of Laura with the Laser Project;
5. Zark's ship design is the front panel and coin slot for arcade games;
6. Identity disc are the equivalent of a floppy disk where all information is stored;
and yes, Zark is DIllinger...
Also, great eye on seeing Pacman...
I am so looking forward to your reaction video with TRON Legacy which I'm sure you will fully appreciate... ❤🤓
TRON was definitely one of my favorite films as a kid! And yes, the summer of 1982 a TRON arcade game was released that was so much fun to play. From light cycles to tank wars!
I was a kid when this film came out and loved every minute. We all went to the arcade to play the Tron video game. The Lightcycle mini game was the game very loved and would become the basis for so many copycat games. I have the 25th anniversary copy of this movie.
You will definitely need to watch tron legacy after this one.
This was one of my favorite movies growing up, it was so ahead of it's time!
Yes! Tron was an actual video game in the early 80s!
brainstorm, dreamscape, altered states are some other outside the box 80s sci fi movies
Dreamscape was a good flick. I am surprised it wasn't remade / rebooted in modern times.
Brainstorm was rated PG, so my dad took me to see it, thinking it'd be "safe." He was pretty embarrassed after that full frontal sex scene. 10-yr old me found it to be very educational, though....
c. 15:49: Most of the actors were dual cast. Jeff Bridges plays both Flynn and Clu; David Warner portrays Dillinger and Sark; Bruce Boxleitner plays both Tron and Alan, and so on.
Programs, you might say, are made in the images of their users.
I was a teenager when Tron came out. Back then the movie made more sense to us computer geeks as the "language' of computers was very different to what it is today. Back then most programs were written in "basic" which had code that read as "If" "Then" or "Yes" "no" . Very binary type of coding that anyone using computers knew as you had to write all your own programs or enter them manually from a script. You wouldn't by a computer game you would buy the program that you entered into your own computer manally.
Or... you bought Zaxxon on cassette and spent 30 to 45 minutes loading into memory on your Atari 800 computer using your cassette drive... and you only ever did that once. 😉
I LOVED Tron back in the day... I was 12 and it made a huge impression on me. I LOVED videogames... the OG's Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missile Command, and Pac Man and dozens of others... and then the Atari 2600 came out and within the first year our family got one... right around the same time all the boys in the neighborhood did and it was just a revolution... no more running 2 miles down to the nearest videogame arcade every Saturday afternoon, spending all my allowance in quarters, running home to search the couch cushions for change, collecting all the house's bottles and returning them for a few dollars more in change, another couple of hours at the arcade then back home another way through the woods looking for beer bottles from the older kids partying in the woods, cashing THEM in and back to the arcade all because I KNEW I sooo close to getting through that one more level in the game...
And then the actual Tron videogame came out and that was really quite an incredibly well realized adaption of the movie's computer land world. But WOW did the lightcycles AI difficulty really ramp up in the third wave ! Could never beat them !
So Tron... back in the day... well definitely Top 5... now still Top 20 for me...
This 1982 film was the first time that CGI (Computer Graphics Imaginery) was used extencively in a movie. It was a technological breakthru, nevertheless, many scenes were filmed using traditional optical efects (that's why the image quallity is not always consistent). In 2010 a continuation was made: Tron Legacy (Daft punk original sound track).
wow i remember this classic good call you wonderful people
The best part of this movie is how it takes us back to a time when computers were new to the world and people weren't as familiar with them or how they worked. It put forward an imaginative picture of how to conceptualize what was happening inside a computer with processes and programs, written by users with tasks and objectives.
I was completely blown away when I saw this as a kid in the mid 80’s. It was the movie that sparked my interest in computers and gaming which remains my hobby to this day. I love the movie and even have a framed Tron poster hanging in my living room.
OMG I am freaking out… one of my favorites of all time. Used to go to sleep to this movie atleast 300x my game room is Tron themed and I have a Tron Arcade gane and the Tron Oinball. Will watch this in a couple of hours THANK YOU. 💙💙💙💙
Have you seen One hour photo? Features Robin Williams, if you haven’t that’s a good movie I recommend
Tron changed our world. It was so transformative. The Computer Tech World had finally arrived. My friend named his son Tron. Please see Tron Legacy.
Cindy Morgan who plays Lora/ Yori in this movie just recently passed away not that long ago RIP. She also is the one who played Lacey underall in Caddyshack
Jeff Bridges deserves all of his fame. You should do a reaction to The Last Picture Show.
Please watch this animated series that is a prequel to tron legacy: Tron Uprising
It’s a tv series
Anyone else remember the Tron games on the old Intellivision console? Awesome console games.
From IMDB: The state-of-the-art computer used for the film's key special effects had only 2MB of memory and 330MB of storage.
Flynn is THE DUDE from The Big Lebowski - Jeff Bridges
Tron: Legacy (2010) I think you would enjoy this sequel more than the original. Very cool and more modern looking movie.
That's true.... couldn't agree more.... but I think it's important to have this as backstory before watching TRON:Legacy
@@jkbowers56 100%....It just seemed like they didn't really love this movie and I think that Tron Legacy is a lot better, and they both would be missing out if they never checked it out. Legacy is a very good movie IMO.
TRON was envisioned as a game tie-in to the movie and it was a set of minigames emulating the games shown in the movie. There were also console ports of the minigames, but not bundled as a whole collection on one cartridge, due to size limitations of ROM chips back then. I still remember my favorite part of the game as a kid were the light cycles. TRON was The Matrix before The Matrix. TRON came out at a time when computers were barely starting to become mainstays in offices. There was still so much to know about the capabilities in 1982 that we take for granted in 2024. In comparison, the computers used to send men to the Moon are crude compared to the computer we all have in our pockets.
And I still can't get over you didn't recognize Flynn was played by Jeff Bridges aka, The DUDE.
Flynn was played by Jeff Bridges. This movie was incredibly successful in its day. Upon its release, the standing video game of the same name was added to arcades and movie theater lobbies everywhere. Internet and WiFi were concepts, but remote control televisions, call-waiting and microwave ovens were still very new to households at that time.
If you've seen Free Guy, you'll notice that it has the same premise as Tron, but from the perspective of an NPC within the game.
I had one of those car toys as a kid in the eighties, the red one. It was the coolest toy I ever had.
I was thirteen when this came out. Blew me away. Played the arcade game a TON back in the day. The future of computing in movies was showcased right here
There was a Tron game that came out when the movie came out, and it had different competitions. I loved racing the Light Cycle.
This came out a good decade before the internet gained popularity, so the take on computers and what they can do is given a more quaint mystique here. Seeing it in the theater when I was 10, though, blew my mind.
1982 was a banner year for sci-fi/ fantasy/ horror. Just game-changer after game-changer (pun partially intended)- this movie, ET, Poltergeist, The Thing, Conan The Barbarian, The Dark Crystal, Beastmaster, Blade Runner, etc.
And the game with the ball and hand scoops is a Brazilian sport called jai alai.
You're absolutely right at 18:44 that was Pacman. A very cool easter egg from that time period :)
There was a Tron arcade game released after the movie that included the lightcycles and other contests from the film.
There was also a short-lived, underrated TV series called "Automan" about a Tron-like character who became a superhero in the real world.
40 years later I’m still blown away by this movie. The Tron arcade came out after the movie.
The fact that this movie got made at all is pretty amazing. The work that went in to it was massive. All the live action scenes that take place inside the computer were basically treated like an animated movie. There's a 90 minute making-of documentary that was included in the 25th Anniversary DVD set. I wouldn't be shocked if it's been posted to UA-cam by someone.
FYI, Jeff Bridges, who played Flynn, besides playing The Dude, was also the bad guy of the first Iron Man movie, Obadiah Stane.
Yeah that's hysterical. "His voice sounds familiar" and he's over Jay's right shoulder the whole time! LMAO
Tron was also a huge hit in arcades back in the day. For you young kids who may not be aware of what a arcade is. It's the building where all the video games were kept and you could play for just a quarter. A place to go with your friends and spend that weeks allowance.