Birth.Movies.Death. Disney Live Action Commemorative Issue
By Jim Braden @jbraden6
“All this technology scares me.” – Kevin Flynn
READY > “System Online”
When 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY premiered in 1968, it presented the first portrayal of an A.I. interacting with humans in a realistic manner. An A.I. that was, unsurprisingly, dangerously unstable. In subsequent years, the gradual migration of computers from mainframe laboratories to suburban homes, coupled with the ever-present threat of nuclear war, caused an insidious anxiety to take root in the popular consciousness. A widespread lack of understanding of what this new technology was truly capable of, along with the fear of human obsolescence in the workplace, drove a deep distrust of computers. Even as William Shatner gleefully shilled for the Commodore VIC-20, films like WAR GAMES, LOOKER, and even SUPERMAN III encouraged technophobia.
This was the climate in which Disney uploaded director Steve Lisberger’s TRON to the multiplex matrix. In contrast to these cautionary tales of a computerized future, TRON presented an optimistic vision. “I come from an era where there was a great deal of idealism,” says Lisberger. “When we approached cyberspace, it was potentially a paradise. If we could get everybody in cyberspace, getting their programs and their identities out there, getting whatever they needed… the world would be Heaven.”
INPUT > “Greetings, Programs!”
Given the general ignorance concerning what computers could do, the filmmakers decided to focus their story on Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a brilliant computer programmer who also happens to be a super-cool video game whiz. By placing Flynn as the bridge between benign (and hugely popular) video arcades and the vaguely threatening computer engineering lab, he became an audience surrogate as he travels from comfortable reality into the unknown digital world.
Because he poses a threat to the diabolical MCP (Master Control Program) and its human counterpart, a corrupt executive named Dillinger, Flynn is captured and beamed into the computer where the MCP can deal with him personally. Though our hero’s digital disintegration is played for a mild, kid-friendly scare, it transitions to a dazzling first-person view of Flynn’s passage into “the System”, passing through a kaleidoscope of microchip clouds drifting over circuit board plains and (literal) silicon valleys. It’s the digital analogue of Dave Bowman’s journey into the monolith in 2001, but far less terrifying; an invitation to a bold, new world of infinite possibility.
Flynn is summarily captured by the MCP and his minion, SARK, and conscripted to engage in gladiatorial combat in the form of video games. As Flynn interacts with his fellow prisoners, he learns that within the System, these personified Programs are more than merely strings of code on a monitor, but rather thinking, feeling beings with a near-religious loyalty to their respective Users. These are simple, harmless Programs – one a pudgy accounting nerd, another a life insurance sales calculator who pushes his User’s product, even within the computer world. These guys aren’t synthetic beings to be feared – they’re average, workaday joes just like the rest of us.
Except, of course, for the MCP. An evil artificial intelligence, the MCP seeks to conquer the digital world. Having grown beyond the capacity of his human colleagues, the MCP has set his sights on the military computers of Strategic Air Command (which, as WAR GAMES taught us, handles the nukes). The MCP is an existential threat in both the computer world and the real one, and is the embodiment of every technophobe’s nightmare. In the real world, the MCP resides in a massive computerized desk in Dillinger’s office – the original Black Mirror. Within the System, Flynn teams up with a security program named TRON (incidentally an actual debugging command in the BASIC programming language) to thwart the MCP and liberate the digital world. In a moment meant to strike at the heart of human technophobia, the MCP is ripped to pieces, reduced to its very core – a strange, decrepit Program pecking away at an old typewriter from the early 1900s. The message is clear: at their core, even the most powerful computers are merely an evolution of simple human tools, and humans will always be in control of them.
With the SARK and the MCP defeated (deleted?), Flynn returns to reality and the little computer people are free to live in peace, fall in love and peddle insurance annuities, all in harmony with their human Users. A classic kill-the-dragon story wrapped in a stunning CG-animated package. Guaranteed box office gold…right?
ERROR > “Derezzed”
The problem was, Disney had no idea how to market the film. It was a confusing premise that dealt with a subject that people weren’t comfortable with. In order to tap some – any – audience, Disney produced a made-for-TV documentary called “Computers are People, Too!” as a means of giving the film some context. The narrative featured a human host interacting with a futuristic supercomputer, intercut with vignettes featuring composers and dancers using computers to produce art. When the host asks if she’ll ever be replaced by machines, the supercomputer promises that humans and computers are “on the verge of a beautiful partnership.”
But it wasn’t enough. In the end, the film failed to meet Disney’s lofty expectations with a mere $33m box office take. Disney had hoped to kickstart a franchise, but instead, plans for a sequel were quickly shelved.
PRINT > “Legacy”
Though TRON barely made it out of Beta, it cast a long shadow. It’s impossible to say how much influence TRON had on the “fun” science-themed movies that quickly followed – WEIRD SCIENCE, REAL GENIUS, MY SCIENCE PROJECT, etc. – but it clearly influenced the next generation of filmmakers, and eventually spawned a sequel. TRON: LEGACY writer Adam Horowitz remembers “…coming home from TRON and [I] went to my parents and asked them for a computer. They said: ‘Yeah, those are 40 grand, no way.’ Times have changed.”
TRON helped introduce the world to the concept of cyberspace, and correctly predicted a future in which humans and computers coexist. As Lisberger says, for good or ill, “we’re all on the game-grid now.”
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