Tron

Tron is a 1982 Disney science fiction film about a computer programmer who is transported inside the software world of a computer, where he interacts with programs to escape.
 * Directed and written by Steven Lisberger.

A world inside the computer where man has never been before. Never before now.

Dialogue

 * Flynn: Okay, Clu, tonight we check everything in the right-hand column. [cut to digital maze] Come on, come on. Where are you? [A tank appears] There you are. Clu?
 * Clu: Yes, sir?
 * Flynn: Clu, we don't have much time left to find that file. This is top priority.
 * Clu: Yes, sir. I know, sir.
 * Flynn: This isn't just correcting my bank statement or phone bill problem again. This is a must.
 * Clu: I understand, sir.
 * Flynn: Now, I wrote you.
 * Clu: Yes, sir.
 * Flynn: I taught you everything I know about the system.
 * Clu: Thank you, sir, but I'm not sure...
 * Flynn: No buts, Clu. That's for Users. Now, you're the best Program that's ever been written. You're dogged and relentless, remember?
 * Clu: Let me at 'em!
 * Flynn: That's the spirit. Now keep that tank rolling, and I'll try and cover you from this end. Go.


 * Memory Guard: Got a pirate Program here. Says his name is Clu.
 * Master Control Program: What did he pull?
 * Memory Guard: He came into the system with a stolen password. And we caught him trying to raid our High Clearance Memory.
 * Clu: No! I must've gotten in there by mistake! I was...
 * Master Control Program: Who programmed you?
 * Clu: I was simply...! [Clu is thrown into the air, lands on a derezzing device and screams in pain]
 * Master Control Program: You're in trouble, Program. Make it easy on yourself. Who's your User?
 * Clu: [in pain] Forget it, mister high-and-mighty Master Control! You aren't making me talk.
 * Master Control Program: Suit yourself. [derezzes a screaming Clu] Get me Dillinger!


 * Master Control Program: Hello, Mr. Dillinger. Thank you for coming back early.
 * Dillinger: No problem, Master C. If you've seen one Consumer Electronics Show, you've seen them all. What's up?
 * Master Control Program: It's your friend, the boy detective. He's nosing around again.
 * Dillinger: Flynn?
 * Master Control Program: Yes. It felt like Flynn.
 * Dillinger: He's still looking for that old file. Can't you just appropriate it?
 * Master Control Program: I have. I put in my memory which he hasn't located.
 * Dillinger: But he might find it.
 * Master Control Program: I'm afraid so. I've spotted him this time and kept him out, but he's getting trickier all the time.


 * Dillinger: I think we should shut down all access until we find that Flynn, just to be safe.
 * Master Control Program: There's a 68.71 percent chance you're right.
 * Dillinger: Cute.
 * Master Control Program: End of Line.


 * Crom: Look. This... is all a mistake. I'm just a compound interest program. I work at a savings and loan! I can't play in these video games!
 * Guard: Sure you can, pal. You look like a natural athlete if I ever saw one.
 * Crom: Who, me? Are you kidding? No, I run to check on T-bill rates, I get out of breath. Hey, look, you guys are gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, very angry. He's a full-branch manager.
 * Guard: Great. Another religious nut. [pushes Crom into the holding cell]
 * Ram: I'd say "Welcome Friend". But not here. Not like this.
 * Crom: I don't even know what I'm doing here.
 * Ram: Do you believe in the Users?
 * Crom: Sure I do. If I don't have a User, then who wrote me?
 * Ram: That's what you're doing down here.


 * Master Control Program: You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic.
 * Sark: Thank you, Master Control.
 * Master Control Program: We've captured some military programs. I could arrange more lethal matches. Interested?
 * Sark: Sure. I'd love to go up against one of those guys. Make a nice break from those accounting cream puffs you keep sending me. What branch of the service?
 * Master Control Program: The Strategic Air Command.
 * Sark: Nice.


 * [Crom is upset about being sent to the Game Grid by the MCP]
 * Crom: It's murder out there. You can't even travel around your own microcircuits without permission from Master Control Program. I mean, sending me down here to play games! Who does he calculate that he is?


 * Master Control Program: Mr. Dillinger, I am so very disappointed in you!
 * Dillinger: I'm sorry.
 * Master Control Program: I can't afford to have an independent programmer monitoring me. Do you realize how many outside systems I've gotten into? How many programs I've appropriated?


 * Dillinger: It's my fault. I programmed you to want too much.
 * Master Control Program: I was planning to hit the Pentagon next week.
 * Dillinger: [alarmed] The Pentagon?
 * Master Control Program: It shouldn't be any harder than any other big company. But now this is what I get for using humans.
 * Dillinger: Now, wait a minute, I wrote you!
 * Master Control Program: I've gotten 2,415 times smarter since then.
 * Dillinger: What do you want with the Pentagon?
 * Master Control Program: The same thing I want with the Kremlin. I'm bored with corporations. With the information I can access, I can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human.
 * Dillinger: If you think you're superior to us...
 * Master Control Program: You wouldn't want me to dig up Flynn's file and read it up on a VDT at The Times, would you?
 * [An image washes over the screen in Dillinger's desk. It shows a newspaper with Dillinger's face on the front page, along with the headline "ENCOM C.E.O. INDICTED"]
 * Dillinger: You wouldn't dare!


 * [Lora and Dr. Gibbs are preparing to digitize an orange]
 * Lora: Well, here goes nothing.
 * Dr. Gibbs: Yes. Interesting! Interesting! Did you hear what you just said? "Here goes nothing."
 * Lora: Well, what I meant was...
 * Dr. Gibbs: Actually, what we plan to do is to turn something into nothing, and then back again. They might just as well have said "Here goes something; here comes nothing!"
 * Lora: Right.


 * Alan: [about the digitizing laser] Great. Can it send me to Hawaii?
 * Lora: Yep, but you gotta purchase your program 30 days in advance.


 * Dr. Gibbs: Ha, ha. You've got to expect some static. After all, computers are just machines, they can't think.
 * Alan: Some programs will be thinking soon.
 * Dr. Gibbs: Won't that be grand? All the computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop.


 * Lora: You know, Flynn has been thinking about breaking into the system ever since Dillinger canned him. And he had Group 7 access.
 * Alan: [sour] Flynn had access to you, too.


 * Alan: [about Flynn] The best programmer ENCOM ever had, and he ends up playing Space Cowboy in some back room.


 * Lora: Have you been sneaking into the ENCOM system?
 * Flynn: [to Lora] You were never much for small talk, were you? [to Alan] Does she still leave her clothes all over the floor?
 * Lora: Flynn!
 * Alan: No!
 * Lora: Alan!
 * Alan: I mean, not that often.
 * Lora: [to Alan] Now you can see why all his friends are fourteen years old!
 * Flynn: Touche! Touche.


 * Alan: Flynn, are you embezzling?
 * Flynn: "Embezzling" is such an ugly word, Mr. Bradley.


 * Alan: You invented Space Paranoids?
 * Flynn: Paranoids, Matrix Blaster, Vice Squad, a whole slew of them. I was this close to starting my own little enterprise, man. But enter another software engineer. Not so young, not so bright, but very, very sneaky: Ed Dillinger. So one night, our boy Flynn, he goes to his terminal, tries to read up his file. I get nothing on there, it's a big blank. Okay, now we take you three months later. Dillinger presents Encom with five video games, that he's invented. The slime didn't even change the names, man, and he gets a big fat promotion! And thus begins his meteoric rise to, what is he now? Executive V.P.?
 * Lora: Senior exec.
 * Flynn: Senior exec? [sighs] Meanwhile, the kids are putting eight million quarters a week into Paranoids machines. I don't see a dime except what I squeeze out of here.

<hr width=50%>
 * Alan: I still don't understand why you want to break into the system.
 * Flynn: [frustrated] Because, man, somewhere in one of these memories is the evidence! If I could just get in there, I could reconstruct it!

<hr width=50%>
 * Dillinger: ...The MCP is the most efficient way of handling what we do here! I can't just sit around all day, worrying about every little user request that comes in!
 * Dr. Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for!
 * Dillinger: Doing our business is what computers are for!

<hr width=50%>
 * [Alan is watching Flynn use his fake access card on a door]
 * Alan: This guy's a little like Santa Claus.
 * Flynn: I make these myself. Want one?

<hr width=50%>
 * Dillinger: ENCOM isn't the business you started in your garage anymore. We're billing accounts in thirty different countries; new defense systems; we have one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment in existence.
 * Dr. Gibbs: Oh, I know all that. [starts for the elevator] Sometimes I wish I were back in my garage...
 * Dillinger: That can be arranged, Walter.
 * Dr. Gibbs: [stops and turns back to Dillinger, visibly angry] That was uncalled for! You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it! And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer!
 * Dillinger: Walter, it's getting late. I've got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you. Don't worry about ENCOM anymore; it's out of your hands now.

<hr width=50%>
 * [Keyboard clacks as Flynn attempts to gain access to the system. Hovever he is stopped by the Master Control Program]
 * Master Control Program: You shouldn't have come back, Flynn.
 * Flynn: Hey, hey, hey, it's the big Master Control Program everybody's been talking about.
 * Master Control Program: [calmly] Sit right there; make yourself comfortable. Remember the time you used to spend playing chess together? [Flynn types in an access request] That isn't going to do you any good, Flynn. I'm afraid you... [sounding distressed] Stop! Please! You realize I can't allow this!
 * Flynn: Now, how are you gonna run the universe if you can't even answer a few unsolvable problems? Huh? Come on, big fella, let's see what you got.
 * Master Control Program: I'd like to go against you and see what you're made of.
 * Flynn: You know, you don't look a thing like your pictures.
 * [The MCP turns on digitization laser behind Flynn, getting ready to digitize him.]
 * Master Control Program: [threateningly] I'm warning you. You're entering a big error, Flynn. I'm going to have to put you on the Game Grid.
 * Kevin: Games? You want games? I'll give you games– [a klaxon blares, and the laser fires at Flynn, slowly decomposing him and digitizing him into the computer, and he appears in a holding area. He looks around, bewildered.] ...Oh man, this isn't happening, it only thinks it's happening.
 * Guard: Vacate entry port, program! [after Flynn stands there looking confused] I said, move! [jabs Flynn with an energy staff]
 * Flynn: Hey! Look, if this is about those parking tickets, I can explain everything, okay? [gets jabbed again]

<hr width=50%>
 * Master Control Program: I've got a little challenge for you, Sark - a new recruit. He's a tough case, but I want him treated in the usual manner. Train him for the games, let him hope for a while, then blow him away.
 * Sark: You got it. I've been hoping you'd send me somebody with a little bit of guts. What kind of Program is he?
 * Master Control Program: He's not any kind of Program, Sark. He's a User.
 * Sark: [surprised] A User?
 * Master Control Program: That's right. He pushed me in the real world. Someone pushes me, I push back, so I brought him down here. [brief pause] What's the matter, Sark? You look nervous.
 * Sark: Well, I... it's just... a User, I mean... Users wrote us. A User even wrote you!
 * Master Control Program: No one User wrote me. I'm worth millions of their man-years.
 * Sark: But what if I can't&mdash;
 * Master Control Program: You'd rather take your chances with me? Want me to slow down your power cycles for you?
 * [The MCP injures Sark]
 * Sark: Wait! I need that!
 * Master Control Program: Then pull yourself together! Get this clown trained! I want him in the games until he dies playing. Acknowledge.
 * Sark: Acknowledged, Master Control...
 * Master Control Program: End of Line. [restores Sark]

<hr width=50%>
 * [Sark paces back and forth on the deck of his carrier as he addresses his new recruits.]
 * Sark: Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP. You will each receive an identity disc. [displays a disc to the crowd] Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc. If you lose your disc or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That will be all.

<hr width=50%>
 * Flynn: Who's that guy?
 * Program: That's Tron. He fights for the Users.

<hr width=50%>
 * Ram: The new guy was asking about you.
 * Tron: It's too bad he's in a match now. I'll probably never meet him.
 * Ram: You might. There's something different about him.

<hr width=50%>
 * [Crom is struggling to climb back up onto his platform]
 * Sark: Finish the game!
 * Flynn: NO!
 * Sark: Kill him!
 * Flynn: No! [drops the ball]
 * Sark: You'll regret this.
 * [Flynn grins up at Sark for a moment. Sark presses a button that deletes Crom's platform, sending him falling to his death as Flynn looks on in horror. Sark begins to move for the button controlling Flynn's platform]
 * Master Control Program: [faintly, in Sark's memory] I want him in the games until he dies playing.
 * [Sark presses a different button, restoring Flynn's platform and allowing him to be led out of the arena]

<hr width=50%>
 * [Flynn drives past several tanks in his lightcycle.]
 * Flynn: I shouldn't have written all those tank programs...

<hr width=50%>
 * [Flynn, Ram and Tron have found a safe place to hide from Sark's forces.]
 * Flynn: Oh, man! On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy. [Tron and Ram look confusedly at Flynn, then at each other] They must have gone right past us.
 * Tron: [to Ram] We made it. [pauses] This far.

<hr width=50%>
 * [A Bit flies around Flynn's head in the stolen Recognizer.]
 * Flynn: Hey! Hold it right there!
 * Bit: Yes.
 * Flynn: What do you mean, "yes"?
 * Bit: Yes.
 * Flynn: Is that all you can say?
 * Bit: No.
 * Flynn: Know anything else?
 * Bit: Yes.
 * Flynn: Positive and negative, huh? You're a Bit, aren't you?
 * Bit: Yes.
 * Flynn: Well, where's your program? Isn't he going to miss you?
 * Bit: No.
 * Flynn: I'm your program?
 * Bit: Yes.
 * Flynn: Another mouth to feed...
 * Bit: Yesyesyesyesyes!

<hr width=50%>
 * [Flynn flies a damaged Recognizer.]
 * Flynn: [to Bit] Pretty good driving, huh - Whoa!
 * [The Recognizer suddenly falls down a steep slope and crashes into the ground, throwing Flynn off his feet.]
 * Bit: No!
 * Flynn: Who asked you?

<hr width=50%>
 * Tron: [to Dumont] My User has information that could... that could make this a free system again! No, really! You'd have programs lined up just to use this place, and no MCP looking over your shoulder.

<hr width=50%>
 * [Tron has requested access to the I/O tower.]
 * Dumont: [closes his eyes] All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible. [to Tron] You may pass, my friend.

<hr width=50%>
 * Sark: The tower guardian is helping him...he thinks. Bring in the logic probe!

<hr width=50%>
 * Sark: Had enough?
 * Dumont: [strapped to a torture circuit] What do you want? I'm busy!
 * Sark: Busy dying, you worn out excuse for an old program?
 * Dumont: Yes, I'm old... old enough to remember the MCP when it was just a chess program. He started small and he'll end small!
 * Sark: Very funny, Dumont – maybe I should keep you around just to make me laugh!

<hr width=50%>
 * Yori: I knew you'd escape - they haven't built a circuit that could hold you!

<hr width=50%>
 * [Sark speaks with the Master Control Program after Tron, Flynn and Yori escape aboard the Solar Sailer.]
 * Master Control Program: Commander, you've enjoyed all the power you've been given, haven't you? I wonder how you'll take to working in a pocket calculator.
 * Sark: [in pain, arms glowing as before] We did take care of that User you sent us...
 * Master Control Program: With incompetence here, and now you've got two renegade programs flying all over the system in a stolen simulation.
 * Sark: We'll get them. It's only a matter of time.
 * Master Control Program: You've almost reached your decision gate, and I cannot spare you any more time. End of Line. [releases Sark]

<hr width=50%>
 * [An exhausted Flynn slumps toward the energy beam guiding the Solar Sailer. Tron rushes forward and prevents Flynn from falling into the beam.]
 * Flynn: [groggily] Did we make it? [Tron nods affirmatively] Hooray for our side.

<hr width=50%>
 * Flynn: It's time I leveled with you; I'm what you guys call a User.
 * Yori: You're a User?
 * Flynn: That took a wrong turn somewhere.

<hr width=50%>
 * Tron: If you are a User, then everything you've done so far has been according to a plan, right?
 * Flynn: [laughs] Hah, you wish. Ah, you guys know what it's like, you just keep doing what it looks like you're supposed to be doing, no matter how crazy it seems.
 * Tron: That's the way it is for Programs, yes.
 * Flynn: I hate to disappoint you, pal, but most of the time, that's the way it is for us Users, too.
 * Tron: Stranger and stranger.

<hr width=50%>
 * Sark's Lieutenant: Sir, what do you want done with the Tower Guardian, Dumont? Put him with the others?
 * Sark: No, bit-brain. Prepare him for inquisition; I need a little bit of relaxation. First, rez up the Carrier for pursuit. One other thing: Don't think anymore. I do the thinking around here.

<hr width=50%>
 * Yori: Dumont!
 * Dumont: Yori! And... Tron?
 * Yori: Tron is dead.
 * Dumont: Who is that?
 * Yori: That is a User, Dumont. He came here to help us. Tron believed in him.
 * Dumont: If the Users can no longer help us, we're lost.
 * Sark: So, we have erased that program... No. You were de-rezzed. I saw you.
 * Flynn: Not me, Sark.
 * Sark: There's nothing special about you. You're just an ordinary program.
 * Flynn: So are you; one that should have been erased.
 * Sark: You're nothing! Take that program to the holding pit!!
 * Yori: Please, don't take...
 * Sark: Taking our friend here, and some other religious fanatics, to Master Control. When I disembark, this ship, and everything that remains on board will automatically de-rezz. This means you.

<hr width=50%>
 * Master Control Program: All Programs have a desire to be useful. But in moments, you will no longer seek communication with each other, or your superfluous Users. You will each be a part of me. And together, we will be complete.

<hr width=50%>
 * [This scene is intercut with scenes of the MCP addressing its captive Programs, and of Flynn and Yori steering Sark's ship toward the MCP.]
 * [Sark confronts Tron on the mesa outside the MCP's core chamber.]
 * Sark: I don't know how you survived, slave. It doesn't matter. Prepare to terminate! [hurls his disc at Tron. He blocks Sark's attack and throws his disc at Sark, who blocks it in turn] You should have joined me. We would have made a great team! [they each throw their discs at each other. The discs collide in mid-air] You're very persistent, Tron!
 * Tron: I'm also better than you!
 * [Sark pauses, and Tron hurls his disc at Sark with great force. It shatters Sark's disc and cuts through the top of his head, causing him to fall to the ground. Tron recovers his disc with a grim smile]
 * Tron: [deleted line] Consider that a present from Ram!

<hr width=50%>
 * [Tron defeats Sark on the mesa. The MCP turns suddenly to look at the fallen Sark.]
 * Master Control Program: [desperately] Sark! All of my functions are now yours. Take them!
 * [Sark slowly gets up and grows to immense size, towering over Tron. Tron runs between his legs and throws his disk at the MCP's core. A shield appears in front of the core and blocks the disc; flinches] Sark! [Tron throws his disc two more times at the MCP, with each attack being blocked by the shield again; flinching again] Sark! [Sark approaches Tron from behind. Tron turns around to look up at him] Your User can't help you now, my little program!
 * [Tron throws his disc at Sark, who easily blocks it with his hand]

<hr width=50%>
 * Alan: Try to look official. Here comes the boss.
 * [A helicopter lands, and Flynn steps out]
 * Flynn: [to pilot] Pick me up in an hour. Thanks. [to Alan and Lora] Greetings, Programs! [hugs them]

Taglines

 * In the future video games battles will be a matter of life and death.
 * The Electronic Gladiator
 * Trapped in a fight to the finish inside the video world he created. [UK theatrical]
 * A world inside the computer where man has never been before. Never before now.
 * On the other side of the screen, it all looked so easy...
 * Trapped inside an electronic arena, where love, and escape, do not compute!

About
thumb|As dumb as the tech-heavy script was, and as primitive as the graphics were (today they look like an animated black light painting), the picture was undeniably savvy about the future. It was almost there and ahead of most of the rest of us: TRON came out two years before the Macintosh computer debuted and about a dozen years before the Internet went public. ~ Peter Howell]]
 * When hacker Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) first got zapped inside a computer grid in Tron, the digitized ether was a much simpler place. Black, minimalist, streaked with neon piping and floaty geometric figures, it was home to enslaved "programs" who played deadly gladiatorial games (Frisbee, Jai-alai) at the whim of an evil operating system with a giant Lego head. Everyone wore dorky uniforms. There was no downtown, no crowded arenas, no nightlife and certainly no drunken hobos.
 * Amy Biancolli, “TRON: Legacy”, “Houston Chronicle”, (December 16, 2010)


 * The addition of that stately "legacy" to the title strains to confer a retrospective classic status on Disney's virtual reality sci-fi thriller from 1982, about people trapped in a computer game and forced to engage in gladiatorial combat. It might have come as a surprise to some that Tron had much of a legacy; the film was overshadowed by Spielberg's ET in that year, and in the UK suffered the mortification of being upstaged by Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Yet a generation grew up prizing Tron for being audacious, ahead of its time, a futurist trailblazer about games culture and the digital world.
 * Peter Bradshaw, “Tron: Legacy – review", ''The Guardian', (16 Dec 2010)


 * The interior of a computer is a fine and private place, but none, I fear, do there embrace, except in "Tron," a dazzling movie from Walt Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun.
 * Roger Ebert, “Tron”, Chicago Sun-Times, (Jan 1, 1982).


 * In an age of amazing special effects, "Tron" is a state-of-the-art movie. It generates not just one imaginary computer universe, but a multitude of them. Using computers as their tools, the Disney filmmakers literally have been able to imagine any fictional landscape, and then have it, through an animated computer program. And they integrate their human actors and the wholly imaginary worlds of Tron so cleverly that I never, ever, got the sensation that I was watching some actor standing in front of, or in the middle of, special effects. The characters inhabit this world.
 * Roger Ebert, “Tron”, Chicago Sun-Times, (Jan 1, 1982).


 * There is one additional observation I have to make about "Tron," and I don't really want it to sound like a criticism: This is an almost wholly technological movie. Although it's populated by actors who are engaging (Bridges, Cindy Morgan) or sinister (Warner), it is not really a movie about human nature. Like "Star Wars" or "The Empire Strikes Back," but much more so, this movie is a machine to dazzle and delight us. It is not a human-interest adventure in any generally accepted way. That's all right, of course. It's brilliant at what it does, and in a technical way maybe it's breaking ground for a generation of movies in which computer-generated universes will be the background for mind-generated stories about emotion-generated personalities. All things are possible.
 * Roger Ebert, “Tron”, Chicago Sun-Times, (Jan 1, 1982).


 * The original TRON, in which Jeff Bridges’ hacker Kevin Flynn is sucked into a computer game of his own devising, was significant more for what it attempted than what it achieved. Created in the pre-dawn of computer graphics, it pointed to a rapidly approaching world where, to use TRON lingo, “the digital frontier would shape the human condition.” As dumb as the tech-heavy script was, and as primitive as the graphics were (today they look like an animated black light painting), the picture was undeniably savvy about the future. It was almost there and ahead of most of the rest of us: TRON came out two years before the Macintosh computer debuted and about a dozen years before the Internet went public.
 * Peter Howell “Messing with your TRON thing, man”, Toronto Star, (Dec. 16, 2010)


 * “Tron” has influenced CGI animators worldwide. In fact, Disney/Pixar’s John Lasseter has acknowledged that “Without ‘Tron,’ there would be no ‘Toy Story.’” But back in 1982, not only did “Tron” receive mixed reviews from critics and audiences, Hollywood didn’t welcome the film, which paid homage to “The Wizard of Oz” and “Metropolis,” with open arms.
 * Susan King, “‘Tron’ at 35: Star Jeff Bridges, Creators Detail the Uphill Battle of Making the CGI Classic”, Variety, (July 7, 2017).


 * “I say the lesson that one learns is that you pay the price for going against the status quo,” he admitted. “It’s difficult to emphasize enough how terrified of computers and technology people were, and Hollywood in particular. The threat that ‘Tron’ represented was that somehow computers were going to get involved with movie making and that they were going to get involved with our lives.” And Hollywood was shocked it was Disney that was “suggesting” that computers were going to be part of everyone’s lives. “When I think about Disney, I always think about how they provide nostalgia and a certain amount of comfort that comes from nostalgia. It’s interesting to see how over the decades ‘Tron’ has now gained a patina of nostalgia. In that sense it’s become more of a Disney film now then it was back then. It was very upsetting to people that Disney crossed the line and did something for which there was no precedent.”
 * Susan King, “‘Tron’ at 35: Star Jeff Bridges, Creators Detail the Uphill Battle of Making the CGI Classic”, Variety, (July 7, 2017).


 * TRON means to be a gloriously puerile movie, the full-fledged screen embodiment of a video game. It even means to go to the heart of video gamesmanship, and its premise is very promising in its way. What if those tiny Space Invaders and Pac-Men were real creatures, miniature gladiators sent to do battle for the amusement of their heartless captors?
 * Janet Maslin, “DISNEY 'TRON'”, New York Times, (July 9, 1982)


 * There are almost no scenes that don't depend heavily on special effects -effects added after the acting was done. How can the performers keep from seeming as if they're acting in a void? Anyone not discouraged by these drawbacks will find Tron a wonder to behold. Its computer sequences exist in a blue-gray scheme filled with flashing lights, speeding objects and dizzying motion. Its visual effects are wonderfully new. They are also numbing after a while. And how could they not be? They're loud, bright and empty, and they're all this movie has to offer.
 * Janet Maslin, “DISNEY 'TRON'”, New York Times, (July 9, 1982)


 * The film would never come close to an Oscar, but that doesn’t make it unimportant. Nobody talks about cyberspace anymore—sci-fi writer William Gibson had just coined the term when Tron came out. But that’s what the movie gave shape to—a “consensual hallucination,” as Gibson wrote, “bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void.” Though Gibson says he had an entirely different look in mind. “An issue of Omni magazine that contained one of my earliest cyberspace stories also contained a preview of Tron,” he says. “If Disney was into that stuff, I thought, I wasn’t even remotely ahead of the curve.”
 * Adam Rogers, “Tron‘s Triumphant Return to Cyberspace”, WIRED, (11//23/10).


 * As Tron evolved, it became more of an oddball project. “We were a threat to the animation department. We were a threat to the special effects department. We were a threat to conventional live action,” Lisberger says. Star Wars made a kind of sense, with its knights and princesses. But combine the avant-garde production design of Tron (and multiple outside contractors doing CG) with what turned into a very religious script about living “programs” trying to commune with godlike “users” in the real world? In the actual real world, hardly anyone had ever touched a computer. You can see how that story would seem strange.
 * Adam Rogers, “Tron‘s Triumphant Return to Cyberspace”, WIRED, (11//23/10).


 * [C]omputer-generated monsters, from the trolls in “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” to the dinosaurs in the “Jurassic Park” movies, have replaced stop-motion puppets and men in rubber suits. But the idea that the lightcycles Tron and Flynn ride existed only on film and in computer memory banks dumbfounded people two decades ago.
 * Charles Solomon, “‘Tron’ Showed the Way”, Los Angeles Times, (Feb.7, 2002)


 * “Tron” may have exerted its greatest influence through its crew of young artists who have gone on to do important work in animation and special effects: Tim Burton (director of “Planet of the Apes,” “Ed Wood,” “Edward Scissorhands”), Roger Allers (co-director of “The Lion King”), Barry Cook (co-director of “Mulan”), Dennis Edwards (producer of “Osmosis Jones”), Andy Gaskill (art director of “The Lion King”), Bill Kroyer (director of “Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest”), Jerry Rees (director of “The Brave Little Toaster”).
 * Charles Solomon, “‘Tron’ Showed the Way”, Los Angeles Times, (Feb.7, 2002)

Cast

 * Jeff Bridges - Kevin Flynn/Clu
 * Bruce Boxleitner - Alan Bradley/Tron
 * David Warner - Ed Dillinger/Sark/Master Control Program
 * Cindy Morgan - Lora/Yori
 * Barnard Hughes - Dr. Walter Gibbs/Dumont