Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Tron Legacy Exposed 320

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the end-of-line dept.
KingofGnG writes "Disney has chosen the San Diego Comic-Con International to present its new sci-fi project: the sequel to Tron. The classic movie from 1982 dealt with video games, virtual reality and 3D graphics when none of those things were widely popular. The new movie has got an official title and synopsis now, and they've released the very first trailer from the movie (this time without silly censorship) together with some concept art and the teaser poster." No matter how silly the movie is, they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Tron Legacy Exposed More

Tron Legacy Exposed

Comments Filter:

  • Videogames in 1982? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:48PM (#28840533) Homepage Journal

    Videogames weren't popular in 1982? Let me guess: in 1982, you were still a
    Hershey bar in your dad's back pocket.

    One word: Pacman

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by WillAdams ( 45638 )

      ::applaud:: and agree.

      Here's a blast from the past:

      âoePac-Man Feverâ (Pac-Man)
      âoeFroggyâ(TM)s Lamentâ (Frogger)
      âoeOde to a Centipedeâ (Centipede)
      âoeDo the Donkey Kongâ (Donkey Kong)
      âoeHyperspaceâ (Asteroids)
      âoeThe Defenderâ (Defender)
      âoeMousetrapâ (Mousetrap)
      âoeGoinâ(TM) Berzerkâ (Berzerk)

      William

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by moxley ( 895517 )

      Seriously....I had an entire >cassette [wikipedia.org] with songs about videogames around that time; it was Buckner and Garcia's "Pacman Fever" - and in addition to Pac Man it had songs about Centipede, Defender, and many others.

      So I think by the time a campy album has been released, based on the smash success of a novelty single, that video games were indeed popular.

      They weren't 3D (well, not really, I supposed you could say that Tempest was 3D in a way), but there was Intellivision, Atari, and awesome Apple ][ games t

    • Re:Videogames in 1982? (Score:5, Funny)

      by xant ( 99438 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @05:09PM (#28843749) Homepage

      > still a Hershey bar in your dad's back pocket.

      Wait. Wait, wait, what? We're just going to let this pass unremarked? What the fuck does that mean? What bizarre creation myth did your parents tell you led to your existence? I cannot think of any rational way this is a metaphor for meeting and/or fucking your future wife.

      C

  • TR2N? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:50PM (#28840563)
    I'll miss trying to pronounce the working title. Trihtoon, Tratoowon, The movie concept formerly known as Tron 2.

  • Disney pah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Plunky ( 929104 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:50PM (#28840567)

    No matter how silly the movie is they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

    Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

    • Re:Disney pah (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mcfatboy93 ( 1363705 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:59PM (#28840687) Homepage

      What culture?

    • What Plunky is talking about (Score:5, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:59PM (#28840707) Homepage Journal

      Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

      Before you mod Plunky's post all the way to -1, consider that The Walt Disney Company was one of the two biggest advocates of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (the other being the Gershwin estate).

    • Re:Disney pah (Score:5, Informative)

      by Etrias ( 1121031 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:01PM (#28840741)
      Say what you want about Disney (I'm no fan, myself), but they will get my money for Tron.

      You should see the trailer for Legacy: It's here [flynnlives.com].

    • Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

      This is the one (lack of) story that they didn't co opt from public domain though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Plunky ( 929104 )

        This is the one (lack of) story that they didn't co opt from public domain though.

        Yes they did [wikipedia.org]

        In 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended copyright protection to the duration of the author's life plus seventy years for general copyrights and to ninety-five years for works made for hire.

        They have arranged to withold Tron from the public domain for an extra 20 years.

    • Disney doesn't steal your culture, they just copyright it, then charge you money to use your own culture. I've always contended that both Disney and Microsoft use the same business model: steal intellectual property from others, then vigorously defend it as their own. That being said, I still use XP, and I will be taking my daughter to The Frog Princess as soon as it comes out. Sigh...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Morkano ( 786068 )

      No matter how silly the movie is they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

      Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture

      Not only that, but it's that sort of sentiment that encourages publishers to just churn out cheap crap on an established universe rather than make something that lives up to, and even surpasses the original.

      I refuse to see any revivals that aren't at least as good as the original.

  • 1982 (Score:3, Informative)

    by arizwebfoot ( 1228544 ) * on Monday July 27, 2009 @01:52PM (#28840593)

    Had lots of Atari games in 1982 - like Asteroids.

    Wow, those were the days.

    Before that, like in the late 70's we had Pong, which I could play for hours - depleting my entire savings of quarters.

  • Disney... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noundi ( 1044080 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:00PM (#28840717)

    No matter how silly the movie is, they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

    Oops, you just defined the source to 90% of Disney's revenue.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Capt.DrumkenBum ( 1173011 )
      I see the other 10% of their revenue coming from the new game "LightCycles 3D"
      Which I sadly will probably buy a copy of.

      • Armagetron Advanced (Score:4, Informative)

        by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:08PM (#28840871) Homepage Journal

        I see the other 10% of their revenue coming from the new game "LightCycles 3D"
        Which I sadly will probably buy a copy of.

        A video game published by Disney probably won't run on Linux, unlike Armagetron Advanced [armagetronad.net].

      • I see the other 10% of their revenue coming from the new game "LightCycles 3D"
        Which I sadly will probably buy a copy of.

        I'm just happy that someone seems to have made an actual Space Paranoids [tron-sector.com] game! *That* was the game I always wanted to play as a kid, not that thing they came out with at the arcades. Apparently at a recent promotional event for the new movie, someone set up a "Flynn's" arcade, put a bunch of 80s arcade games in it, and included this game in an arcade cabinet. Sweet.

    • No matter how silly the movie is, they'll at least get my money for sheer nostalgia.

      Oops, you just defined the source to 90% of Disney's revenue.

      But how is the remaining 10 percent split among Super Jonas Bros., Miley Virus, Desperate Housewives and the rest of the ABC network, much is Kill Bill and other Miramax productions, and ESPN?

  • that the game that came out a few years ago was Tron 2. Am I missing something?

  • Kinda weird mashup (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ryvar ( 122400 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:02PM (#28840769) Homepage

    Somebody already mashed this trailer up with Michael Jackson's "Beat It" - it works disturbingly [youtube.com] well.

    --Ryv

  • Screw TRON (Score:5, Funny)

    by localman57 ( 1340533 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:03PM (#28840797)
    Along with "War Games" TRON gave an unrealistic expectation of what computers could do which continues to perplex Ludites to this day.

    On an offtopic note, this reminds me of one time when I went to a school auction. A couple of idiots felt that they got a really good deal, because they got the largest piece of computing equipment (A DEC computer of some sort) for less than what the Commodore PET computers were going for. I couldn't help but smile when I heard one say to the other "This part's the brains."

    • Screw the Ludites! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KGBear ( 71109 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:23PM (#28841161) Homepage
      They'll have an unrealistic expectation of any expression of technology, by definition. All the while War Games and Tron were inspiring a whole generation (myself included) to learn what it's all about. We knew very well the expectations in both movies were unrealistic, but that was never the point. I had no hope of making my Sinclair ZX81 do anything remotely close to what Tron showed me but I got to fell like Flynn when I hacked a reset button for it (pin 13 to ground on the Z80). (Good) sci-fi is about inspiration, not reality. If it were realistic it would be a documentary and in 1982 a very boring one...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      Don't EVEN compared Wargames to Tron! Yes, there were a some exaggerated elements to Wargames, but on the whole it was remarkably accurate in portraying hacker culture and the tricks of the hacker/phreaker trade (so powerful that it even inspired the popular terms "War-dialing," and later "War-driving," among phreakers). Tron, by contrast, was nothing but pure fantasy--a flimsy excuse of a plot designed to service some whiz-bang new CGI.
    • Thinking a bit more about this, perhaps the best counter example of this was "Short Circuit" where they explained that "They don't get happy, they don't get sad, they don't get angry, THEY JUST RUN PROGRAMS".
      • Oops, wait. Scratch that. Actually, the robot did get happy, sad, and angry. Oh, and its programming was done by a bolt of lightning. Yeah, that one sucked too.

  • Tron 2.0 Videogame - No Longer Cannon? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StaticEngine ( 135635 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:05PM (#28840829) Homepage

    I really enjoyed the PC game Tron 2.0, put out by Monolith a few years back. It's actually quite clever (some good jokes, and of course the Musak version of the Tron theme plays in "the real world"), and the graphical style makes it almost timeless: it doesn't require high poly count video cards, it's all about that Tron look. The negatives, of course, were that most of the weapons past the disc were superfluous, and the multiplayer lightcycle races grew tiresome after a few rounds. It also had Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan providing voice talent.

    I'm excited about a new film, but I'm also torn about what this might do to the story. Still, it's nice to see an interesting IP still has some life in it.

    • Tron 2.0 story was more than just the Video Game. IIRC, there was also a comic book. Flynn looks older in this movie than in the Tron 2.0 timeline, so this might fit in nicely.

  • Could not care less. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:12PM (#28840957)

    I'll get downed for the fanboys, but whatever:

    I couldn't possibly care less about a Tron sequel. The original was enjoyable when you were a kid, but watching it as an adult, you just realize what boring and uninteresting crap it is. It isn't even watchable in stretches longer than about fifteen minutes. So anyone who has finally realized what crap it is won't care about a sequel and kids today who are the age that we were when we liked the first one won't care because they weren't around for the first one.

    I could almost understand a remake and doing it right this time. But a sequel suggests that they thought the original was actually good. The only people who will care about this are those who are suffering a heavy bout of nostalgia and haven't watched it recently so still mistakenly believe it's AWESOME.

    It's like Knight Rider. I'm sure a lot of us remember how cool Knight Rider was when we were kids. Then watched a couple episodes as adults and realized how stupid and terrible and uninteresting it is.

    Instead of this shameless money-grab, they should... you know... do something new.

    • I was an adult when Tron came out. I remember thinking it looked like a really cool movie. Then it came out and I learned how bad it sucked, why would I be interested in a sequel.
      • I remember thinking how much it stole from "Through the Looking-Glass". Also, the InfoWorld (which was then primarily a CP/M weekly newspaper) review was titled "The (Disney) Empire Strikes Back".

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by AP31R0N ( 723649 )

      As you grew up you should have learned the difference between opinions and facts.

    • Even when I was a kid, Tron was interesting only because of the computer graphics. It was an "eh" film, but it made use of cool new technology. I have watched it after becoming an adult, and was surprised to find I enjoyed it more. Not only due to nostalgia, but I actually understood the interplay between the adult characters in the real world this time, and I finally got all of the computer puns.

    • Re:Could not care less. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fprintf ( 82740 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:37PM (#28841403) Journal

      But, but, but... we are Generation X, long forgotten in between the baby boomers and their annoying offspring, the GenY'ers. Now that the old fogeys are retiring it is our turn in charge, and we are going to create nostalgia for our youth era gone by. No longer do we have to relive the 1960s and 1970s... nooooo, that is only for the baby boomers. Now instead we get to relive bad hair, metal, band-aid, the dawn of personal computing and video games. We get to recreate Atari 2600 games and make them into movies. We get to mandate any new pop stars create hits "remaking" the hits of our generation... hopefully we'll do better than Phil Collins did with that Supremes remake. This way we'll get to like the current popular music. And g'damn it you are going to sit through it and like it. Maybe in time you too will get sick of it and create your own grunge movement. Rap doesn't count.

      To all those GenY'ers who might complain, I say you guys have nothing to bitch about for quite some time. We GenX'ers after all have sat through countless replays of Beatles and Mama's and Papa's songs on the radio, umpteen recollections of what a tragedy it was when losing John Lennon, television show after show on JFK Jr., and that god-awful mess that "the Cuba crisis" was about. About the time you have listened to Nirvana's Teen Spirit for the 10,000th time, and have your own stars go tits up (and I mean beyond that dude who played the Joker in Batman) like Kurt Cobain, well then you can complain.

      Now get off my lawn.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kannibal_klown ( 531544 )

      'll get downed for the fanboys, but whatever:

      I couldn't possibly care less about a Tron sequel. The original was enjoyable when you were a kid, but watching it as an adult, you just realize what boring and uninteresting crap it is. It isn't even watchable in stretches longer than about fifteen minutes.

      I feel that away about a lof of things I used to watch. The old Transformers cartoon, Knight Rider, even some films.. Back when I was a kid these shows were awesome and now I have to stop after just a few mi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clintp ( 5169 )

      What's wrong with re-using a Universe? It saves time doing exposition and background, and let's you frame a new story in a familiar setting.

      Admittedly, sometimes it works (Hobbit->LoTR, SW->ESB->RotJ, Discworld, Dune->DM->CoD) and sometimes it doesn't (SW ep IV-VI -> SW I-III, Matrix->Matrix R/R). If the storytelling is any good, the setting is just secondary.

  • Yeesh. Did not want to associate those two ideas in my head... not that tronguy left much to the imagination to begin with.

    How much will I have to drink to erase that thought?

  • Lightcycles only do straight lines! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:15PM (#28840999)

    Is nothing sacred? Lightcycles going around curves. How could you... *sob*

    • I noticed that too... They've taken a few liberties but overall I'm happy to see that they've mostly kept with the original look and feel. It looks incredible while still being true to the unique Tron environment. It's nice to see what you can do now versus then. The lighting on the suits isn't as blown out and the reflections are awesome.

    • Re:Lightcycles only do straight lines! (Score:5, Informative)

      by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @04:39PM (#28843287)
      Lightcycles could navigate curves in the original movie, and were clearly shown doing so during their escape from the game grid. When I get home tonight I'll pop the DVD in and give you a timestamp to look for.

  • Have I got this right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tetsujin ( 103070 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:17PM (#28841045) Homepage Journal

    If I remember correctly the premise of the sequel is that Enzo and Andraia get lost on the web for a while and grow up to be badasses - and then return to Mainframe for the final battle with Megabyte?

  • Introducing new characters... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Temujin_12 ( 832986 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:20PM (#28841103)

    New characters/themes to bring Tron into the 21st century:

    1) Qubit - flies around saying, "Yes", "no", and "maybe"
    2) Tron-troll - Any scene involving communication between more than two characters is constantly interrupted by the local Tron-troll
    3) Anonymous - suddenly hordes of identical looking drones appear to aid the main character in his/her quest then dissipate feeling good about themselves
    4) Users - rather than only having sparse information about the users, characters in Tron know everything about the users and are constantly interrupted by the user's incessant communications about what they are currently doing or their asking Tron characters to fill out quizzes which have nothing to do with the plot of the movie
    5) DRM - weapons, vehicles, and entire structures suddenly stop working at the whim of the MCP

    • 1. Maybe.
      2. Can we get some Sark/MCP slash?
      3. Metamodding.
      4. "Turn left!"
      5. I thought Microsoft WAS the MCP. Question is, who's Tron?

  • By coincidence, last weekend I saw TRON in its entirety on YouTube. I must confess that it's a great movie. Obviously, technically, nobody knew what the hell they were talking about and it shows. Still, it was a great, prophetic movie. Well worth catching in 10 parts, each 10 minutes long...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      It's only four minutes long? What a rip-off.

    • Still, it was a great, prophetic movie. Yeah, 'cause in real life, people really do get sucked into their computers all of the time... I'm sorry, it had a pathetic plotline, bad acting, and terrible graphics. Aside from semi-cool light cycles (which were only put in to leverage a computer game spinoff as far as I can tell) there is really nothing to like about the movie.

  • I wonder (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:21PM (#28841115)

    If the title of this movie will be "Troff"?

  • While you all bask in your nostaliga over here, I'll be over there [wired.com] both watching Olivia Wilde talk about the movie and watching the non-slashdotted trailer.

  • Premise: The MCP is sold to a young kid at an electronics fair. Playing a game of chess the MCP (fitting on an old tape reel) the MCP says he can improve the game if the young boy, Inserts a disk from another program. After a few minutes the graphics improve in the game.

    A short interlude of the boy progressively adding new disks and features as the MCP grows more complex. Then he finally plugs it in to the Internet...

    10 years later.

    The young boy, now a leader in industry running a CPU manufacture seals the

  • It won't stand out anymore (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Monday July 27, 2009 @03:39PM (#28842361)

    Back when video games were a fairly new thing and CGI was amazing they made Tron. The visual style was impressive, especially given the use of hand tinting and other post processing effects. These days it's all too easy using CGI and other computer gadgetry.

    There simply isn't any way that this sequel can stand out compared to all the other CGI fx laden films around. Unless of course they go for rotoscoping or similar as used in A Scanner Darkly.

  • The sign of the beast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ral ( 93840 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @04:05PM (#28842767)
    Here's a bit of odd trivia. The original Tron movie was created (in part) on a clone of the Digital PDP-10 computer. The PDP-10 includes an instruction called TRON (Test Right-halfword Ones and skip if Not masked). The opcode in octal (which is the convention on the PDP-10) is 666.

    I doubt Disney will actively publicize this.

    (I still fondly remember working for years with this odd but elegant 36-bit machine.)

  • I wish Sark was in this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sark666 ( 756464 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @06:02PM (#28844447)

    I'm excited as hell for this movie, but I wish they brought back David Warner as Sark. You might say he's too old, but I've seen him in something recently and he still looks good. He's truly an underrated actor and makes a great villain.

    A little pointless trivia, he was also the voice of the MCP.

  • Next up for a redo: The Black Hole (Score:3, Funny)

    by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Monday July 27, 2009 @06:07PM (#28844499) Homepage

    This time it's blacker and deeper than ever!

    First Disney movie with that tagline!

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close