Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: TRON...Happy 25th!

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 07-09-2007, 12:11 AM:

"It all happens inside a computer."

On July 9, 1982, twenty-five years ago today, Walt Disney's "Tron" was released on 1,091 theatre screens in the United States and Canada. The groundbreaking film, starring Jeff Bridges and directed by Steven Lisberger, cost nearly $20 million to produce (a huge sum in its day) and grossed, according to most accounts, a mere $30 million domestically.

A visual and aural delight, "Tron" was nominated for two Academy Awards: Sound and Costume Design. But, more amazing than the film's amazing visual effects is trying to figure out why the film was not nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar!

Of note to the film's history is that it was photographed in Super Panavision 70, reviving the process that had been popular with the 1960s roadshows but had been dormant for a decade. But despite the large-format origination, Disney struck only about 40 high-quality 70-millimeter prints for domestic distribution. A list of the venues in which the 70mm version was booked is provided below, and what some may find a surprise is the number of theatres in major markets denied an opportunity to showcase "Tron" in the best presentation manner available at the time. (Some theatres in cities absent from the list of initial 70mm bookings did, however, screen a 70mm print in the fall of '82 or spring of '83 when Disney re-issued the film with the hope it might find an audience during a less-crowded moviegoing season.)

So...is "Tron" a good movie? After 25 years I still can't decide! But one thing is certain: the film was ahead of its time due to the innovative use of computer graphics, and its influence can be observed in countless movies, television programs and video games. I think anyone working in the film, computer and video-game industries owes a debt of gratitude to "Tron" and its talented production crew.

Anyone have any "Tron" memories they care to share?

Me? As a 13 year-old, I saw "Tron" in July or August of '82 at the Barstow Twin in Barstow, California. What I remember most was: (1) being confused by the character names and computer terminology, (2) thinking the movie was not as good as the video game, (3) seeing the trailer for the soon-to-open EPCOT Center and wondering why Florida instead of California would get such a thing, and (4) on the way out of the theatre, enthusiastically spotting the one-sheet for that summer's re-issue of "Star Wars" which included a banner in the corner of the poster promising the first glimpse of footage, in the form of a coming attractions trailer, for the next "Star Wars" movie due for release the following year. I would see "Star Wars" several (more) times during that re-issue, and "Tron" was quickly forgotten.

Over the years, though, thanks to the fantastic Special Edition LaserDisc and subsequent DVD, and the 70mm print that surfaced in 1999 and made the rounds, I’ve come to appreciate "Tron" and think it deserves some recognition on this, the 25th anniversary of its release.

_______________________________________________

A supplement to this reminiscence for the film history and technology enthusiasts: a list of the original, first-run 70mm Six-Track Dolby Stereo engagements of "Tron."

Baltimore, MD: Westview
Bloomingdale, IL: Stratford Square
Calgary, AB: Chinook
Cedar Grove, NJ: Cinema 23
Chicago, IL: McClurg Court
Chicago Ridge, IL: Chicago Ridge Mall
Edmonton, AB: Londonderry
El Cajon, CA: Parkway Plaza
Gretna, LA: Westside
Grosse Pointe Woods, MI: Woods
Hillside, IL: Hillside Square
Honolulu, HI: Royal
Las Vegas, NV: Cinedome
Livonia, MI: Terrace
Los Angeles, CA: Chinese
Los Angeles, CA: Village (opened July 16)
Milwaukee, WI: Spring Mall Triplex
Montclair, CA: Montclair
Montreal, QC: Claremont (July 23)
New York, NY: State 2
Northbrook, IL: Edens
Orange, CA: Cinedome
Paramus, NJ: Route 4 Sevenplex
Pittsburgh, PA: Warner
Portland, OR: Bagdad
Quebec City, QC: Canadien (July 22)
Reno, NV: Century
Sacramento, CA: Century
San Antonio, TX: Northwest
San Diego, CA: Glasshouse 6
San Diego, CA: La Jolla Village
San Jose, CA: Century 24
Southfield, MI: Northland
Springdale, OH: Tri-County
Toronto, ON: Hollywood
Tucson, AZ: El Con
Vancouver, BC: Denman Place
White Plains, NY: United Artists
Winnipeg, MB: Metropolitan (July 30)
Woodbury, NY: Cinema 150

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-09-2007, 02:59 AM:

quote:
Anyone have any "Tron" memories they care to share?

Well, I never cared for the arcade game since the controls weren't very well implemented. I usually just stuck with Ms Pac Man, Dig Dug and Q*Bert instead. I never saw the movie until recently, where I downloaded and watched it via my Xbox. The movie definitely isn't great, but it I do like the cheesiness factor. Also it is fun to hear the terminology of the day and how they were so amazed by it. The reason I watched the movie is because of the South Park episode where Moses appears as the spinny-top-thingy that is the final boss in the movie Tron.

Posted by Chad M Calpito (Member # 3736) on 07-09-2007, 03:57 AM:

The movie, at least in my opinion, was fantastic. I especially liked the special effects. Since I loved going to the arcades in the 1980's, this movie was of special interest to me. So, Happy 25th to Tron. [beer]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-09-2007, 04:59 AM:

I saw TRON the following week in July of 1982 - 35mm scope and mono - at our local shoebox UA 4plex cinemas. "TRON" only stayed at this cinema for a two week engagement, thus, I managed to cram in a couple more visits to this house to see the movie again.

At least, this one house, being the largest house that had the film, did have the true, 2.35/1 scope masking tabs, not the usual 2.10/1 cropping as most shoebox houses in this era would have.

I read about TRON in Boxoffice magazines a few months before and had to go see it upon arrival.

Might say, with TRON was the beginning of my interest in CGI films..and was excited in 1984 that Disney Video released TRON on VHS (of course full screen format..), and I plopped down my $39.95 for that video.

David Warner pulled off an excellent bad guy being "Zark" as he did in those late 70's and 80's movies that he would star in (like WB's 1979 feature "Time after Time" with Malcom MacDowell as H.G. Wells..and Warner as "Jack the Ripper")

Later on that year, is when BALLY Midway released the arcade game of TRON for the arcade palaces and was one of my favorite games to play.

Might have to pull out the DVD now and celebrate this anniversary tribute....

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 07-09-2007, 09:12 AM:

I've never seen it, but did run the ShoWest promo reel for it at Caesars Palace that year. Disney supplied all of the gear for the general screenings in the old Colliseum meeting rooms. About the only thing I remember of that screening was having to rehearse the show several times in order to get the changeovers just right. All of Disney's other stuff was in 1.85 with a changeover to 2.39 for the Tron segment, stop and cue up the 1.85 machine, then switch back to 1.85 for the close. All double-system mag sound of course. It was one of my first screenings in a pseudo-studio screening room environment. Fun, in a way.

Posted by Paul Gordon (Member # 3320) on 07-09-2007, 10:02 AM:

When is Disney going to rerelease this in cinemas!!! it still stands up and I want to see it again on the big screen...

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 07-09-2007, 11:38 AM:

quote:
So...is "Tron" a good movie? After 25 years I still can't decide!

Introducing Richard Roepers next guest movie critic...

I liked the movie then. I like the movie now. The special effects were awesome back then, however, they definately show their age now.

All I remember about seeing this movie is that I was in MN, snuck in a LARGE bag of Reese's Pieces, ate them all, got sick, repeated the very next day.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 07-09-2007, 12:07 PM:

I was fortunate in that my theatre booked it as a second run filler that fall (it seemed that the industry was in one of it's "funks" where nothing was doing well) and we played it in our Dolby house.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-09-2007, 12:09 PM:

I really liked that film....but for the wrong reasons: I sold A LOT of lenses. Yes, it's true, you cannot project deep purple and dark maroon unless you have lots of extra light. These theatres looked great when Tron left.

Don't look for a reissue soon, Disney (?) lost a bundle on it, even in the theme parks! Louis

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-09-2007, 01:29 PM:

Yes, it was a flop. We never played it, and that was at a time when we were playing 2 changes a week, so we were playing everything that was grossing anything!

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 07-09-2007, 01:43 PM:

Well, hate to go against the grain here, but I thought TRON was just cheap-looking. Also, Disney still put in too much of their "cuteness" (just like the "Black Hole") that makes no one over the age of seven want to sit through twice. I have no doubt that people worked hard on it, but if someone tries to use new technology that's not quite ready yet, it sets things back.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-09-2007, 02:20 PM:

("The Black Hole" - Disney's first PG film in 1979..and in Scope where using a widescreen process was rare for them to use. Also where back then when Disney was rather a third string film company with tons of less than average film releases designated for families ...And by trying a PG release, it was a very poor attempt at making a serious movie as well for they were still in the "cute" mode of their family releases with this one ....I did like VINcent though...voice of Roddy McDowell ...

we could almost open up a separate topic on that movie..)

As I mentioned in other posts, just was lucky to see TRON in 70mm in the fall of 1982 ... and that sure made up for the 35mm mono release that I saw in July...

-Monte

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-09-2007, 02:24 PM:

I really liked Tron the first time I saw it. The bold, graphic visual style of the movie was wonderful. I think my own sense of graphic design was affected by the movie. I believe Tron still holds up very well to do this day. I have seen the movie many times -mostly repeat viewings on various video formats. My aunt Patricia had it on a RCA SelectaVision disc. I currently have the 2-disc DVD. Tron would probably be really good in Blu-Ray format if they encode the video properly.

Many viewers in 1982 were thrown by all the computer terms used in the movie. I was taking computing classes in middle school on pre-Mac Apple machines and Radio Shack TRS-80 "trash 80" computers -and getting annoyed by their different treatments of BASIC language. Obviously knowing what all the terminology meant made the film more enjoyable.

The movie is not without a few flaws. Some of the dialog is pretty cheesy. When Jeff Bridges' character was playing Space Paranoids (early in the film) and beat the scoring record, why did he quit playing right then? Why not keep playing and establish a much higher score? The music score could have been better. But those are minor nits. Overall, Tron was quite a ground-breaking movie.

Tron was definitely before its time. The movie had a real concept of the Internet and hacking computer networks well before the Internet had even been invented. The movie pre-dated the virtual reality world of The Matrix by nearly two decades.

In terms of technology Tron was at the bleeding edge in 1982. This is one movie where CRAY supercomputers were really used to create some of the visuals. The film took the first baby-steps toward fully computer generated movies. Pixar's John Lasseter said, "without Tron there would have been no Toy Story.

In 1982 I was a teenager living in Belle Chasse, LA -a suburb south of New Orleans. My family saw it at a theater in nearby Gretna, but I don't remember anything about it being shown in 70mm. I wasn't aware of formats like 70mm until seeing Return of the Jedi a year later in Springfield, VA. I didn't even know Tron was actually filmed in 70mm until hearing it from Robert Harris during a talk he gave to School of Visual Arts students at a screening of Spartacus in 1991. What I did know was Tron looked very cool and unlike any other movie I had seen before or since then.

The Summer of 1982 had a number of really good movies. E.T.: The Extraterrestrial was very entertaining. Poltergeist scared the shit out of me. Although Bladerunner has had a more lasting influence on the visual design of science fiction films, I believe Tron was far more visually remarkable.

Tron - The Games
I didn't really care for the original coin operated video game. The problem is players just memorized patterns to beat one level after another -so it got repetitive very quickly once you figured out that glitchy joystick. It was kind of cool how the levels of the game were named after programming languages like BASIC, FORTRAN, APL, ASSEMBLER, etc. I remember games like Dig Dug and Robotron: 2084 appearing in arcades in the summer of 1982 and faring better. A couple years later Bally/Midway released the Discs of Tron coin-op game. I liked that one a lot more. It was in a huge, booth-like cabinet. Unfortunately the game never had much success.

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Don't look for a reissue soon, Disney (?) lost a bundle on it, even in the theme parks! Louis

Didn't Disney make a couple 70mm DTS prints of Tron in 2002 for the film's 20th anniversary? I'm only asking this because the Paramount Theater in Austin, TX is showing Tron in "70mm and digital stereo" August 24-25. I'm seriously considering making the drive down there to see the show (and do some serious beer drinking on 6th Street). Tron is one of several movies the Paramount is showing in 70mm during August.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 07-09-2007, 03:11 PM:

I found TRON to be a major disappointment. Not having been in to video games may have been a factor. Another may have been that it remains the only film I saw at the Chinese where the left half of the screen was out of focus. Maybe it was the dullness of the graphics inside the game the characters were in. Regardless, it just seemed lifeless to me. I truly didn't care about any of the characters. They were completely listless to me. I think I remember seeing this opening weekend (it was playing on all three Mann Westowwod screens in 35mm, I seem to remember before going to the Village in 70mm. It was a Saturday matinee and very few people were in the theatre, quite a bit of difference than usual at that theatre for this time period.

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 07-09-2007, 03:39 PM:

Maybe they should hand it over to George Lucas and see if he can "enhance" it at all. I'm guessing the digital glowing effects would be quite cool.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-09-2007, 06:53 PM:

I, like some others, was not enthralled with the film "Tron". I found it interesting, but not exceptional.

I did enjoy the upright Tron video game and had one in my home gameroom until I got divorced in 1986 and my ex-wife took all my pinball and video machines, cash, as well as my testicles. Ow!!!

I did tons of work on "The Black Hole", but was really disappointed in how shitty it turned out. The "good" robots made me wanna barf! Too f*cking "pretty" and goodie-2-shoes!

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 07-09-2007, 07:00 PM:

Put me in the "I found it interesting but I wasn't blown away" camp. The visuals were great but overall the movie was just very flat. I do remember where I saw it: Edwards Cinema West in Westminster CA (35mm).

The thing I remember most about seeing "Black Hole" is the theater played Louie Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" over and over and over before the show. It was literally all-Hello Dolly, nothing else. That was at the "original" Edwards Cinema in Costa Mesa, their first location.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 07-09-2007, 07:13 PM:

quote:
it was playing on all three Mann Westowwod screens in 35mm,

I saw it during that opening weekend at the Mann's Westwood Triplex, there was nothing special for me.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-09-2007, 08:06 PM:

"Mr.Pizer, there are three kinds of people out there: the Do's, the Dont's and the Cant's - The Do's will do anything, the Don't won't do anything, and the Can't won't even try..!"

__ V.I.N.cent

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 07-10-2007, 03:19 PM:

I drove to Cincinnati to see the film at the Mid-States Tri-County Mall theatre. Nothing special...film was OK, but not the greatest thing ever. Computer animation was certainly state-of-the-art for the time. Tri-County was an acceptable 70mm venue, but nothing outstanding. At least that Mid-States house had booths instead of projecting from the lobby!

Since BLACK HOLE was brought up, was that the last film with an overture before the film started? The shoebox theatres of the time didn't know what to do with that...house lights up, down, projector lamp on or off? Most played with house lights out, so it was very odd hearing music in the dark.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 07-10-2007, 07:51 PM:

I loved to play the Intellivision version when i was a kid. Scored over 1,000,000 points (which - granted - was not hard to do). Every so often I miss playing the game.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-11-2007, 01:46 AM:

Sadly, TRON was the last film to play at Honolulu's Royal Theatre in Waikiki in 70mm before closing for good. TRON actually opened at the Royal Marina Twins in 35mm a few weeks earlier and moved over to the 800 seat single screen Royal in the large film format. I cannot understand why the Royal Theatre did this because it was not doing too well at the Marina. I happen to catch the very last showing at the Royal and the audience consisted of about ten people including me.

I recall being very impressed with the image quality but very bored with the movie.

-Claude

Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 07-11-2007, 08:22 PM:

I forgot to mention in my initial post that last week the USA TODAY ran an article highlighting the most influential movies since 1982 (the year the newspaper began being published and, coincidentally, the year in which "Tron" was released).

To my surprise, "Tron" was not included on their list.

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 07-11-2007, 11:32 PM:

I first experienced Tron via 2000' reel changeover projection at the Sonomarin D/I... It first doubled with Flash Gordon(1980) and later in its run doubled with Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

My second experience with Tron was in early 1983 at the Phoenix Theatre when it was a rep house. That was my first time hearing it in stereo. That time the print had a 'prologue' snipe cut into it in between the 'Distributed by Buena Vista' and 'Walt Disney Pictures Presents' title cards (the print in my drive-in run did not have this snipe)

The FX were AWESOME. The dialogue, not so much. But it was a lot of fun to be had at the movies, and its one of my all time favorite films.

One of these days I need to catch the 70mm reissue prints if they ever come this way again...

-Aaron

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 07-13-2007, 03:05 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
A couple years later Bally/Midway released the Discs of Tron coin-op game. I liked that one a lot more. It was in a huge, booth-like cabinet. Unfortunately the game never had much success.

The original game was also produced in the booth-like cabinet as well as the stand-up coin-op style. I wish I could still find an arcade TRON video game....ahhh the memories.

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 07-13-2007, 11:56 AM:

happy B day!

JJ

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 07-13-2007, 01:49 PM:

quote: Frank Dubrois
I wish I could still find an arcade TRON video game....ahhh the memories.

Here ya go Frank:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dedicated-1982-Bally-Midway-TRON-Arcade-Machine-Game_W0QQitemZ330144761288QQihZ014QQcategoryZ13716QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem