TRON Reviews

Similar to Fritz Lang's Metropolis. This film is often criticized for it's illogical computer world where people are forced to fight each other like gladiators using energy weapons.  Jeff Bridges plays the ne'er-do-well hero who finds himself in this fantasy world where he has to  fight an evil A.I..  I think David Warner is a good villain.  He plays both Sark (the main henchman) and the voice of the MCP (the evil A.I.).  He is basically having conversations with himself in part of the movie.  Actually, most of the actors are playing two versions of themselves, depending on which reality the hero happens to be in.  (Maybe that's why some people don't like the story and find it confusing.) The actions scenes were quite novel for their time.  I suppose whether you think they hold up or not might depend on your age.  As a kid who was always looking for something as fantastic as The Empire Strikes Back, I felt like TRON had enough imagination to be a pretty good adventure film. 

Had I not known before watching the film (or had I somehow missed the remarkably obvious "hidden Mickey"), I would have never guessed TRON to be a Disney film. It simply has little to nothing in common to anything else Disney has ever made. And I'm not referring to the lack of musical numbers or princesses, but rather the lack of humor, coherent plot, memorable characters, and basically anything resembling entertainment. TRON is a mess. A boring mess. Its cult classic status is a mystery to me.

Normally I'd explain the plot of the film right about now, except I have no idea what the movie was about. Somebody named Flynn gets sucked into a computer game, and has to figure out how to defeat something called Master Control Program. But there are so many points of confusion and tedious chase scenes mish-mashed throughout the film, that the plot gets totally lost at times.

Perhaps I would have a better understanding of the story if the dialogue wasn't so terribly dull. The script is composed of incredibly bland exposition and tedious tech-talk, making it a chore to listen to.

While TRON is only 96 minutes long, it's fairly dull from the very start. There are some slightly intriguing elements early on, but by the time TRON hits the 45 minute mark, it becomes a certified snore-fest. Frankly, I was just about bored to tears.

TRON is often praised for its "incredible" visuals. But they look so horrendous that I can't imagine they are appreciated as anything more than as a lesson in how NOT to create special effects. I understand that this film is over 30 years old, but surely the intense ugliness of this production was evident at the time of its release.

The effects are frightfully messy looking. Once we enter the video-game world, everything from the backgrounds to the (laughably bad) costumes are digitally created. This makes the film appear muddy and shoddy. So muddy, in fact, that I frequently mixed up the identities of certain characters, merely because the special effects caused their faces to be difficult to see clearly.

The acting ranges from bland to campy. Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan fall into the former category. David Warner falls into the latter.

The score, composed by Wendy Carlos, is delightfully retro, yet simultaneously obnoxious as a result. The electronic elements are amusing, but they become excessive and irritating as the film progresses.

A mess of a film, TRON features disastrously ugly special effects, terrible dialogue, weak acting, and a confusing story that isn't worth trying to follow. On top of that, it's just a big bore, lacking the fun and excitement of the films it's so clearly trying to imitate (namely Star Wars). If you want to see a better video-game oriented Disney film, watch Wreck-It Ralph. If you've already seen Wreck-It Ralph and you want to see if Disney can find success in the same pattern twice, here's your answer: no. Go watch Wreck-It Ralph.

For many years, I wanted to see this movie but, somehow, it was never broadcasted in any of my TV channels. Eventually, I watched first the sequel and, guess what, 2 months later, the BBC was showing this movie… Anyway, I was quite blown away. Indeed, visually, it was just amazing and it was way ahead of its time, at least 10, maybe 20 years than its contemporaries. While watching the end credits, I noticed that Moebius, one of my favorite comic-book artists, was a conceptual artist and it figures. Indeed, this world was completely immersive and, to think that it was made 30 years ago, it still blows my mind, especially coming from Disney which was never really daring in its live productions. Of course, when it was released, it was completely misunderstood and it failed at the box-office. Unfortunately, even though it was visually amazing, the story was not really great though. I mean, the possibilities were quite limitless and they could have made one hell of metaphysical tale about the relationship between users and programs, between players and games and so many other things. Instead, there was this rather murky plot but it was still fairly entertaining. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, from a visual point of view, it is quite a visionary feature and it is definitely worth a look.

It may have been innovative, and it is, in fact, quite pleasant to watch, but thats not enough. It's also a bit dumb at times, to say the least, and there's always the sensation we're watching some lame 3D tv show for kids. As much as this enchanted many people, and of course, the wannabe nerds of the eighties, it didn't wowed me. Bill Gates favorite film? I'd say yes.

To Read My Review of "TRON" - awesomebarnhart.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/tron-1982/

I almost saw Tron Legacy at the cinema without any knowledge that it was a sequel to this film and that night, I decided to watch it. I did enjoy it but I did not find it amazing. I mean, a lot of people nowadays wouldn't watch it because the effects aren't like Avatar, District 9 or anything else and some would find it cheesy. Me, on the other hand, didn't find it cheesy. I thought the effects were fantastic for its time and they were really good in comparison to films nowadays. It is like a mixture between Fantastic Voyage, Blade Runner and Star Trek: The Motion Picture so clearly there is a lot of action and adventure, stunning effects and also a lot of suspense too. Disney's involvement of this film made it even more magical than it already was and I am glad that they produced the 2010 sequel too.


Hacker/arcade owner Kevin Flynn is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate known as the Master Control and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the ultimate blazingly colourful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron to outmanoeuvre the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game.


Tron was the first film I experienced with a younger Jeff Bridges so was rather weird seeing him younger. As far as his performance as Kevin Flynn/Clu is concerned, it was brilliant! Then again, when is he not brilliant? I'll be looking forward to seeing him in the sequel. I liked Bruce Boxleitner as well as Alan Bradley/Tron and will be looking forward to seeing him in the sequel too.


Steven Lisberger perhaps had a lot on his shoulders as director because many were expecting stunning effects with intense action, solid acting and a good script but I think it was a wise choice to make him director of the film as well as writer. He did a good job and handled the scenes inside the program and outside the program pretty well. In many ways, it takes an absolute genius to write a screenplay alone based on one's own creation, Lisberger can be added to that list because he did a good job of the script and there wasn't really anything cheesy about the way it was written at all. He managed to keep the pace of it at normal so it didn't feel rushed and it wasn't slow so that's good. Tron was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Costume Design and Best Sound but I think it should have won both. Plus, it should have won Best Visual Effects in 1982 over E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, let alone be nominated for it.


Overall, Tron is a fun action-packed thrill ride that I did enjoy and perhaps would watch again in the future. It is an underrated film but not one of the best science-fiction films I have watched. It was still a fun piece of entertainment that was worth watching and that I would recommend to others only for the fun of it.

original to the max - style and effects were and still are very good. - remaking tron - wooooo.. lets hope it can live us to its earlier realtion.

I never get tired of watching this movie. I really enjoyed it when it first came out (as a kid), and I was a little surprised at how much I still enjoy it, now that I'm an adult. But I watch it again every month or two, and I'd recommend it to anybody.