 I'm a computer programmer by training, and have resigned myself to the fact that my chosen profession is probably never going to get an accurate screen presentation in Hollywood. Frankly, the act of programming a computer is completely boring to anybody who's not doing it, which has forced Hollywood to some creative flights of fancy in depicting it. As a result, watching any movie involving computer programming requires a conscious suspension of disbelief that I'm sure lawyers experience when watching Ally McBeal or doctors experience when they watch Gray's Anatomy.
Disney's TRON is no exception. The odd thing is that I have no issues at all accepting the patently fabricated world of light-cycles, giant robotic enforcers, anthropomorphic computer programs wielding killer frisbees, or the mechanical megalomaniac Master Control Program, all of which depict the world inside the computer as a gigantic video game. I also find that the movie nicely captures the philosophical angst of the personal computer industry during the early 1980's, as it moved out of garages and basements into multi-million dollar companies, and the ensuing influx of conformist bean-counting suits began pushing out the rebellious innovators who had made the industry possible in the first place.
No, the parts that make me grit my teeth and mutter to myself, "It's only a movie," are the mechanics of the film, as programmers interact with machines in ludicrous natural-language protocols and envision their programs operating as their fantasy/video-game avatar equivalents. The few technical bits the movie is gets right are eerily accurate, as one character interacts with what is essentially a desk-sized iPad and some of the advanced video games in the movie resemble the earliest first-person shooters but pre-dated them by almost a decade. So, TRON's depiction of the world of computer programming is accurate philosophically, but egregiously wrong in its mechanics. Unfortunately, this also accurately describes my impression of TRON's filmmaking in general. While it's undeniably innovative and a good amount of fun to watch, it also has enough flaws that keep it from true classic status.
 TRON tells a parallel tale on both sides of the computer screen with its human "Users" mirroring their programmed counterparts inside a fantastically realized world. Chief among the Users is Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a former top programmer for the company Encom whose video game creations were stolen by fellow programmer Ed Dillinger (David Warner), who rode them to the top of the company. Meanwhile, another Encom programmer, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), finds himself stymied by the mysterious disappearance of his security program TRON and the increasingly claustrophobic restrictions put on him and the other programmers by the company's "Master Control Program" (MCP). It turns out that the MCP has become sentient and, with Dillinger's assistance, is systematically seizing control of computer systems throughout the world. Flynn and Alan team up to begin investigating Encom with the help Lora (Cindy Morgan), an Encom scientist experimenting with digitizing objects. (She is also Flynn's ex-girlfriend and Alan's current one.) Mix together, shake well, and Flynn soon finds himself inside the world of the computer, facing electronic counterparts of his friends and enemies, where he must continue his battle with the MCP from the inside of the machine.
The best thing about TRON is the vividly realized world inside the computer, rendered unforgettably in wireframe and neon. It was rightly hailed at the time as a technological breakthrough, and in hindsight, it turns out to have been prescient in a number of different ways. TRON was the first feature film to attempt actual animated storytelling using CGI, although the overwhelming majority of its effects were done with a variety of camera tricks, traditional film-based special effects, and traditional animation techniques. Rather than pursuing more photo-realistic CGI (well beyond the computational power of the computers at the time anyway), writer/director Steven Lisberger opted to model the live-action camera shots to look like computer graphics and the results are quite astonishing. If nothing else, TRON has an dramatic and unique visual style, and its success at creating a believable world gives the lie to those who think increased realism is the only worthwhile end-goal of CGI animation. Beyond the use of CGI as a filmmaking tool, TRON turns out to have been technically prescient in a number of ways as in its use of motion-captured animation and "green screen" filmmaking where sets and backgrounds are fabricated after principal photography is completed. The fact that most of these techniques had to be done painstakingly by hand (via the rotoscope or optical compositing rather than through digital means) makes TRON's achievements even more impressive, while also explaining why they were not too widely adopted afterwards.
 Unfortunately, the movie's technical achievements are not mated to a script that can truly capitalize on them. TRON is messy, as one can determine pretty quickly when trying to summarize the movie's plot. It's worst offense is that it can't quite decide which of its leading men is the real hero. Most of the time, it seems like Flynn is meant to be the lead, but there are too many moments when he becomes an enabling supporting character for TRON instead. However, TRON himself is too thinly characterized to make a very deep impression, and that can't be entirely excused because he was written as a computer program. To pick another set of characters in a more recent "parallel worlds" movie, we may love Morpheus and recognize his critical role in the plot of The Matrix, but we will never mistake him for the lead character of the movie. In TRON, it's entirely debatable which character is the enabling bystander Morpheus and which is the chosen hero Neo, and that ambiguity is what fatally cripples the movie. It doesn't help that the movie starts pulling out entirely random solutions to the story problems its characters face as the movie wears on, or that the final resolution is so flagrantly unsatisfactory and glaringly inadequate. It is unquestionable that TRON has imagination to spare, but it would have been a much better movie for sacrificing some of that imagination for a sturdier story structure.
The last time Disney released TRON on home video was on a splashy 20th anniversary DVD edition, and while it's now out-of-print and a little harder to find now, any of the film's legions of fans will be well-rewarded for the effort to track it down if they don't already own it. (On the other hand, I also suspect that the movie will be re-released on DVD (if not Blu-ray) in conjunction with the sequel, so only the exceptionally dedicated or impatient need expend the time, energy, and money to rustle up a copy of the last release.)
The two-disc set has the same careful attention to detail and lavish set of extras that are usually reserved for its recognized classics. While the movie is showing its age and its budgetary constraints, the anamorphic video image looks as good as one could possibly hope for. The movie also receives a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, which is not used to its fullest extent, but certainly renders the sound for the entire movie with razor-sharp clarity. The movie disc of the set includes a feature-length commentary track by director Steven Lisberger, producer Donald Kushner, associate producer Harrison Ellenshaw, and visual effects supervisor Richard Taylor. The track is extremely informative, switching from technical detail to filmmaking anecdotes with ease and with very few dead spots. However, those who don't know how the magic was done might be better off listening to it after watching the bonuses on disc 2, since a lot of the technical terminology used on the commentary track is likely to be utterly baffling without some visual frame of reference.
 The core of the second disc of bonus features is the "Making of TRON" documentary. At 90 minutes, it runs nearly as long as the movie itself, and provides a wealth of information about every aspect of the film from a broad cross-section of participants, including all the major actors (except David Warner) and even former Disney chief Dick Cook. Several deleted elements are included as well, with three scenes included and two musical tracks that were removed from the final film restored over the finished footage. The remaining special features include numerous smaller films and tests referred to in the commentary track; several making-of documentaries that were filmed before, during, and after production; an entire section on Storyboarding that explains the process by stepping through the boards of the famous light-cycle sequence; and a staggering amount of artwork from production, from production sketches to wireframe models of the assorted objects rendered in full CGI. My only minor complaint is that these features are all presented in full-frame, but this was something that wouldn't have been as objectionable when the disc was released in 2002.
Despite its flaws, I can completely understand how TRON can command such a loyal cult following almost entirely based on its visual style. It must also be said that it pulls off some filmmaking techniques that more modern films have stumbled over, and that its heart is certainly in the right place. Its themes are all well thought out, and the upcoming sequel even seems to pick up on the next step in the technological story as the former upstarts rebelling against the establishment grow to become the establishment themselves. However, in the end, TRON is still far more interesting to examine as a technical achievement than really enjoy as a film.
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