I was planning to have my new site all done and premiered by the end of the day today, but it is not to be this week, I don’t think. It will probably be in the next few days, and definitely the first of the new weekly DHARBIN! strip installments will start a week from tomorrow, Monday December 8. I now have 2 strips in the can, so if I can get another one done this week I’ll be a full 2 ahead by Monday, meaning it’s more likely I’ll be able to stick to a weekly schedule.
Contributing to my not-getting-done-itude was the movie Tron, which I watched today. This is a poor excuse: Tron is barely an hour-and-a-half long, I think. It’s also so dumb in the dumb parts that you could easily do any number of things while watching it, including finish a website design, defuse a chemical bomb, and land a pilotless 747 jetliner with the help of an air-traffic controller by telephone. But when Tron is good, it’s REALLY good:
Unfortunately, when Tron is bad, it’s awful. I know that this is generally the case when you go back and watch something that was amazing and innovative when you were a kid, but Tron seems to be almost laughably crappy.
What’s funny is that the visual effects are still pretty arresting–the problems with the movie are with the story, dialogue, editing, direction, and pretty much everything else that a regular movie is judged on. In its way, Tron paved the way for other visually stunning but ultimately terrible movies like all those Star Wars prequels, etc.
But visually stunning it still is, despite being utterly obsolete as far its technology goes. In fact, as someone who’s generally a little uninterested in computer-generated stuff, I was surprised to find myself on the edge of my seat during some of the more artsy scenes–beyond the drama of some of the chases, it was just how fascinating the scenes themselves were. The design of everything in Tron is extraordinary–it’s hard to express how disappointing this makes the rest of the movie.
For one thing, if they cut out all the long clunky pauses, the movie would probably only be 45 minutes long. For serious. As a matter of fact, cutting out most of the dialogue would help as well. As soon as characters start talking, it’s like the “plot” part of a porno–boooooorrrring. I caught myself repeatedly thinking, throughout the course of the movie, of how amazing it would have been if creative people with the same amount of artistic vision and excellence as the visual designers had done the rest of the movie. This seems to be the problem most times when art and commerce share the same cart. And for its time–1982 or so, I think–Tron was like Harry Potter, as far as generating a short-lived empire of toys, video games, and swag goes.
But I don’t mean to beat up on the movie, not that the movie cares or has feelings. I think if you stick pretty much ANY movie you enjoyed as a kid up against The Godfather or The Third Man, it’s going to come off as hideously trite and childish. I mean, The Goonies is great, but..
And what IS great about Tron is its look forward–remember that in 1982, the fax machine was still on the leading edge of technological development. Watching it now, in 2008, is wistful in a way–you can’t help but think of the people designing the look of the film, trying not only to anticipate the look of the future, but to also anticipate what their audience thought the future would look like. This is both a blessing and curse of all speculative fiction–once your speculation is proven wrong, your story loses some of its teeth, but gains a sort of otherworldly alternate reality. I guess that’s redundant, huh?
Consider 2001: A Space Odyssey. Speaking in late 2008, I can say with at least 90% confidence that humans are not yet turning into Star Children out past the orbit of Mars. Nor are highly friendly computers locking us out of our own pod bays. Nor has everything turned white and become incredibly, incredibly clean. But for me this adds to the story rather than subtracts from it. While it loses some of its post-Atomic Age this-could-happen-to-us element–since clearly it has not–it becomes somehow MORE fictitious, which improbably makes it easier to buy somehow. Plus it bears noting that 2001 was also a visually stunning and highly innovative movie, like Tron. Also, a much better movie.
Another interesting parallel between 2001 and Tron is the fear element–in both movies the bad guy seems to be technology. In their separate futures, self-aware computers align themselves against humans. This is a standard trope in many sci-fi stories, which is always interesting to me: that when people think about the future, they envision menace and strangeness; sentient computers which kill them or make them drive light-cycles or lock them out of pod bays. In the 50′s it was fear of atomic weapons and the world they had created–but by the 80′s it was fear of science itself.
This is especially interesting considering the surpassingly consumer nature of technology today. Today we carry telephones in our pockets which are barely larger than credit cards, but are more powerful than the most powerful computers of the 50′s. You can get one for as little as thirty bucks, and most of them play music, run complex programs, access the Internet, and on and on. If anything, science is more and more ubiquitous today, although I’m sure I could muster up a proper dread if I had to. But if you watch the eleven o’clock news, dread should be found in every nook and cranny of modern living, most often your home somewhere.
I’m not very interested in dread, although I can handle it if it is the motive force behind a great piece of art. Which Tron is not, but it certainly has its moments. The sort of early scenes in the computer world are like a primer on German Expressionism, although with the sort of neon-heavy sensibility of the early 80′s. And somehow, it’s beautiful.
I’m not the only one who thinks so, either–while hunting the little Tron clip above, I found numerous mentions (including a fuzzy trailer) of a forthcoming Tron sequel starring Jeff Bridges, AND this Tron light-cycle game.
Okay, that’s all I have to say about Tron. It’s fun to look at, but terrible. And the music–whoa! Now that I have that out of my system, back to work on comics and websites. Huzzah!
I watched it a while back when it first came out on DVD and one thing that struck me was how dry the computer world was. Just the look and sound of it made me gasp for air and need to drink water. There is that one scene where they drink that water and without that, I think I might had died right there in front of the TV. Very surreal.
See, I kind of liked that dryness of the computer world–the water-drinking scene was so weird, I couldn't handle it. I mean, here they are as fugitives in this digitized world, and they get all excited to drink some water? Very weird, and not at all something that gave the world more depth or anything–if anything, it made things more confusing.
The best "people" parts are the religious elements–the idea that the downtrodden cling to the idea of "users", still out there somewhere in the real world. Tron should have been a giant religious allegory, with a foundation in humanism rather than just standard 80's computer ideas and fear.
I thought the dryness was appropriate and I can really appreciate the art and design behind a visual image that can make a person feel something/anything on a physical level. I salute them for pulling off the sterility of the computer world. Still, it's kind of hard to take. It should have played up that religious statement you mention but…yeah, the Black Hole should not have sucked either but… ya can't have it all. Tron and The Black Hole are two of the most disturbing movies a person can ever watch on mind altering drugs that I never did back in college and would never ever do now. They make Jacob's Ladder and The Shining seem like episodes of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Why are live action Disney movies from the 70's and 80's so disturbing? Don't even get me started on Something Wicked This Way Comes.
I have a slight advantage in that I didn't see ANY of these movies when they originally came out, except The Black Hole, which was the last movie I saw in a theatre until I was 15, due to excessive Christianity. I saw Tron on a local "Saturday Afternoon Movie" -type channel when I was a teenager. So most of these live-action kids' movies aren't really creepy to me, just inane. I didn't see The Dark Crystal until I was 23 or so, and a girl I was wooing wanted to watch it. God, it was awful, but my need to agree with everything this girl said prevented me from protesting aloud. So I fell asleep.
Most of the good stuff in Tron is due largely to 2 men– Syd Mead and Moebius, who did a large portion of the memorable design work for the film. I watch Tron in slow motion, and only the parts with the computer effects/design.
I love watching the Byte in slow motion when it does the YES/NO dialogue (it turns in on itself with a 4th dimentional cube) and also that scene with the tank (a Recognizer was it?) reassembling on the Atari-ish landscape…not to mention the whole Lightcycle battle, needless to say.
I think I like this film more now than I did at the time. But I remember seeing early thumbnail sketches in a magazine by Moebius– illustrating the Jai-lai like game of toss on the suspended battlefield…my first introduction to Moebius, I must've been 9 yrs. old. Still a vivid memory. And years before I saw an ish of Heavy Metal let alone the Marvel books…
The effect sequences in the first Star Trek are the same way– excellent stuff to watch on its own.
You know, it must be that Disney locks down clips of its movies, but I looked like crazy for one of the more "out" sequences when I was writing this post. For instance, I had forgotten the bizarre scene (around the same time as the byte's "yes/no" thing) where Flynn pilots that thing drunkenly and as he gets lower, pieces of his construct are chopped off until only the capsule at the top is left. Whoa! I remember seeing that as a kid and just having my mind blown for some reason; literally like there's some kind of deep truth embedded in that deconstruction.
On the other hand, the byte scene you mentioned goes NOWHERE! I don't think he ever shows up again–so weird how that movie is put together.
Did you ever see a movie called (I think) LIGHT YEARS? It was an Isaac Asimov thing, with a similar group of bizarre world-building ideas tied to this messiah idea that fantasy/sci-fi seems to latch onto. Again, how come in the future everything is so terrible? Why do we always need messiahs?
Yeah! Yeah! I agree, I agree!
It's like sience fiction movie house style. In the books, you can jump into your own visual interpretation of the atmosphere and the details. But most SF stories that get transcried to film seem to be picked for those pushy-button drama effects.
Just look at the K. Dick stories that got their turn in recent years. They put the technical paranoia (excuse ME the shortcut here) of stories like "paycheck" into a pure action settlement.
It's like hearing some studio guy say: "Hey that sounds interesting… but you know what: Lets take all the interesting plot stuff out!"
Tron is a religious movie with a hatred of militant secular or Atheistic Ruling Bodies…(I.E Government)
1. The MCP Program represents an Atheistic Government. All "Programs" that exist in the system are enslaved and meant to serve the MCP. All "Resisting Programs" (God Worshipers) are made into "Gladiators" until they die. The MCP's lackey, Sark, even tries to use Government to enforce Atheism by threatening slavery and death…to quote "Sark" during the scene where he addresses the prisoner/gladiators…"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 that will result in your eventual elmination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP." so
1. Religious Programs are given a choice between worship of State which means Life
2. or Worship of the Gods…which means Death
3. Tron is the "Righteous" Prophet or Herald with absolute faith in his "User" (God) "Alan1". Nobody else in current society really believes in the users anymore but a few, but TRON thoroughly believes. His belief is so strong that it reinforces his purety of heart and purpose which is reinforced I.E Spiritually by his User (Alan1). This is what makes him so strong and such a big threat to the MCP. He cannot do it alone though he will need "Divine" help.
4. Enter Flynn, Flynn is suppose to represent J.C (Jesus Christ) he is the "God-Man" or the God who became Man. Flynn is a user who gets beamed into the TRON Universe and because he developed programs in the "Real World" he has Miraculous powers in the TRON world which he helped create. He eventually sacrifices himself by throwing himself into the MCP distracting the MCP enough so TRON can finish him off.
The entire message of TRON is Pro Liberty, Pro-Freedom and Pro-Religion…notice it links all those three concepts together and does not disconnect Religion from Liberty and Freedom. It is also an argument against over-reaching militant secular atheistic governments and (It was developed in the 1980's so its likely the MCP represented The Soviet Union)freedom of religion.
Awesome film
Now see how much more interesting the religious angle is? But that quote from Sark is like 95% of the actual religious content of the movie–they spend the rest of the dialogue on malarkey and padding.
Tron could have been like Dune, insofar as having a complete world, society, culture, etc. Instead: fluff.
You know what's awesome, Fred? You are.