Speaker 1: Welcome friends. The podcasts podcast is done to join Tack again.
Speaker 1: Ryan the Talk Dat Booby's Mom in their backs only made.
Speaker 2: The income five to eleven computer center of the most
Speaker 2: calculating intelligence on Earth.
Speaker 1: I still do not understand why you want to break
Speaker 1: into the system, because man, somewhere in one of these memories.
Speaker 2: Is the obult Kevin Flynn computer genius searching for answers
Speaker 2: inside the system.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, it's the big Master control program everybody's been
Speaker 1: talking about. Stop, I'm more than you.
Speaker 2: Trapped inside an electronic arena. Journey across an electronic scene
Speaker 2: on cycles made of light. Tron enter its world.
Speaker 1: This summer.
Speaker 3: Greetings programs, Welcome to a movie film commentary track. I
Speaker 3: am the program Zachy, and I'm here with my user Brian.
Speaker 1: Hello, what's happened? We are real. Don't let any of
Speaker 1: the other programs tell you otherwise, and we love you.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know there is a brand new Tron movie
Speaker 3: coming out, Brian. That's a sentence I never thought I
Speaker 3: would utter, being honest, I never thought that.
Speaker 1: That would be true with the second one when that
Speaker 1: came out, And now I just can't believe we're actually
Speaker 1: getting a third one. But I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like the day and age where
Speaker 1: the most anything that's gonna get made with a big
Speaker 1: budget has to be based on some sort of IP
Speaker 1: by and large, and so with Disney owning so many things,
Speaker 1: it feels like Tron would be like their twentieth priority,
Speaker 1: you know, out of all the things that they own.
Speaker 1: So I'm just I'm I'm shocked they went back to Tron,
Speaker 1: but I'm happy.
Speaker 3: What's interesting to me is like in the IP Overdrive
Speaker 3: age that we're in, weirdly, Tron ends up being kind
Speaker 3: of like a niche indie thing.
Speaker 1: That's That's just what I mean, right, because it has
Speaker 1: to have a big budget, but they have to also
Speaker 1: know that this isn't going to take the world by storm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you know in the Disney architecture, Tron is
Speaker 1: like Blair Witch, you know. Yeah. But you know what,
Speaker 1: now that I think about it, they have a Tron
Speaker 1: ride at parks, don't they. So I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a calculus where they think this feeds into the
Speaker 1: parks a little bit, you know, maybe someone will buy, uh,
Speaker 1: do the ride and also buy the shirt at the
Speaker 1: gift shop at the end, I don't know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, Brian, it's Tron's world. We're just living
Speaker 1: in it. That's true. That's true. That's the way I
Speaker 1: look at it.
Speaker 3: And and for me, this is fantastic because it gives
Speaker 3: us an opportunity to hop in the old way back
Speaker 3: and watch the original Tron from nineteen eighty two. Yep, yep, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a movie that, certainly I have a great
Speaker 3: deal of affinity for. I think I've told the story before.
Speaker 3: I went to preschool with a Tron backpack slung around
Speaker 3: my shoulders.
Speaker 1: Wow. So we go way back, wow Wow.
Speaker 3: And you know, I suspect we're gonna have a fun
Speaker 3: conversation because it had been a little while since I
Speaker 3: had seen this original film. So it's fun, fun to
Speaker 3: watch with commentary eyes.
Speaker 1: Yes, I gotta say, I have a lot of well funness.
Speaker 1: But also my nostalgia is probably even bigger for it,
Speaker 1: like my memories of it more than I actually remember it.
Speaker 1: So it was I've seen chunks of it on TV
Speaker 1: and things like that throughout my life, but sitting down
Speaker 1: watching the whole thing, I mean, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: hasn't been as many times as I think. So it
Speaker 1: was cool to go start it from the beginning last
Speaker 1: night and get reacquainted. Well, hey, we're about to watch
Speaker 1: it again.
Speaker 3: So, folks, if you want to watch Tron with us,
Speaker 3: this is the nineteen eighty two original, you're welcome to
Speaker 3: do that. Otherwise, we'll try to keep our conversation interesting enough,
Speaker 3: hopefully to keep you engaged, and we'll suck you in,
Speaker 3: just like the MCP does to poor Ole Kevin Flynn.
Speaker 1: Right, and we're gonna hit play in just a second,
Speaker 1: so we'll do the usual thing. One two to three
Speaker 1: plate Brian, you're ready to go, I'm ready. All right,
Speaker 1: let's do this. So here we go, one two three plate.
Speaker 2: A.
Speaker 3: Right, So I have to say when we talk about
Speaker 3: sense memory, this opening sequence here where we see this
Speaker 3: little pattern here in the construction of Tron man the
Speaker 3: process where it comes together in that note as the
Speaker 3: Tron logo comes up, it pulls me right back.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I think I had this aped off
Speaker 1: of TV when I was a kid. Like this makes
Speaker 1: me think of Saturday Afternoon Fox thirty two, you know,
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and I remember just being dazzled by I
Speaker 1: mean this, this is sort of a brief thing here
Speaker 1: of computer graphics we're seeing, but when Flynn is brought
Speaker 1: into the computer world and we go through that almost
Speaker 1: like two thousand and one Stargate style sequels. Oh yeah, sure. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean that was dazzling to me as a kid,
Speaker 1: and I remember watching that a lot. You know, It's
Speaker 1: why I have several things I want to say. But
Speaker 1: did you know that there was apparently a prologue to
Speaker 1: this movie in theaters that kind of explained the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, my understanding is that was in international releases,
Speaker 3: and it was definitely on international home video releases.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I was reading a bunch of different things,
Speaker 1: and I was reading two different prologues, so I don't
Speaker 1: know if they were different in different ways.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was living overseas, so by way backstory,
Speaker 3: when my family moved to Saudi Arabia, we took a
Speaker 3: bunch of movies with us. My my my uncle had
Speaker 3: a whole collection of movies that he duped to it. Actually,
Speaker 3: my cousin Samsa and Harris, they listened to the show
Speaker 3: we got movies from their dad, and so Tron was
Speaker 3: among them. We had This and Star Wars and Superman
Speaker 3: and the black hole, like all the stuff that was
Speaker 3: really like my formative you know, yeah, wow, okay, the
Speaker 3: wet cement, if you will. So we had we had,
Speaker 3: you know, the American release of Tron that we took
Speaker 3: with us, and then over there I happened to see
Speaker 3: somebody else's copy and it starts with a thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is the story of two worlds. One
Speaker 1: world is our world, the real world one the other
Speaker 1: world is a world of programs and whatever. And I
Speaker 1: was like eight or something when I saw that, I
Speaker 1: was like, I get it, guys, I don't think you need.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 3: Even that's funny, you know, but I very distinctly remember
Speaker 3: seeing that and being finding it off putting.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, that's funny. Because yeah, then I guess
Speaker 1: there was some card that also said kind of it ended.
Speaker 1: The last card said on the other side of the screen.
Speaker 1: That's when we get that moment at the beginning where
Speaker 1: we see the light cycle. That's right game. I just
Speaker 1: find that's interesting. And then apparently there was there was
Speaker 1: two prologus, and again it might have been according to
Speaker 1: region or something, but one of them got into you know,
Speaker 1: every time we renew our driver's license or pay our
Speaker 1: telephone bills. Each of us is left. A little bit
Speaker 1: of each of us is left within the computer. Just interesting.
Speaker 1: I well that was the other thing too, is I
Speaker 1: had forgotten. I remember that these were programs, but I
Speaker 1: guess I wasn't really thinking of what it meant. I
Speaker 1: just remember the aesthetic of the movie, most of them all.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: Quick, Brian, before this has seen end here and point.
Speaker 3: First of all, the actor that Ram is talking to,
Speaker 3: that's the guy play the guy Ram is talking to.
Speaker 3: His name is crom That's Peter Jurassic who ten years
Speaker 3: later was one of the regulars on Babylon five with
Speaker 3: Bruce box Lightner. Ah, but more interesting to me on
Speaker 3: this rewatch. I didn't realize that that's the guy who
Speaker 3: Flynn does the ring game with, right, yeah, And so
Speaker 3: you know suddenly we're like, oh, we know that guy.
Speaker 3: We kind of like him, you know, oh totally yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you feel a little more anyway, apology sorry continue,
Speaker 3: well no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, sort of like humanizing these computer programs, and
Speaker 1: I had forgotten that, you know, they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna accounting program. I don't I don't even know
Speaker 1: why I'm here. Yep, yeah, that whole thing. So it's
Speaker 1: like I was thinking about this, like imagining my you know,
Speaker 1: copy of Microsoft Word looking like me in there, just
Speaker 1: being like, I don't understand we're in a little Neon suit,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Yeah, And I would love if you know,
Speaker 1: people use like bad grammar sentences and he like corrected them,
Speaker 1: you know, his like spell check grammar check got kicked in.
Speaker 1: That'd be a fun personality quirk. This is incredible, I mean, still,
Speaker 1: the inside of this tank or whatever it is, this
Speaker 1: is just so gorgeous. The way they achieved these effects,
Speaker 1: which is largely not digital, right, No, it sounded pain
Speaker 1: I mean you're probably gonna talk about it, but it
Speaker 1: sounded painstaking. Yeah, I mean it's nuts, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's remarkable because the way they visualized this world, and
Speaker 1: it's partly Mobius the kind of artist, and partly Sidmeade
Speaker 1: the production artist, coming together with this unique aesthetic, which
Speaker 1: to me, you watch it, you know, forty plus years later,
Speaker 1: and it it stands completely apart. It's unlike anything else. Still, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, even with the neon trim and the sort
Speaker 1: of future tech lookie sort of thing that other people
Speaker 1: have kind of adapted into their own works. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: look at one frame from this film and you know
Speaker 1: exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it got me thinking about how there's something
Speaker 3: remarkable about you can create something that is absolutely state
Speaker 3: of the art, and then wait a couple of years
Speaker 3: and it starts looking kind of janky and dated, which
Speaker 3: I would argue is what happened with Tron. Like ten
Speaker 3: years later you're like, oh, that's really dated, right, and
Speaker 3: then it comes it goes from timely to out of
Speaker 3: time to timeless.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and so we're fully on the other side
Speaker 1: of that now. I think it helps that it's leaning
Speaker 1: into the video gameness of it instead of trying to
Speaker 1: make these ships look anything other than a collection of blocks,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So then it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well this this is how it's supposed to look. It's
Speaker 1: not that it looks old. Yeah. Well, it's sort of like.
Speaker 3: The world of the Grid is completely its own thing, right,
Speaker 3: So this isn't like a wreck at Ralph situation, right right, right, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's not reliant on our familiarity with various ips,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And then by the way, we see Clue there was
Speaker 1: yellow for a bit. That was the original intention to
Speaker 1: have the good guys be yellow and the bad guys
Speaker 1: be blue. Interesting, and then they at one point switch
Speaker 1: that up, which I don't know why it is, but
Speaker 1: it just sort of makes sense. It's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: red bad. I think it's the the you know, the
Speaker 1: good guys of the blue Lightsabers, the bad guys of
Speaker 1: the red light Saber. That's exactly what I was going
Speaker 1: to say. Yep, and the Star Wars is just apparent
Speaker 1: every which way in this movie. Right now, I should
Speaker 1: say this.
Speaker 3: I remember very distinctly the part where Clue gets de ress.
Speaker 3: I remember it scaring me when I.
Speaker 1: Was yeah, because it's pretty horrifying. Yeah yeah. And then
Speaker 1: I can't remember the character's name, but the elder program
Speaker 1: who's sort of like a face, yeah, but also part machine,
Speaker 1: and he's swiveling around toward the end. Something about that
Speaker 1: like really unnerved me. I don't know, like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's like like human had been taken over by a machine.
Speaker 1: I know that's not what it is, but it's it's yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this right here, I remember is creeping me out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. By the way, this helicopter yep, right,
Speaker 1: I read that they used like three M tape to
Speaker 1: do that, and I thought this would look amazing now, right.
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked when I saw it. It
Speaker 1: looked too cool and good for something. This whole sort
Speaker 1: of it looks like, yeah, a Neon style trim on
Speaker 1: this helicopter, but it's just reflective tape. Amazing, that's and
Speaker 1: it's very distinctive, and I like how it it blurs
Speaker 1: the line between the world of the grid and the
Speaker 1: real world. Right.
Speaker 3: I think that's the one thing I remember watching this
Speaker 3: movie at a very young age, and I have to
Speaker 3: imagine that this was at least some factor in my
Speaker 3: not wanting to work in a cubicle.
Speaker 1: Especially that one shot where it looks like, yeah, that one.
Speaker 3: Match shot that goes just way down in the distance,
Speaker 3: just a sea of cubes, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like no, thanks. Well, they said that they
Speaker 1: intentionally chose this view out the window with the la
Speaker 1: you know, city scape because it looks like sort of
Speaker 1: like a computer grid, interesting like circuitry. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: this I was curious about this too, This desk where
Speaker 1: you see you know, like a keypad light up keypad
Speaker 1: and the messaging and apparently that was done with rear
Speaker 1: projection from under the desk. Well, and there was nothing
Speaker 1: like that at the time. Yeah. Yeah, and yet now
Speaker 1: we're like, no, that's we have that now, totally totally
Speaker 1: touch pads. Yeah, yeah, essentially. And it's funny though. I
Speaker 1: was thinking when he was using the keypad that when
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day, when you're not using
Speaker 1: it as a keypad, you would just see nothing but
Speaker 1: finger smudges all of your desk. That's so true. And
Speaker 1: I was like, eh, so I were only in here
Speaker 1: at night, I guess. Yeah. By the way, I have
Speaker 1: to say, this version that we're looking at that's available
Speaker 1: for streaming is stunning. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I remember this movie looking aged, you know, and
Speaker 1: which makes sense it is older and whatever. But it's
Speaker 1: just amazing what they can do now and how they
Speaker 1: can restore these films because it looks very filmic still, right,
Speaker 1: but it just looks so crisp and sharp and beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've done right by this movie. Yes, in terms
Speaker 1: of the restorations.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember when the DVD came out. We're
Speaker 3: talking two thousand and two, I believe. Yeah, we've been
Speaker 3: for the twentie anniversary and they did a nice job,
Speaker 3: and then the Blu ray in twenty eleven, and you know,
Speaker 3: at every step of the process, they've really.
Speaker 1: Worked to preserve the essence of the movie.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's worth calling out because a lot
Speaker 1: of times people overcorrect, that's right, and they try to
Speaker 1: smooth everything out to the point where it just looks whack.
Speaker 1: People look waxy. Yeah, you know, but this I thought
Speaker 1: this was a stunning restoration. Bruce Boxeitner like full on
Speaker 1: Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent. Yeah, right, with the I
Speaker 1: didn't even think of it that way. Yeah, with the glasses.
Speaker 1: He's comically oversized class that's so funny.
Speaker 3: The one thing you got to say about this movie,
Speaker 3: and it really stuck out to me on rewatch, is
Speaker 3: like Tront himself not that interesting a character, being honest.
Speaker 1: Totally right. Yeah, I mean back, I have revisited this
Speaker 1: since my childhood. But if I hadn't seen it since
Speaker 1: then and you asked me now, I would have thought
Speaker 1: Tron was probably Jeff Bridges because he's a more dynamic,
Speaker 1: Yeah character, it's interesting because the story is situated as
Speaker 1: such that that Flynn is our POV character. Yes, but
Speaker 1: you know he has more of an arc. Well, he
Speaker 1: has an arc Tron does not, you know. And and
Speaker 1: I mean Bruce box Lightner is just one of these
Speaker 1: like classically heroic. I mean he's got like a face
Speaker 1: chiseled out of granite, you know, a classical hero. I
Speaker 1: just wish they gave I wish they gave his character
Speaker 1: more to do. I mean it's kind of a bummer
Speaker 1: that even in the sequel, like his character most important
Speaker 1: character development happens off camera. Interesting. See that's the thing too.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the sequel. I haven't seen it since
Speaker 1: it came out, but I do plan on watching it
Speaker 1: now that I've seen this, and with the new one
Speaker 1: coming out. Yeah yeah, I don't even remember how they
Speaker 1: further the story. To be honest, Well, in that case,
Speaker 1: I just won't I won't say. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's funny. I was like, oh, I forgot that there's
Speaker 1: kind of like a Wizard of Oz element, you know,
Speaker 1: where you're seeing actors played two characters. But I mean
Speaker 1: it's not the same because thought I had that thought too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And That is kind of cool though, the idea that
Speaker 1: the user who either interacts or created the program has
Speaker 1: imprinted a bit of themselves onto it, so we see
Speaker 1: that personified. See.
Speaker 3: My thought though, is like, well, people write multiple programs, right,
Speaker 3: so it'd be funny. Sure, multiple people look the same,
Speaker 3: but like one of them has like a funny mustache on,
Speaker 3: one of thee has like, you know, like a mohawk.
Speaker 3: But it's all the same person, right, just to differentiate,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Right, right right, It would be funny. Now that there's
Speaker 1: so many more programs and they're so silly, I mean,
Speaker 1: even just like an AD blocker or something, it would
Speaker 1: just be interesting to see those things personified. See, I
Speaker 1: see it like multiplicity, you know, Michael, exactly exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of them is wearing boxer shorts on his head,
Speaker 1: like just just different. Yeah right right, I'm flappy Bird,
Speaker 1: remember me? You know? Oh yeah, just too many of
Speaker 1: them now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this this whole conceit of the of the matter
Speaker 3: transmitter thing, Like I I love the movie shorthand it's like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, we can do this thing. And there's the
Speaker 3: orange and now it's there and and you know, you
Speaker 3: just roll with it. Certainly as a kid, you just
Speaker 3: roll with it, but like the implications are staggering.
Speaker 1: I actually I was like, wait, what's happening, Like it's
Speaker 1: putting the particles into the laser, but then it's like
Speaker 1: reassembling them inside a computer or what. So mine now exists? Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's data. It's it's data. Yeah, So it's in essence,
Speaker 1: it's like a transporter from Star Trek. Okay, So it
Speaker 1: takes your your image, it transit it, it translates you
Speaker 1: into data, and then it stores you. I mean the
Speaker 1: amount of data that would be required would be astronomical, right,
Speaker 1: and they can reassembly you. So in essence, again, it's
Speaker 1: like a transporter. Yeah, yeah, which I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's I get it.
Speaker 3: Like it doesn't matter that that's just an orange right.
Speaker 3: That is life altering What just happened there?
Speaker 1: Yes? Right?
Speaker 3: Right, Like that changes all notions of what we know
Speaker 3: about the world. But it's kind of like, hey, here's
Speaker 3: this thing, and Alan's like hey neat, So anyway, what
Speaker 3: are you doing later?
Speaker 1: Right? Right? Right? Yeah? Yeah? I was thinking of like,
Speaker 1: would you want to introduce an element where it seems
Speaker 1: a little more dangerous, like you see the orange explode,
Speaker 1: It's like, well, it's just experimental. We're not sure if
Speaker 1: we can get it to work. But then the first
Speaker 1: time on him, But then I'm like, maybe that's just
Speaker 1: too many. I think the problem there is that's not
Speaker 1: what the story is about, right, Like, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: realize I'm thinking of Honey, I shrunk the Kids, which.
Speaker 3: Is yeah, because ultimately, all you're trying to do is
Speaker 3: seed the thing that lets us get to the thing
Speaker 3: that we want to see. Yeah, no, no, right, So
Speaker 3: Cindy Morgan, she was also on a show called Bring
Speaker 3: Him Back Alive with the Bruce Box Lightner.
Speaker 1: Oh funny, right around this time. Actually, she was also
Speaker 1: in Caddyshack, right, she was in Caddy Shack, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she passed away a couple of years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, it was really sad. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: This summer, by the way, was just bananas. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is the summer of eighty two in terms of
Speaker 3: the movies that were released that year. I mean it
Speaker 3: was just like hitters week after week. This this movie
Speaker 3: had the misfortune of sort of coming out close enough
Speaker 3: to e t that it that it sort of got
Speaker 3: you know, people chose that one instead.
Speaker 1: You know, well that's kind of the problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: Disney originally was going to release this around Christmas time.
Speaker 1: It was gonna be a holiday one. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then when they found out that Don Bluth was putting
Speaker 1: out The Secret of Nim in July, you know, they
Speaker 1: were like, well, we got to go against Don Bluth
Speaker 1: because Don Bluth used to be a Disney guy, but
Speaker 1: he ended up leaving to start his own He broke bad,
Speaker 1: He broke bad on Disney. Yeah, and he brought some
Speaker 1: Disney people with him, so there was some bad blood there.
Speaker 1: So it's just funny that this was this release date
Speaker 1: was out of spite, but then ended up competing with
Speaker 1: like yeah, et Rathocon Poultrygeist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although it did it did do better than Secretive Nim,
Speaker 3: So there is there you go. Disney got their pyrrhic victory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, also apparently it had a lack of marketing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you read about this, but there
Speaker 1: was sort of a Disney felt like they had a
Speaker 1: way they do things and they'll build on word of
Speaker 1: mouth and they don't need to spend like et had,
Speaker 1: you know, ten million dollars in marketing and Annie and
Speaker 1: other movies, you know, big marketing campaigns. But Disney was like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't do that. And they spent for Disney. Damn
Speaker 1: it kind of and they let's see it says well,
Speaker 1: they spent less than five hundred thousand dollars, citing Walt
Speaker 1: Walt Disney's adage that the only publicity worth the money
Speaker 1: was free. And I think it really came to bite
Speaker 1: them in the butt.
Speaker 3: So when you consider that, the fact that the movie
Speaker 3: did like okay mm hmm, is itself kind of remarkable
Speaker 3: because if they had put some marketing muscle behind it,
Speaker 3: it probably would have done a lot better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it did. It did okay enough to not
Speaker 1: embarrass the studio, but not okay enough to to continue
Speaker 1: with the brand, you know. Yeah, yeah, but it was
Speaker 1: funny taken. Sorry, I mean for.
Speaker 3: Most of the eighties, this was their highest grossing live
Speaker 3: action movie.
Speaker 1: Well that's because they didn't make another one after the failure.
Speaker 1: That would explain that almost a decade. There you go. Well,
Speaker 1: following this and the black Hole, I should say the
Speaker 1: black Hole.
Speaker 3: See this did better than the black Hole, I think
Speaker 3: in terms of money money in versus money out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which, by the way, you look at Disney's live
Speaker 1: action output in this moment, and Disney was in a
Speaker 1: weird like crossroads moment where they were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out their identity. Yeah, but you've got to admire the
Speaker 1: black Hole in Tron like what weird bold films? That
Speaker 1: is really true.
Speaker 3: So so you know there, you know, they say necessity
Speaker 3: is the mother invention, right, and if Disney was riding
Speaker 3: from success to success, they wouldn't swing at these kind
Speaker 3: of off kilter projects, right, and certainly the black Hole
Speaker 3: is just.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Like, I mean, I know we're going to
Speaker 1: talk through that one of these days, Jeacubly, we haven't
Speaker 1: we You and I share such an affinity for that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know we'll get there. And it's they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to make something like Star Wars, and they
Speaker 1: go with the black Hole. Yeah that's a choice, you know.
Speaker 3: Now, this one much similar, much more similar thematically to
Speaker 3: Star Wars. But it's out there, right, and you realize, like, well,
Speaker 3: if they weren't just sort of grasping for something, they
Speaker 3: wouldn't have taken Steven Lisberger's pitch and been like yeah,
Speaker 3: we can do this, you know, so, like I'm glad
Speaker 3: about that, and then you fast forward to today where
Speaker 3: it seems like Disney's sort of on the back foot,
Speaker 3: like maybe that's how we end up put this neutron
Speaker 3: mmmm mmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. Yeah, but yeah, I grew up with
Speaker 1: The Black Hole too, probably because it was again, it
Speaker 1: was one of those things they'd put on Saturday afternoons.
Speaker 1: But you know what's interesting is I do feel like
Speaker 1: they're very in it. They're both innovative, and they're both
Speaker 1: really visions, yeah for sure, but they're also missing like
Speaker 1: certain sparks of fun and like dynamic characters like a
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Ye, you know, so they I think they're
Speaker 1: very watchable, certainly for people like us, because we love
Speaker 1: not just enjoying good stories and characters, but we also
Speaker 1: love watching movies and looking at movies. And these are
Speaker 1: two movies that are just a pleasure to look at
Speaker 1: and to watch and to admire the filmmaking. But you know,
Speaker 1: we also know that that isn't enough to make a blockbuster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's yeah, I don't know, but but I yeah,
Speaker 1: the Swings. I really admire that Disney went for it.
Speaker 3: With something like this, like that's the thing because this
Speaker 3: era they're they're cranking out Herbie movies probably Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forgot about those, right, And that was I.
Speaker 3: Mean, it's so weird because Disney circa early eighties is
Speaker 3: vastly different from from what we know of as Disney now,
Speaker 3: you know, oh yeah, and and and I think this
Speaker 3: movie just emerged from that that like sense like hey, this, yeah,
Speaker 3: what the hell? You know, let's give this a shot.
Speaker 3: And Stephen liz Berger comes in with this deceptively simple
Speaker 3: idea and yet like to me, what what sticks out
Speaker 3: to me when I watched this is all of so
Speaker 3: much of the shorthand that informs this movie in terms
Speaker 3: of the computer world, and you know, the the iconography
Speaker 3: and everything and and all much of that I should
Speaker 3: say has been sort of subsumed more broadly into the
Speaker 3: culture in the deck had since in terms of like
Speaker 3: the anthropomorphization of computers. And and I mean you and
Speaker 3: I how much time lately have we spent talking about
Speaker 3: AI and all this stuff? Well, shit, man, this thing
Speaker 3: got there.
Speaker 1: Yeah ahead of the curve, right, I had forgotten about
Speaker 1: the plot element where the MCP or yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: also want to say MCU. The MCP is not just
Speaker 1: you know, watching over its own affairs. It's also like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mess with the Kremlin. So yeah, it's becoming
Speaker 1: this Yeah, I don't know, ai sentient sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and I had forgotten about that, but yeah, pretty pretty
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve. And you've got to imagine too.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is when atari is so hot and
Speaker 1: like new and innovative, and video games and arcades are
Speaker 1: just you know, and so someone comes in and be like,
Speaker 1: what if a guy went in a video game? Like
Speaker 1: now you can completely imagine it, but back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, that must have been like, oh, dude, do that,
Speaker 1: and don't tell anyone we're making this because we're going
Speaker 1: to be the first people to do it. Yeah, so true. Right,
Speaker 1: by the way, I just want to call out because
Speaker 1: I don't think we go back there, but Flynn's Arcade,
Speaker 1: that building that's on Washington Boulevard down in Culver City,
Speaker 1: no kidding, Yeah, And I've gone down there a couple
Speaker 1: of times and I always forget about it. There's a
Speaker 1: restaurant at the bottom of it now and I'm always like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it just because it's that establishing shot we see
Speaker 1: when you walk toward it on the sidewalk. It's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: Flynn's arcade. That's cool. I mean I look. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, you should say Bernard Hughes. You know who
Speaker 1: who plays the the the elderly fella here. What's his name?
Speaker 3: He oh, Walter Gibbs. Yeah, he's he's also Dumont. But
Speaker 3: I didn't realize until this rewatch that he's also the
Speaker 3: MCP who we see at the at the at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie. Oh, interesting, the old man, right,
Speaker 3: And and he's also the voice. He's the voice of
Speaker 3: the MCP that's speaking to Dillinger. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: because because essentially it started as a chess program that
Speaker 3: Gibbs wrote and then Dillinger uh annexed it. So it
Speaker 3: makes sense that like, like the m c p IS
Speaker 3: is based on Gibbs, not Dillinger. Fascinating, Yeah, like sark
Speaker 3: Is is Dillinger's program.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, right, huh. I love it. The biggest.
Speaker 3: Radiation, see, you know, seeing this movie as a kid,
Speaker 3: this and then Star Wars very much as part of
Speaker 3: that same nexus. I think I think I I just
Speaker 3: my my affinity for for the good natured rogues a
Speaker 3: La Han Solo and and Flynn.
Speaker 1: Right, they just come from the same that same uh
Speaker 1: a bag of archetypes, you know, yeah, totally mad mart
Speaker 1: again in Willow. Yeah yeah, yeah, right, that same the
Speaker 1: charming rogue you know, yeah, yeah, I think that's the
Speaker 1: thing is is Jeff Bridges is is so fun in
Speaker 1: this that he does kind of just blow the other
Speaker 1: characters off the screen. Yeah, you know, And it's funny
Speaker 1: because I think of different in my mind. Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this thing right here where basically the mcps like I've
Speaker 1: I've grown bored of corporations, and he starts talking about
Speaker 1: like wanting to enter the Pentagon and the Kremlin and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, I don't remember that. It's like a
Speaker 1: big threat. But it doesn't it feels like it doesn't
Speaker 1: get revisited, Like there isn't like some sort of countdown
Speaker 1: at the end where it's going to like get out
Speaker 1: of the building and it needs to be yeah for it.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's interesting, right, You think there would be
Speaker 1: something like that, Yeah, I mean, now there would be,
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of like Flynn has to get out of
Speaker 3: the grid so that he can stop the MCP in
Speaker 3: the real world. Yeah, like there's there, there'd be some
Speaker 3: kind of conjoint thing like Tron has to do this
Speaker 3: thing in great world, and then Flynn asked to do
Speaker 3: something in the real world.
Speaker 1: Right, that's exactly it. That's what it would be now. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then David Warner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by the way, I just saw him a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago. I just watched Titanic with my kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was gonna say, yeah, he's uh, Billy's Ane's
Speaker 1: right hand man in there, or enforcerr whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call him. And of course he's Ninja Turtles too, yep,
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles two. I mean, David.
Speaker 3: Warner was like the quintessential character actor. He would just
Speaker 3: pop up in anything and you knew you were going
Speaker 3: to get something dependable from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, just certain actors like they just whatever that
Speaker 1: comes out of their mouth, they do it in an
Speaker 1: interesting way. It sounds good. Yeah. He was in Time
Speaker 1: after Time, which I think you saw relatively recently. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. Yeah, he was Jack the Ripper and that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think this shot here at the cubicle. Earlier,
Speaker 1: we saw the cubicles from a different angle where we
Speaker 1: had that man painting where we see they go on
Speaker 1: and on and on. That's right here. It just for
Speaker 1: some reason it stuck in my brain because it was
Speaker 1: such a dynamic looking visual. Yeah. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're here from a different angle where we can't see
Speaker 1: the expanse. And then I was like, oh, it's because
Speaker 1: the lights are out. They'd have to make an entirely
Speaker 1: different painting of it with them. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: so they shifted the angle. See.
Speaker 3: I love how the MCP is blackmailing David Warner in
Speaker 3: the real world and the digital world, both in different ways.
Speaker 1: No, that's funny. Yeah, yeah, but that's that's also the
Speaker 1: whole thing about Dillinger stealing these video game ideas from Flynn.
Speaker 1: It's just these are the details I'd forgotten. I just
Speaker 1: remembered the broad strokes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, well I love that because because here,
Speaker 3: so Flynn is here, he's hacking into n com so
Speaker 3: that you can find the proof. And it's like, I
Speaker 3: have proof that Dillinger stole my my programs. How I
Speaker 3: got this piece of paper that says so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want it to just prints it up It's like,
Speaker 1: how do we know that's what there should have been
Speaker 1: deleted scene? You know, like, well, how do we know
Speaker 1: that you didn't write that out and just print it
Speaker 1: because I didn't. Yeah, chucks out nineteen eighty two? Else
Speaker 1: would you know? How would you do that? So this
Speaker 1: apparently was a real like laser bay at Lawrence Livermore
Speaker 1: National Laboratory. That's where all the door, that huge door
Speaker 1: is it from the same sort, right right down the
Speaker 1: street from where I live? Pretty cool? Yeah, yeah, pretty cool?
Speaker 1: Just like uh what you we call it Cyberdine right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, yeah, yeah, right down the street from you.
Speaker 1: There we go. We got we got all kinds to
Speaker 1: reveal your location. But yeah, one time I said, evil
Speaker 1: Machine Intelligence are being berthed. Yeah, but no, I realized
Speaker 1: that it was close to you, and I remember I
Speaker 1: was like, can we please go and drive up and
Speaker 1: see it? And you didn't have to twist my arm
Speaker 1: too much? You know, so so amazing seeing that in person.
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost like seeing a character from a film,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh totally. Yeah. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I mean this bay is laser bay is real? I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the actual laser. I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to be Jeff Bridges and having that thing pointed
Speaker 1: at my head. Yeah, right, that thing switched off.
Speaker 3: Right, Man, you're realized, you know, I've my memory of
Speaker 3: the second film is he's much more doing kind of
Speaker 3: a Lebowski thing, you know, yes, yes, And and I
Speaker 3: didn't realize watching this, Oh no, it's it's very much
Speaker 3: in play here because it's a lot like far up man.
Speaker 1: You know, he's I was going to bring that up
Speaker 1: because that was my memory too. I was thinking there
Speaker 1: was different eras sort of Jeff Bridges, but no, there's
Speaker 1: a couple times where he throws down a man, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and here he's quoting John Lennon lyrics exactly
Speaker 1: right before the laser goes off. So yeah, he's at
Speaker 1: that sort of. It is funny.
Speaker 3: I mean when you see him in interviews, he has
Speaker 3: like this haggard mountain man persona.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, it's like I grew up in the wilderness
Speaker 1: and it's kind of he's like pseudo Sam Elliott thing happening.
Speaker 1: It's like any from Malibu. You know. That's so funny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he never like shook the rooster Cogburn or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, he just stayed there. Yeah, it's like Austin
Speaker 3: Butler and Elvis right right.
Speaker 1: Right right, because he still got yet like the sort
Speaker 1: of hippie thing, but like he added the grizzled at
Speaker 1: one point, and it feels like that's lingered. It just stuck. Hey.
Speaker 1: But it works. If it works, it works, you know what. Truly,
Speaker 1: I think Jeff Bridges is one of our great living actors. Oh, unquestionably,
Speaker 1: you know. I just like he's have you seen The
Speaker 1: Old Man the TV show? No, I'm familiar with it though,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: It's it's like the show is, it's like it's it's good.
Speaker 3: It's not bad, but it's not it's not amazing, but
Speaker 3: like he elevates it just by being in it, you know.
Speaker 1: I Mean I gotta say, like this, that image of
Speaker 1: him just standing there, his glowing outfit and then all
Speaker 1: the stuff around him, I still find it dazzling. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even after all the things I've seen now since and
Speaker 1: the advances we've made with visual effects, I mean, I
Speaker 1: still find this dazzling.
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing, and and I think what's what
Speaker 3: works in the movie's favor It stands completely apart, right,
Speaker 3: Like you could you would never make a movie like
Speaker 3: look like this today because it's such a foolhardy proposition, right,
Speaker 3: Like you know, they say fortune favors the foolish, right
Speaker 3: the Stephen Lisberg is the first movie. He didn't know
Speaker 3: what he was getting into, all the work that was
Speaker 3: going to be involved, right, And so they got it
Speaker 3: done and it's like, holy hell, that was a that
Speaker 3: was a that was a lift.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so nobody's going to try that again.
Speaker 3: And there's more economically, there's more visually economical, and just
Speaker 3: more efficient ways of doing it for follow ups and whatever.
Speaker 3: But the result is that this movie stands completely apart
Speaker 3: in terms of the visual approach and the technical approach.
Speaker 1: I mean, we should get into that and talk about
Speaker 1: how they did it. I mean, have you watched anything
Speaker 1: behind the scenes about that? Yeah, I've dipped in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember twenty some years ago. There's like a
Speaker 3: feature length documentary on the DVD that I just inhaled
Speaker 3: back in the day.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I watched that too, and I kind
Speaker 1: of skimmed through it last night. But yeah, no movie
Speaker 1: will ever look like this again because there's no way
Speaker 1: anyone will do this process again. Yeah, which is basically
Speaker 1: everything in the computer. They shot the actors on sixty
Speaker 1: five millimeter film because of the high resolution, but everything
Speaker 1: around them was entirely black, and all of the color
Speaker 1: lines on their costumes were entirely black. And then they
Speaker 1: printed out every frame of this movie well in the computer.
Speaker 1: And then they made these different layers, right, So they
Speaker 1: made a layer where they just exposed the faces. The
Speaker 1: eyes and teeth were a layer, the costume was a layer.
Speaker 1: Then there was layers of what the black lines all
Speaker 1: over their costumes were, so they could make a negative
Speaker 1: and put a light through it so they could get
Speaker 1: this glowing effect. And basically they took all these layers
Speaker 1: and smashed them together and shot it like an animated film,
Speaker 1: frame by frame, reshot the film frame by frame as
Speaker 1: if it was an animated movie, having printed out the
Speaker 1: original frames and composited all those different elements they wanted
Speaker 1: to add to them. I mean, that's insane. This old
Speaker 1: movie has been shot and then printed out and then affected,
Speaker 1: and then all these layers slapped on top of one
Speaker 1: another and then shot. That's what we're looking at the
Speaker 1: final product. Wow, amazing. Yeah, and and that's why you'll
Speaker 1: see the blue isn't perfect right, Like you'll see there's
Speaker 1: parts like ram right there on the right how it's
Speaker 1: black where it should be blue because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: done by hand, you know. And you know what, I
Speaker 1: love it. It makes it that's you're live exactly right,
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's the ghost in the machine. It's like that's
Speaker 3: the that's the soul like in every frame.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, I love it. I love it. And also
Speaker 1: I guess in the computer they just couldn't well, I mean,
Speaker 1: with with all the process that was having to happen,
Speaker 1: it was too difficult to move the camera. So all
Speaker 1: the shots are locked down. And that's something that definitely
Speaker 1: stuck out to me on this watch. You can feel
Speaker 1: it a little bit unfortunately. But but but then they
Speaker 1: all the shots that are strictly that was the thing
Speaker 1: also is they couldn't the computer animation. They didn't have
Speaker 1: a way of blending that at this time. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: although the computer animation shots are, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of camera movements I think probably to try to make
Speaker 1: up for an.
Speaker 3: Ad Yeah, some motion, but but I I think I
Speaker 3: think you know, there's times where it gives kind of
Speaker 3: student film energy. Uh, not in terms of performances, but
Speaker 3: in terms of like I get like THHX vibes.
Speaker 1: Right, oh, one, which is funny. You say that because
Speaker 1: the original idea was that all the backgrounds and things
Speaker 1: would be more white.
Speaker 3: Why oh see okay, oh that would have been that
Speaker 3: would have been nuts. That would have been really hard
Speaker 3: to pull off.
Speaker 1: Yes, and they were saying it would have required huge
Speaker 1: amounts of light and they're like, you know, let's just
Speaker 1: make it black. So but I like it. I think
Speaker 1: it works. Especially having those colors against a darker background.
Speaker 1: I think works. They pop more than they would against
Speaker 1: the white background. Yeah, I agree. See, I'm saying I'm
Speaker 1: watching this and I'm I'm picturing them all being yellow
Speaker 1: as originally intended, and I'm like, nah, man, no yellow, Like,
Speaker 1: why would you give them the color of cowardice?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. You know what it makes me think
Speaker 1: of Raised Lightsaber too at the end of Skywalker, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking yellow. I don't know, yellow is not
Speaker 1: a color that really pops. It's interesting. Yeah, Now, these
Speaker 1: disc battles.
Speaker 3: My my first of all, I remember like being blown
Speaker 3: away by them. As a kid rewatching, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: wish I.
Speaker 1: Thought there was more of this, you know, oh funny, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we get this, which is awesome. Still, it's it's
Speaker 1: so unique, you know, so unique, Yes, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just a cool idea, you know, Oh, this
Speaker 1: idea of people are fighting with these discs. You know,
Speaker 1: it's but it's it's the sound design. That's what occurred
Speaker 1: to me on this watch because this, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean they're literally just throwing glowing frisbees at each other,
Speaker 1: but they add this real like dangerous sounding like like
Speaker 1: like oh I don't want to get hit by that thing,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then during the light cycle sequence,
Speaker 1: which is still to me like thrilling. That's great. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it when I was watching it, though,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this isn't We're not seeing these
Speaker 1: crazy They're not like flipping over one another, they're not
Speaker 1: doing these crazy things. And then it occurred to me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, but the sound yea, the sound is
Speaker 1: so intense and the engines are just escalating, like it
Speaker 1: just really adds this. It's sort of you know, it's
Speaker 1: like fifty percent of it. You know, and I just
Speaker 1: did you see that? I guess the sound was nominated
Speaker 1: for an Oscar, which I think makes sense and is deserved,
Speaker 1: but the special effects were not. Now I saw that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they thought using computer The Academy thought that using
Speaker 1: computers was cheating. Oh oh you sweet summer child, right
Speaker 1: if they knew what was coming, You're right right now.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, there's an AI actress who might get
Speaker 1: nominated for an oscar. How about that? Yeah, we're like
Speaker 1: two we're like two steps removed from that. So are
Speaker 1: we Are you talking about my favorite actress, Tillie Norwood, Oh,
Speaker 1: the very same future Academy Award nominee, No doubt. I'd
Speaker 1: like to think she's listening to this. You know, she
Speaker 1: probably is because she's always connected to every computer in
Speaker 1: the world through whatever service she's going on. So Tilly,
Speaker 1: here's to you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I do kind of like, too, is that well before
Speaker 1: we lose it, because I do want to talk about
Speaker 1: this this battle here. But Disney animators refused to work
Speaker 1: on this movie because they were all also thinking like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: computers are going to put us out of business if
Speaker 1: we advance this and make it look cool. And then
Speaker 1: twenty two years later, so you got to ask, right,
Speaker 1: is are we the Luddites when we're expressing concern over Ai?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Yeah, like, well we Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone listening to this in thirty years be like, oh
Speaker 1: you you old senils. Yeah exactly. By the way, I
Speaker 1: never noticed as a kid that Tron has the tea
Speaker 1: has a t on his chest. I still didn't notice.
Speaker 3: If you look, it's it's it's like, well, when we
Speaker 3: have a clear look, I'll show you this scene here
Speaker 3: with with Flynn dueling the guy. It does the thing
Speaker 3: that I that I love about about it establishes our
Speaker 3: hero's morals right away.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know this guy from Adam. He didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell's going on, right h And he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to kill that dude, mm hmm. Right.
Speaker 1: And even as a kid, as a kid, I.
Speaker 3: Remember really liking this, not because of what happens to
Speaker 3: the guy, but become being like, no, that's the hero,
Speaker 3: that's who you want to be.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. You know what I love about this too
Speaker 1: is this is such a simple game. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: really throwing frisbees at each other and playing highlight you know.
Speaker 1: But what they do is I think they do an
Speaker 1: admirable job. Yeah of like uh, I don't know, plusing
Speaker 1: it up and making it feel because then it's like okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but when the ball touches the ground, there are these
Speaker 1: different rings and certain rings will appear and it becomes harder,
Speaker 1: Like it feels like a video game. I want to play.
Speaker 1: That's right, well, it evokes the I see right there.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I'm not doing it. Yep.
Speaker 3: It evokes Pong and that type of stuff that was
Speaker 3: you know, Atari games back in the day m hm,
Speaker 3: where you know, the interface, the visual interface was not
Speaker 3: something that resembled real life, right, but it made sense
Speaker 3: within the confines of the game, and so I think
Speaker 3: weirdly again, that adds to the sort of timelessness of.
Speaker 1: The movie.
Speaker 3: Where it gives us a game grid, multiple game grids
Speaker 3: that make sense. We understand them, We understand how it works.
Speaker 3: You know this thing, Oh if the if the little
Speaker 3: doudad hits the ring you're on, that that disappears like that.
Speaker 3: It's like video game rules, you know, yep. But it's
Speaker 3: not something that we're connecting to the real world either,
Speaker 3: you know, yep.
Speaker 1: It is funny though, I mean the facts. Look at
Speaker 1: look at Tron's chests. You see that, damn it? Oh
Speaker 1: I see it, yep, yep, yeah, it's see it's a
Speaker 1: t Oh that's funny. I didn't notice that. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, with that guy dying, yeah, I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, like and it's such a perfect actor too,
Speaker 1: because he feels like, I don't know, just very human,
Speaker 1: like a little fluss hanging dangling off of the thing,
Speaker 1: and then when he falls. It would be kind of
Speaker 1: funny though, if Flynn was just like, no turbo tax,
Speaker 1: and then you'd be like, oh right, yeah, no, it
Speaker 1: is just a program.
Speaker 3: See we should we should we cut to the real
Speaker 3: world and suddenly like people are getting like massive tax
Speaker 3: uh tax audits and everything because now that turbo tax
Speaker 3: has been deleted, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Or I was even picturing some guy just like hitting
Speaker 1: his laptop like, hey, turbo tax won't start. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I'll just redownload it. It's just not a big deal.
Speaker 1: I am. It's even better. I mean this today is
Speaker 1: still it's so great, so good. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: stand by the Oh no, you're go ahead, sorry, just real.
Speaker 3: Quick, I mean, the the the mechanics of the game
Speaker 3: are so brilliant, right, Like the light cycle creates this
Speaker 3: this trail behind it and got to avoid that trail,
Speaker 3: so to win the game, you cover up the grid
Speaker 3: with your trail. I mean it's it's like, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: You know that Centipede, there's a game sort of it
Speaker 1: reminds me of that a little bit, like those old
Speaker 1: school games you can actually download on your calculator in
Speaker 1: high school. Yep, yep, that's right. But you're adding a
Speaker 1: human element to it and this amazing sound design, and
Speaker 1: it looks really cool and futuristic, and it's Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say my comment about the sound design, I
Speaker 1: stand by it. I really do think it takes us
Speaker 1: to a whole other level. But I gotta say, I mean,
Speaker 1: looking at this, I silent right now. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is still really thrilling. Yeah. I can't even imagine being
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two and seeing this, Like you, you
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything like this.
Speaker 3: Before, right, Well, that's that gets to back to what
Speaker 3: I was saying earlier. I mean that that that summer
Speaker 3: and more broadly that year, I mean, my god, just
Speaker 3: just hit her after mm hmm. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 3: you said, Wrath of Khan, e T. John Carpenter's the Thing,
Speaker 3: Blade Runner, Conan the Barbarian.
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Poultrygeist, Yeah right, Poultrygeist, you know, and it really
Speaker 3: just this embarrassment of bridges where you're like, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean that that year is sort of celebrated now.
Speaker 3: You know, there's like a whole documentary about just the
Speaker 3: movies of that year.
Speaker 1: Yep. And there was that book which I told you about,
Speaker 1: which is really good. Yes, yeah, I remember, you know.
Speaker 1: What was funny though, I was reading that the movie,
Speaker 1: you know, they said it was a commercial failure, but
Speaker 1: the arcade game based on it was a huge hit
Speaker 1: and outgross the film. Yeah. So anyway, I was hanging
Speaker 1: out with my friend Chad last night who's gen X,
Speaker 1: and so I was telling him that we were going
Speaker 1: to do this today and I was like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: did you see it in Oh wait, we should call
Speaker 1: it the pac Man there on the screen on the right,
Speaker 1: see that, right, like a really really obvious Easter egg
Speaker 1: that they're just like, hey, look there's back man. Yep.
Speaker 1: Kind of funny. But I asked him, I was like,
Speaker 1: did you see trom because you would have been kind
Speaker 1: of young.
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 1: Did it blow your mind? He goes, no, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't see it, but you know I loved the
Speaker 1: video game. And then he went on and on. He's like,
Speaker 1: if I could have two arcade cabinets. He was like,
Speaker 1: it was like one thing and Tron and I was like, wow, darn,
Speaker 1: he just proved to prove that true. That's what he crazy,
Speaker 1: That's what he loved. Yeah, we should talk about the
Speaker 1: score too, for this one by Wendy Carlos. I was
Speaker 1: gonna bring that up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like she did music for The Shining right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Clockwork Orange, Clockwork Orange also. Yeah, And it's it's interesting
Speaker 3: because this I know, I know Disney wanted something more.
Speaker 1: Orchestral and hm and like it's it. I I as
Speaker 1: I was watching this, I was imagining, would would this
Speaker 1: movie be like does the I think the music is
Speaker 1: very interesting in terms of it it works within the film,
Speaker 1: it's not really you can't really listen to it on
Speaker 1: its own, but like, would the movie be better or
Speaker 1: worse off with an orchestral score? You know, I can
Speaker 1: imagine a good orchestral score making me really feel something,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, I think it feels true
Speaker 1: to the material. Yeah, like it feels like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. I couldn't remember, but if I remember
Speaker 1: thinking this last night and I didn't fall through on
Speaker 1: checking it out. But it would make sense if there
Speaker 1: was orchestral in the real world and then inside the computer,
Speaker 1: if it was synthesizer, that makes sense. Yeah, that might be,
Speaker 1: you know, to distinguish a little bit, right right. But
Speaker 1: I was curious because, yeah, she used this synthesizer. I
Speaker 1: guess she did an album called Switched on Bach in
Speaker 1: niceteen sixty eight, which was, you know, groundbreaking in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. I want to check it out. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to hear it. I assume it's the music of
Speaker 1: Bach through a synthesizer. But when I read that she
Speaker 1: had done the shining and everything, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that totally makes sense. And she used the same keyboard. Okay,
Speaker 1: those films in this one, and I can recognize it.
Speaker 1: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: That book I mentioned, by the way, in case somebody
Speaker 3: is listening who wants to hear it. It's called The
Speaker 3: Future was Now by Chris Nashawatti, and it's about the
Speaker 3: films of nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Cool, it is fantastic. I like reading those books and
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, best movie Year Ever that was
Speaker 1: a fun YEP retrospective of nineteen ninety nine. It's it's
Speaker 1: definitely weird to have these these very in depth retrospectives about.
Speaker 3: Times that are like within our wingspan. They don't feel
Speaker 3: like that long ago. Yeah, it viewed with you know,
Speaker 3: decades of historical context, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, yeah, it's it's strange. I mean I said
Speaker 1: that on a regular episode recently, but I had that
Speaker 1: with Forrest Gump recently, where a movie theater was showing
Speaker 1: old classics and usually you're like, oh yeah, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one and you know, Casablanca and those sorts of things,
Speaker 1: but then Forrest Gump was included, and I was like, no, wait,
Speaker 1: I saw that when I was a teenager. That's not
Speaker 1: what like, oh time, it's a flat circle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought this, So I was thinking, yeah, and
Speaker 3: if I'm part of this group, I'm definitely the ram.
Speaker 3: I'm like the guy who just sort of hangs back
Speaker 3: and eventually dies.
Speaker 1: Totally Yeah too, me too, that's me. I'm good at
Speaker 1: like flipping the frisbee around on my finger, which is
Speaker 1: what he does right right playing the game. I don't
Speaker 1: know we'll ask me to throw it at somebody, but
Speaker 1: I can definitely do some some Harlem globe shit with
Speaker 1: it in my hand, you know. Yeah. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: always have like a fun little comment, you know, we
Speaker 1: can be you and I would be a little Greek
Speaker 1: chorus to these guys. But then eventually we'd be killed
Speaker 1: just to set the steaks and then they could go
Speaker 1: save the day.
Speaker 3: Well, and the funny thing with Ram is like he
Speaker 3: just kind of gets exhausted and dies, right, And I'm like, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that's that would be me, just get exhausted.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about that too. I'm like, didn't
Speaker 1: you just drink all that power juice? They don't make
Speaker 1: clear what happens to Ram, yeah, or clear clear enough.
Speaker 1: I would say, they don't make it clear enough. You know.
Speaker 1: They also don't really get into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 1: how Flawn flawn, how Flawn is made. Well, you got
Speaker 1: you need some eggs first of all. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: me some flaunt. But Flynn, like he basically is like
Speaker 1: Neo in the Matrix, where he can stop bullets and
Speaker 1: he kind of does it, but they don't really. It
Speaker 1: just kind of happened. And because I've seen so many movies,
Speaker 1: I understood what was happening. But it did take me
Speaker 1: a second to be like, oh, because he's not He's
Speaker 1: not like the other programs. He's special and you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, I didn't think they really uh
Speaker 1: explained it. You just kinda see it.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of sort of hand wavey shorthand m
Speaker 3: that you are expected to just kind of go with. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, because the broader sort of the you know,
Speaker 3: the ecumenical point here about who are the user? What
Speaker 3: is the movie saying about through its use of users
Speaker 3: and programs? What is it saying about the relationship we
Speaker 3: have to God? Like, there's a lot there.
Speaker 1: You know, I admire the notion, but yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: really get super into it. And it was funny because
Speaker 1: when yeah, one of the programs is saying, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no such things as users or whatever, like you
Speaker 1: believe in users? Yeah, I'm like, well, yeah, do you
Speaker 1: think they got here? You know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: they you know what I'm saying, Like, they don't get
Speaker 1: into them, Like, well, then what do they believe or
Speaker 1: what are they trying to make the others believe? You know,
Speaker 1: because obviously if you're a program, you had to be built.
Speaker 3: Well let's let's carry that discussion forward. Is it that
Speaker 3: different than people who say, you know, who argue that
Speaker 3: everything just kind of came to be in our world?
Speaker 1: Right? You know? It's so funny. As I was saying it,
Speaker 1: I was like, uh, yeah, so yeah, but I am,
Speaker 1: I am interested in it, but I'm also like, don't
Speaker 1: really care that it's missing from this film, but I
Speaker 1: so yeah, like they think that this computer world, they
Speaker 1: just are their own thing and they aren't being controlled
Speaker 1: by anyone else or yeah, like for all we know,
Speaker 1: we're we're just you know, our little you know, chunk
Speaker 1: of cinder that we're on. We're just a little marble
Speaker 1: a in a bag of marbles and a locker room
Speaker 1: at MiB headquarters, which is a whatever that movie shows.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't know, right, that's true, Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but it's like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean like are are are the are the programs? Like
Speaker 3: here this is where my mind goes, like are they
Speaker 3: religious fundamentalists or are they just one of the mill?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, there's users you know, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, it's probably all kinds. There's probably all kinds,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, I mean that's the thing too,
Speaker 1: is at me being a user, Like it's obvious to me,
Speaker 1: you know, and I understand what they are that this is,
Speaker 1: you know, like a podcast app, you know, fighting for
Speaker 1: its life here. But like, but so I am, I
Speaker 1: guess a little curious about a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what they believe, right well, users wrote them so there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Kramit god boy like that that would be
Speaker 1: kind of funny.
Speaker 3: Is like the little we get of Tron we're like
Speaker 3: on board with, but then the more time you spend
Speaker 3: with him, you realize he's like really hardcore into his
Speaker 3: user beliefs and it just starts getting uncomfortable for everybody, Like,
Speaker 3: we don't, that's.
Speaker 1: You don't. We don't. That's why we don't spend too
Speaker 1: much time with Tron. Yeah, you know, in in in
Speaker 1: the Grid, we don't talk about politics and users at
Speaker 1: the at the Thanksgiving table. Okay, uh, you know it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting And I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: out there, but I guess this so Steven Lisberger and
Speaker 1: his producing partner Donald Kushner. They had this idea, and
Speaker 1: originally they thought they could make this story as an
Speaker 1: animated film, entirely animated. Yeah, and then they made some
Speaker 1: sort of demo reel about what they wanted to achieve,
Speaker 1: and they went around town pitching this movie and everybody
Speaker 1: basically said no until Disney said yes. And I really
Speaker 1: wish I could see that demo reel that they had.
Speaker 1: I'd be very curious. Is it available.
Speaker 3: I think I've seen some clips, Okay, Like his original
Speaker 3: conception of Tron was he looked kind of like a
Speaker 3: like a Cylon from the old Battlestar Galactica show, but
Speaker 3: with like a beard, Like it's real, It's not this
Speaker 3: in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Interesting, the fully animated version, I don't you know. And
Speaker 3: I think that was several steps in the process before
Speaker 3: they arrived at what this is, you.
Speaker 1: Know, okay, And I can imagine too. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have the resources available to you and so you adapt, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was curious to see because this is such a
Speaker 1: visual experience, this movie. I was kind of curious to
Speaker 1: see the earlier phases, you know, what his original vision was,
Speaker 1: the animated version whatever sort of test footage that he
Speaker 1: eventually shot that convinced Disney. I was kind of curious
Speaker 1: what that looked like, right, you know something I had forgotten.
Speaker 1: Oh go ahead, no, no, if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about this moment where we have ram basically it makes
Speaker 1: me sad. Yeah, he's a likable guy. He's got a
Speaker 1: lot of personality. He flips that disc like nobody I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I do like how the movie establishes he's a good
Speaker 3: dude because he's like, I'm an actuarial program and you know,
Speaker 3: it's nice helping people plan for their retirement.
Speaker 1: You're like, all right, this guy. I like this guy. See,
Speaker 1: that was the kind of thing that I had forgotten.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's kind of sweet. Yeah, they like
Speaker 1: doing the functions that they do that they're helping people
Speaker 1: if they believe in all right, cram it, god boy.
Speaker 1: But something that I had remembered was that there you
Speaker 1: see the flicker on the suits that were looking at
Speaker 1: it right now. But I thought I remembered their faces
Speaker 1: flickering a little bit more. Oh interesting, And it turns
Speaker 1: out that was the case, and that had to do
Speaker 1: with man, I can't even the compositing and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read the details about it, and I don't even
Speaker 1: know if I could recite them back. But it had
Speaker 1: something to do with the film and the way that
Speaker 1: it was printed and people not paying close attention to
Speaker 1: certain sorts of things, and they were accidental. There were
Speaker 1: mistakes basically, but they were like, well this they called
Speaker 1: it pulsing. They're like, it kind of works. It does
Speaker 1: sort of feel like it could be something that would
Speaker 1: happen in this world. Then flicking like that. But then eventually,
Speaker 1: when they did the two thou eleven blue ray release,
Speaker 1: the director had them correct it because that wasn't his
Speaker 1: original vision. So he finally had the opportunity and he
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, get rid of that flicker.
Speaker 1: So that's fascinating, right, So their faces do not flicker
Speaker 1: in this version the way that we would probably remember
Speaker 1: it from when we were kids. I see, wow. See,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if if we can find some footage of
Speaker 1: the earlier version just to compare, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I think I was saying earlier without
Speaker 1: realizing it is I remember this movie looking like really,
Speaker 1: you know, Haggard, probably for a lot of reasons. When
Speaker 1: we were kids. But now it just looks so stunning
Speaker 1: without sacrificing anything. I don't think it like it looks
Speaker 1: like it's been manipulated in a negative way, but it
Speaker 1: looks beautiful. But I remember this looking like a you know,
Speaker 1: like the film negative had been like driven over by
Speaker 1: a truck or something when I was a kid. And
Speaker 1: that probably has to do with you know, whatever sort
Speaker 1: of prints that they made the TV versions out of,
Speaker 1: and their faces flickering in a way that they don't anymore,
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. I remember for the two thousand
Speaker 1: and two DVD, the retrospective documentary. You know, Jeff Bridge
Speaker 1: just talking about making it, and he pulls out his
Speaker 1: flint hat. Oh really, and he puts a he hung
Speaker 1: on to his flint hat, and I'm like, I love
Speaker 1: this guy. Right, he didn't look back at Tron with
Speaker 1: the contempt. You know. I love that. I love when
Speaker 1: people man that shit was crazy. Yeah. I like when
Speaker 1: people can do that. They seem like fans of the
Speaker 1: stuff too in a way, or at least you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like well that one. You know, we were
Speaker 1: trying for something and it did okay, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: instead like, oh no, I still got the hat, want
Speaker 1: to see it, you know, and he pulls it out,
Speaker 1: he puts it on. You know. I love that attitude,
Speaker 1: that spirit. Now, now this is the bit here, you know.
Speaker 3: I remember every time I watched it, I was just like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess the bit just comes with the the you know,
Speaker 3: the the unit that he's in the recognizer, And it
Speaker 3: didn't occur to me until this, just just this rewatch,
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, no, that's the bit from the beginning
Speaker 3: and he thinks Flynn is Clue, right.
Speaker 1: I was like, duh. I think I got a little
Speaker 1: distracted because I was like, I wonder if this was
Speaker 1: a Disney note, like you always have to give a
Speaker 1: character a cute little sidekick, yeah, you know, like a
Speaker 1: little like a talking animal or something. But in this
Speaker 1: it's like a cute little bit.
Speaker 3: I was, Yeah, but it's literally because if you remember
Speaker 3: at the beginning, when Clue gets captured, he's like get
Speaker 3: out of here, and the bit leaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and then no, there's this master that's that's Clue.
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny, right. I like that. I was like,
Speaker 1: how how forty years? I never I never made that connection, right,
Speaker 1: you know though, I think I'm gonna stick up for myself.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's partially forgivable because there's just so much to
Speaker 1: take in when you're watching this movie, that is true.
Speaker 1: You know, like I am listening sometimes, but other times
Speaker 1: I am just listening to it and looking at it,
Speaker 1: and it's just, you know, you need almost multiple viewings
Speaker 1: to really hear everything that's being said because your eyes
Speaker 1: are just so drawn. Your brain is drawn to everything
Speaker 1: your eyes are taking in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: See, I think that structurally, the mistake is separating Flynn
Speaker 3: and Tron for so much of the movie. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's an odd choice because because our affinity
Speaker 3: for Tron is going to grow based on, you know,
Speaker 3: the partnership he builds up with Flynn. I think that
Speaker 3: that just inherently is more interesting and there's such different
Speaker 3: energies that you can you can see banter being a fun.
Speaker 1: Part of it, you know, oh totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, So we got we got this whole you know,
Speaker 3: side quest portion where you know, Flynn is figuring shit
Speaker 3: out and and I'm like, the more in terms of
Speaker 3: the story, the more important stuff is what Tron.
Speaker 1: Is doing.
Speaker 3: Because he's trying to defeat the MCP and I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you got to find a way to weave them together better,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And then they're a funny mismatched pair, right, exactly right.
Speaker 3: I think I think that would be fun to see
Speaker 3: totally because essentially, you know, the you know, the the
Speaker 3: light cycles get shot, Tron thinks Ram and Flynn are dead,
Speaker 3: He goes off, does his thing, and then we have
Speaker 3: a good whatever it is, twenty minutes something of just Flynn,
Speaker 3: Flynn's side quest. And that's that's an odd choice to me,
Speaker 3: that that that stuck out to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good note. I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting we see those other programs and they look
Speaker 1: more unusual. Yeah, you know, some some Star Wars, Canteen
Speaker 1: Action there. Yeah, definitely. And if they were together, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tron could be like, oh yeah, that's uh, that's real player,
Speaker 1: some old scrappy program or something. Oh Ship, How frustrating
Speaker 1: was that piece of ship program? Never worked? Your files
Speaker 1: wouldn't play? Oh my god? Oh yeah, you see you
Speaker 1: see that guy, don't talk to him. That's Kazah. You
Speaker 1: remind me of that that Chippendale Rescue Rangers movie that
Speaker 1: they did on Disney Plus. Yeah, that's right, that's right
Speaker 1: where they're at a convention.
Speaker 3: There's Ugly Sonic, yes, yeah, which is the the you know,
Speaker 3: the the initial design for Sonic from the Sonic the
Speaker 3: Hedgehog movie that fans were horrified by, so they undid.
Speaker 1: Oh man, think of how many millions and millions and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars it saved them changing that design. Talk
Speaker 1: about it? What I mean like, would they have even
Speaker 1: made a sequel with that Ugly Sonic? Probably not, yeah,
Speaker 1: much less having you know, a fourth one on the way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it would have become like a Morbid Time
Speaker 1: style meme sort of thing Sonic, you know. You know
Speaker 1: it's funny. As I was watching this, well, see, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is actually what inspired That's why I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of it again. The whole sort of there's romantic illusions
Speaker 1: between these programs, which I was like, oh, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: what is that about. I mean, it's a movie, so
Speaker 1: you want to have a little bit of romance, I guess.
Speaker 1: But I just started thinking about it, you know, like
Speaker 1: all these programs are like attracted to each other and
Speaker 1: kiss one another and stuff, And then it made me
Speaker 1: think about like it weird, right, Yeah, And for some
Speaker 1: reason that romance made me think of do you remember
Speaker 1: when we were kids and you had to do Valentine's
Speaker 1: in school, and so there'd be these little boxes you
Speaker 1: get at like the drug store for like mumpet babies Valentine's,
Speaker 1: you know, heman Valentine's. And I was just picturing these
Speaker 1: like discount Tron Valentine theme Valentine's, and I just out
Speaker 1: of my mind just started wandering and I was like
Speaker 1: imagining one being like I love you to bits, you know,
Speaker 1: and like, don't de rest my heart pictures of these
Speaker 1: characters on them and like very wholesome. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like I was gonna be like I'd love to hack
Speaker 1: your drive, but now I feel bad. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I was just picturing like those little, you know, elementary
Speaker 1: school ones and yeah, yeah, no, me too, I love
Speaker 1: you to bits, that's adorable. Well, I'm just picturing smash
Speaker 1: cutting you sitting outside the principal's office and you're like,
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, no one understands me in my
Speaker 1: own time, not a Tron fan. Yeah right exactly, but yes,
Speaker 1: this this character here where we're seeing the old man
Speaker 1: like he's like Dumont Dumont he's like part of the machine.
Speaker 1: Something about that really unnerved me as a kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he's not, though, right, because they yank him
Speaker 3: out of this and he's just like a regular old dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I just you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just the I don't even know if
Speaker 1: I was thinking of this, but just the idea of
Speaker 1: like a man assimilated into being part of a machine
Speaker 1: just something that made me uncomfortable. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It says the man who pondered fishing his AirPod out
Speaker 3: of the toilet.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny, that's exactly's referring to an old
Speaker 1: episode where I dropped one of my AirPods into a
Speaker 1: toilet once, and I was literally thinking about that a
Speaker 1: couple days ago. The fact that I shared that story,
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, too much.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's I don't think it's too much,
Speaker 3: because I think the fact is you pondered it for
Speaker 3: like a fraction of a second before you're like, well,
Speaker 3: obviously I'm not gonna do that. But anybody who's had
Speaker 3: a similar experience has had that moment, that do ardie moment,
Speaker 3: the dry time moment.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. Well they're so damn expensive. Yep. Actually, I
Speaker 1: was in a parking lot the other day and I
Speaker 1: saw one air pod on the ground and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: like my heart broke for that, I know, for the person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love this scene here where Tron is
Speaker 3: getting his instructions from Alan. You know, yes, the literalization
Speaker 3: of just entering command code and this is how the
Speaker 3: programs are receiving.
Speaker 1: I just think it's so cool. And I also love
Speaker 1: that that what follows is essentially are briefing on YAB
Speaker 1: and for moment. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like you gotta do this, you got you know,
Speaker 3: one shot into the exhaust port, you know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: letting us know exactly what needs to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, that's funny. It made me think of that.
Speaker 1: And it also the design here where he needs to
Speaker 1: strike made me think of the interior of the Death
Speaker 1: Star in Return of the Jedi. Those two. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: totally another Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, Sorry I think I
Speaker 1: cut you off. No, no, no, no, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna riffle it. I was just yes, I love this too.
Speaker 1: It's very i don't know, like almost feels holy or something. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to my user exactly, but it would be
Speaker 1: kind of funny. And I realized why they didn't do
Speaker 1: it is then you cut to the real world and
Speaker 1: you see you know, Alan at his death but he's
Speaker 1: really got like three windows open, and he's like half
Speaker 1: paying attention like oh, oh okay, like closing you know,
Speaker 1: like a eBay and you know that's jcrue dot com,
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of like looking at sweaters like oh,
Speaker 1: and then he puts the command half heartedly in Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess to fix this, you could probably do that,
Speaker 1: you know, go to if then you know, just whatever
Speaker 1: the the doss code was back then, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well I think that's why it's such a smart choice
Speaker 1: to that once we go into the computer world, we
Speaker 1: stay there. Yes, yeah, we're not having like a back
Speaker 1: and forth, I think, I think because because it just
Speaker 1: diminishes whatever's happening here, you know, Yeah, it would remove
Speaker 1: all the tension. Seeing him at the snack machine, he like,
Speaker 1: you know, he raises his disc to speak to his user,
Speaker 1: but like there's no response. It's like, why have you
Speaker 1: forsaken me? And then we cut to the real world
Speaker 1: and he's just like his dollar keeps going in and
Speaker 1: out of a snack machine. Oh damn it, like you
Speaker 1: tried smoothing the dollar out on the corner.
Speaker 3: That would be a funny something else, you know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: a different approach, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I see this. This is one of those things too
Speaker 1: where I remember this image but I couldn't remember what
Speaker 1: it was. The solar ship. Yeah, isn't they cool looking?
Speaker 1: Though it is? It's very cool. Kind of clever use
Speaker 1: of the light on the tips of that spear too,
Speaker 1: you know. That looks sort of like they probably just
Speaker 1: have some sort of special lens or something. I love
Speaker 1: how that jumps off. Yeah, I wasn't even part of this.
Speaker 1: It's like, what is it an ironment? These guys are
Speaker 1: so weird and right? That does kind of raise a
Speaker 1: point though, the guard jumping off there. There isn't a
Speaker 1: ton of humor in this where you could imagine Flynn
Speaker 1: reacting a little bit more humorously to some of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to diminish anything, not to like be meta or
Speaker 1: make it silly, but it feels like nowadays that's the
Speaker 1: tenor that's struck most. We need a little more. Well,
Speaker 1: that just happened. I'm not saying that I don't you're right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm but he's right. Yeah, I mean yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you know a little bit, but not I don't want
Speaker 1: the whole movie to be that. But you know there's a.
Speaker 3: You got no, it's it's you know the again, I
Speaker 3: keep I keep dipping into this, but you need a
Speaker 3: little bit of Han solo energy.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you know he's the guy.
Speaker 3: Who's like, I don't believe in the force, you know,
Speaker 3: and that should essentially be Flynn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he has a fun energy and a perspective
Speaker 1: that they could be playing off of. Here. Here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Look, I was joking about Tron being that really obnoxiously
Speaker 3: religious guy, right, that should be the journey for Tron, right,
Speaker 3: Like Flynn is like, hey man, users are we don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on either.
Speaker 1: You know you kind of have a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: right sure. Yeah yeah, Like so Tron.
Speaker 3: Learns that from users users are you know, they're playing,
Speaker 3: they're just figuring stuff out as they go, and that's
Speaker 3: something Tron recognizes mm hm, and like, yeah, learn.
Speaker 1: From one another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like the thing at the end when he's
Speaker 3: got to throw his disc in like that should revolve
Speaker 3: around him having to improvise a solution. Mmmm, because the
Speaker 3: improvising is not something a program would know how to do.
Speaker 3: But Flynn says something to that effect like sometimes I
Speaker 3: just got to figure it out. You're in the moment,
Speaker 3: you don't know what to do, you figure it out,
Speaker 3: something like that, and then Tron does that.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, because that's the thing. I was trying to
Speaker 1: put my finger on it, because I do really enjoy
Speaker 1: this movie. Yeah, but there's something about it that makes
Speaker 1: me feel like I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's true, and it's because I think it's missing a
Speaker 1: little bit of that thing that everyone can latch onto
Speaker 1: with its characters.
Speaker 3: I think that the story keeps you at arm's length
Speaker 3: a little bit exactly right, because I think the heart
Speaker 3: of it should be the characters. Like I like the
Speaker 3: moment we just had where Tron is happy to see
Speaker 3: Flynn again, and it's like it feels like a genuine moment, right,
Speaker 3: And I'm kind of like, well, we're we're about fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes before the end of this thing, and there's like,
Speaker 3: how long were the characters apart?
Speaker 1: Right? I think the movie needs to be about building
Speaker 1: their relationship.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, at the beginning he's like Alan, He's like,
Speaker 3: how do you know that name? They're kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it's like that's how there starts. And then at the
Speaker 3: end when they part ways, each has learned something from
Speaker 3: the other.
Speaker 1: Right, yep. And I do enjoy things that happen with
Speaker 1: the characters, and I certainly enjoy existing in this world,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that I feel like the story
Speaker 1: itself can be enjoyed universally because it's about characters and
Speaker 1: their relationships and the things that they learn. It's it's
Speaker 1: missing a little bit of that.
Speaker 3: The dialogue that we just had, right, Flynn is like, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm actually a user and Tron's like you're a user? Oh,
Speaker 3: kind of basically right, And I'm like, why not like
Speaker 3: make that more of a thing, like introduce that element
Speaker 3: a little bit sooner and have Tron be like this,
Speaker 3: this crackpot idiot thinks he's a user. I'm just keeping
Speaker 3: him around so he doesn't hurt himself kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And then you know what, you get what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: And then you have something that you have something crystallized
Speaker 3: for Tron that, oh he's telling the truth. And then
Speaker 3: and then Flynn is a guy. He's like, you are
Speaker 3: a user, and Flynn is like, yeah, I'm a user,
Speaker 3: and he's like, well, then you must know fix all.
Speaker 3: He's like, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to fix any of this, you know,
Speaker 1: And then right, totally yeah, by the way, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just like workshopping this as I'm watching. No, no,
Speaker 1: for sure, these are like easy things they could have done,
Speaker 1: you know. No, No, I don't disagree, I mean exactly,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. I'm sorry. I got a
Speaker 1: little distracted because those bugs on the ground, They're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, those bugs don't want to run a follow
Speaker 1: those and then they're just never seen again. We never
Speaker 1: see them again. I was thinking when I saw those
Speaker 1: last night, oh, I don't remember those and it's for
Speaker 1: a good reason. They have no effect on the story
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, I guess they are being pursued,
Speaker 1: but I thought, oh, is it just to add an
Speaker 1: extra bit of tension, like, well, there's danger below us.
Speaker 1: And it was just like a quick fix, like I
Speaker 1: don't just make some bugs real quick. I like that
Speaker 1: that in the scene that we just saw where Dumont
Speaker 1: is like, I remember when the Master control is just
Speaker 1: a chess program, which is what his user says earlier
Speaker 1: in the movie. Also, yep, the lesson is don't play chess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my takeaway. And it makes you think of war
Speaker 1: games too. You know. It's like it's all a game
Speaker 1: to those machines, that's right. But yeah, I like this
Speaker 1: him being able to divert the beam dimensionally his user powers. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, it was just looking at the costumes. Two.
Speaker 1: I forgot to note that the costumes were nominated for
Speaker 1: an Oscar as well. That's interesting because when you when
Speaker 1: you look at the production stills minus all of this
Speaker 1: flim flam, you know, mm hmm, there's just these like
Speaker 1: white tights with you know, like magic marker on them,
Speaker 1: And I'm how did they feel wearing those things? Were
Speaker 1: they like what the hell did we sign up for?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I mean they must have seen that test footage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this isn't like a movie where you can just
Speaker 1: have someone pitch this and go trust me, you know
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, it's a little bit like signing
Speaker 1: on to make the matrix, you know. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great comparison right. Famously, Will Smith was like, I don't
Speaker 1: get it right, which is kind of understandable. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: think about the leaps of faith sometimes the studios make yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you wind up with the matrix
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they had to shoot some sort of
Speaker 1: test to show them what bullet tyme would look like.
Speaker 1: And you know, but still, you know, it's we always
Speaker 1: get to see the finished product and and can celebrate
Speaker 1: it because it worked. But when you know, there's you're
Speaker 1: putting together a budget and all you have is script, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, a script in a prayer. You know, like
Speaker 1: you don't you don't know that it's going to turn
Speaker 1: out the it's tightly edited, and the music's going to
Speaker 1: work as well as it does, and the action is
Speaker 1: going to look as cool as it does well. And
Speaker 1: and the sad part is when it doesn't turn out
Speaker 1: the way they would have hoped, you know, which is
Speaker 1: what arguably happened with this film. Yep, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it. It ended up having a very long cultural
Speaker 1: shelf life, and so history was on its side. But
Speaker 1: at that moment, you know, you want the you want
Speaker 1: the Catharsis of the movie. That you that you took
Speaker 1: this big chance on doing well, totally right, and it
Speaker 1: is amazing to think all these years later, this concept
Speaker 1: is still potent enough for Disney to drop millions and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into it. Yeah, well and they apped
Speaker 1: into something that.
Speaker 3: Just something yeah, and and well I think what it
Speaker 3: speaks to the strength of the world real quick by
Speaker 3: So this oh, where's Tron, Oh he's dead? And we
Speaker 3: just went through the where's Flint, Oh He's dead? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, some of these we got to
Speaker 3: find a way around these repetitive beats, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 3: But the I think the fact that we're we're revisiting
Speaker 3: this world, you know, forty plus years later, speaks to
Speaker 3: the fact that the universes is fundamentally interesting but also
Speaker 3: remains largely unexplored.
Speaker 1: Mmmm yeah right.
Speaker 3: So there's like a lot of room, Like it's it's
Speaker 3: an interesting concept with lots of room for stories.
Speaker 1: And a singular look. Yeah, you know, I mean even
Speaker 1: with all the tools digital tools we have now the
Speaker 1: one that I haven't seen the new one yet, but aries,
Speaker 1: but the previous one obviously they can have more bells
Speaker 1: and whistles but it still feels of a piece to this.
Speaker 1: It was consistent with it. Yeah, yeah, because this is
Speaker 1: just so you know, singular and spectacular. Yeah yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how the new one is going
Speaker 1: to be received, but I would ideally I would like
Speaker 1: it to do well enough to keep going, but not
Speaker 1: so well that everybody gets their fingers in it. Mmm. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think I've said before with like with the Planet
Speaker 3: of the Apes films that they've been making for the
Speaker 3: last ten years or so, right, like they they seem
Speaker 3: to do just well enough to make it worthwhile, but
Speaker 3: it's still allow it still gets to kind of just
Speaker 3: be its own little corner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great example, you know, that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's what I would like with this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Worth mentioning, by the way, that that after Tron Legacy
Speaker 3: came out, you know, Disney had an animated.
Speaker 1: Series called Tron Uprising. Yeah, that's right. Our friend friend
Speaker 1: she was he was on post production for that show.
Speaker 1: I think he edited and and that show is terrific.
Speaker 1: I should check that out. Yeah, until it's a prequel.
Speaker 1: It's a prequel to the second movie. Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: set between the two. Man, I like, I said, I
Speaker 1: don't remember anything about the second movie. And now that
Speaker 1: i'm you know, I've dipped my toe with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like excited and see this world get built out.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like this. I liked it. You know.
Speaker 1: That was Humza's very first movie. Can you believe that? No,
Speaker 1: in the theater? Oh wow? Yeah? He was uh three
Speaker 1: going on four wow. And he could sit through it.
Speaker 1: Huh he sat through that's the thing. And I first
Speaker 1: of all, it's PG. It wasn't even PG thirteen. Oh really? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And and he had watched this and he kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, he liked it, And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: he's not gonna remember, but he'll remember the experience.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, sure. Yeah, to this day he
Speaker 1: has he has fond memories of legacy. He said, he
Speaker 1: just watched it recently actually in school. In school. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have to imagine that this was while his high
Speaker 1: school career is winding down and his teacher was on
Speaker 1: is Hey, we're talking about computers. So here's tron. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that feels like a real Mishoover move comes
Speaker 1: us in the back. What does this have to do
Speaker 1: with you quiet any Yeah, I think this is interesting,
Speaker 1: this sort of romance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it nowadays we would call it, you know,
Speaker 3: AI psychosis.
Speaker 1: Back then it was just good clean fun, right, dude,
Speaker 1: The m CP is terrifying. It really is a big face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remembers the South Park turned a character or had a
Speaker 1: character that looked like that. Well yeah, and they had
Speaker 1: and they also had Tron guy. Oh man, I don't
Speaker 1: remember that.
Speaker 3: So so there was a guy who was like a
Speaker 3: really big Tron fan and he made his own like this,
Speaker 3: and he became like a pop culture fixture and and
Speaker 3: kind of you know, you know people he was a
Speaker 3: fixture in the way like Star Wars Kid is a fixture.
Speaker 3: You know, people were he is poking a little fun,
Speaker 3: poking fun of this guy because he's kind of a
Speaker 3: doe looking dude and he's wearing this thing. And I
Speaker 3: remember he used to show up on The Kimmel Show
Speaker 3: a lot, and so yeah, that became that guy became
Speaker 3: kind of a South Park character.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of funny? I mean not holy, but
Speaker 1: like there used to be an age where yeah, those
Speaker 1: sorts of people were still like nerd and you know,
Speaker 1: people make fun of him online. But I feel like,
Speaker 1: now this is those people's moments where it's like, whoa
Speaker 1: you made that? That's amazing. Go on TikTok, you know, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like nerdy sort of things have just become part of
Speaker 1: mainstream culture.
Speaker 3: That is true, But I don't think there is ever
Speaker 3: a moment where it's gonna be socially no, no normative
Speaker 3: for like a dude to walk around in a tron suit.
Speaker 1: You know, fair point, fair point. They're just more avenues
Speaker 1: for them now instead of being like accidentally discovered like
Speaker 1: some video accident, you know, uploaded and then you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like there'd be like forums where that
Speaker 1: those people could hang out and find their people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. By the way, I love this lights
Speaker 1: like yeah, sorry, this is You're right, it's like a
Speaker 1: lightsaber duel. That was a Freudian slip. But yes, it's
Speaker 1: it's great.
Speaker 3: Again what you said before about the sound effects, I
Speaker 3: just wish it kind of went a little longer, To
Speaker 3: be honest, I would have liked some some Phantom Menace
Speaker 3: style action where they're flip flopping and doing all kinds
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 1: You see. I think part of the problem is the
Speaker 1: camera needs to be locked down exactly, and it would
Speaker 1: be cool to see them, yeah, like jumping over these
Speaker 1: little partitions on the ground and flipping. We get a
Speaker 1: little bit of that in the second one. Okay with
Speaker 1: the disc fights. But shoot, what was I saying, Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: guy wearing the tron suit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I think that's always going to
Speaker 1: be something that you look at. No, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: I do like the the disc kind of like opened
Speaker 1: up the guy's head. You get the part it's dark man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool. And I like the video gameness of this too,
Speaker 1: where it's got these the MCP has these shields. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't get the disc through, and so I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just I talk about this a lot, or I
Speaker 1: used to more, but I love really simple to understand,
Speaker 1: you know, goals and finish lines at the end of
Speaker 1: a film. So it's just like, oh, he needs to
Speaker 1: get to the disc through the thing, but there's a shield,
Speaker 1: so we got to get the shield down, there's the opening,
Speaker 1: get it through. Yeay. You know that stuff's just really
Speaker 1: primal and yeah, here here's the problem. Okay, So Flynn
Speaker 1: is like, I gotta jump into that beam. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: did he make that? How do you come to that conclusion? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It just feels right. I don't know, this feels right
Speaker 1: for him too. I'm gonna swap spit with this program.
Speaker 1: See like like that to me, even if you have
Speaker 1: him say something like if I jump in there, I
Speaker 1: can disrupt his whatever. Mm hm yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: something because he jumps, he because he's making he's making
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, he's making a lot of leaps.
Speaker 1: He literally is, but he's making a lot of assumptions
Speaker 1: like why would he think this would bring him home?
Speaker 1: Does he what's the progression? Do you get what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Why is him jumping in? They're causing this to happen
Speaker 3: to the MCP. I think we needed something a bit
Speaker 3: more motivated, Like we've established that Flynn is able to
Speaker 3: impact the grid, and so we needed it's sort of
Speaker 3: like he goes in there, this happens, and then Tron's like,
Speaker 3: hey it's open, and he throws it in. I think
Speaker 3: we needed some connection between what Flinn does and what
Speaker 3: Tron does, like like this is their plan?
Speaker 1: Oh no, definitely, I you know totally Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: mean I think you said something earlier. I mean, this
Speaker 1: movie kind of does a lot of shorthand. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: in the style of you get it, Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Eh, No, I agree. I think it
Speaker 1: would make a little bit more sense, and it would
Speaker 1: probably be just a few degrees more satisfying, you know.
Speaker 3: I think it'd be more satisfying because because for me,
Speaker 3: the big issue I had on a rewatch is that
Speaker 3: Tron is fitly inscrutable throughout the film, and I don't
Speaker 3: I don't feel particularly invested in his character other than
Speaker 3: it's his name on the masthead, which is kind of
Speaker 3: puzzling to me. M hmm, yeah, sure, Like it almost
Speaker 3: feels like it almost feels like Tron should have been
Speaker 3: the name that Flynn adopts when he ends up in
Speaker 3: the grid.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. And that's why the movie is called Tron,
Speaker 1: because he's so clearly the main character. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: get what I'm saying? No, totally, it's weird. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to call it. That the shot where everything's turning
Speaker 1: from red to blue and you see those circles and
Speaker 1: the floor and everything. I remember they use that shot
Speaker 1: in the opening montage for the Wonderful World of Disney
Speaker 1: on Sunday nights, so they'd show clips from all these movies.
Speaker 1: I remember there was like Splash and Roger Rabbit things
Speaker 1: like that, but I remember that shot being used. So
Speaker 1: when I saw that in this I had forgotten about it,
Speaker 1: and it just took me back to being like ten
Speaker 1: years old since memory yeap having like a bowl of popcorn.
Speaker 1: It was Sunday night, Like, what that's gonna be on
Speaker 1: the Wonderful World of Disney tonight? What's what's Michael Eisner
Speaker 1: gonna show us today? Remember he was like hosting it
Speaker 1: for a while. Oh yeah, yeah. He'd always Hi, you
Speaker 1: know who hasn't wanted to meet a mermaid? Well tonight
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks will then say it like that. Well, then
Speaker 1: someone in a goofy suit, remember, would like sometimes come
Speaker 1: in and be like Hi, goofy. Wait wait, print print
Speaker 1: out is coming now? What what is motivating this print out?
Speaker 1: That's the the MCP turned good like giving up the evidence.
Speaker 3: Well, what I saw it is the MCP is deleted
Speaker 3: it in essence, and it I see it as like
Speaker 3: you know when your printer has is like backed up,
Speaker 3: You've got a bunch of print print jobs. Sure, And
Speaker 3: then and then you it's out of paper, and then
Speaker 3: you put paper in and suddenly everything that was backed
Speaker 3: up prints out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Flynn has been trying to print this thing out
Speaker 3: for a while, but the MCP was like holding it back. Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: this is my head canon explanation.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, sure, So it should be coming out of
Speaker 1: like all the printers. Yeah, it should be like like
Speaker 1: back to the future too, right, yes, yeah, or it'd
Speaker 1: be kind of funny if it was. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: was like, why would it be in that laser bay, Like,
Speaker 1: it'd be funny if it came out of his printer
Speaker 1: back at his apartment and he's like, oh damn it,
Speaker 1: and he has like run back to his apartment and
Speaker 1: get the thing and then run back.
Speaker 3: Well, so so think about it. So Flynn goes in there,
Speaker 3: he logs in, he finds the things, he's he's he's
Speaker 3: trying to access.
Speaker 1: The file that's true, and MCP interrupts him.
Speaker 3: MCP interrupts and he's like, here's some algorithms that are
Speaker 3: unsolvable to keep you busy.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And as far as Flynn is concerned, all that happened
Speaker 3: is that, Oh no, I guess Flynn remembers everything that happened, right,
Speaker 3: but like essentially keep the MCP at bay are able
Speaker 3: to print out that file, right, And then Flynn storms
Speaker 3: into a boardroom and he's like, I have a sheet
Speaker 3: of paper here that says I wrote Space Paranoise. And
Speaker 3: they hand the company over to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now he's everybody's boss. Now he's the boss. Because
Speaker 1: it's just that simple. It's really funny, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's fun. I agree. There is a song
Speaker 1: by Journey on the soundtrack called only Solutions, which I
Speaker 1: think there's a line in the movie or Flynn's like
Speaker 1: no problems, only solutions, something like that, and you don't
Speaker 1: you hear it in the in the arcade.
Speaker 3: In the early part of the movie, but it's on
Speaker 3: the album. And so I just yesterday I had put
Speaker 3: on the soundtrack and I put on the song.
Speaker 1: I was like, it's a good song, man, I'd have
Speaker 1: to hear it.
Speaker 3: These Journey kids, they got potential.
Speaker 1: Hey, Tron, So what do you think, man? It's fun? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we agreed on a lot of it, and
Speaker 1: you articulated a lot of what I was feeling but
Speaker 1: couldn't put my finger on just like a few extra
Speaker 1: bits of texture that would have made this feel even
Speaker 1: more like something I could feel emotionally invested in. But like,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping the characters together longer and some of
Speaker 1: the characterizations and things. But this is just one of
Speaker 1: those movies. And it might sound like an excuse, but
Speaker 1: it's just so stunning and the vision is just so
Speaker 1: striking that it's just really fun to watch. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and the characterizations as they are are still fun, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Ram character and Flynn and everything. So and
Speaker 1: you know, you get your sort of death star battle
Speaker 1: at the end. You know, you're in the quote unquote
Speaker 1: trench right with gotting to make your you have to
Speaker 1: make your shot to shut the thing down. And that's
Speaker 1: that's fun. And the light cycle stuff is amazing. So
Speaker 1: I still think only solutions by Journey, oh there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's just you know, it's it's it's God, it's
Speaker 1: the things we would we would have some notes for.
Speaker 1: But I still think it's a really fun ninety minutes.
Speaker 3: I think that the mere fact that they really have
Speaker 3: not replicated what this original movie looked like ever, including
Speaker 3: in the sequels exactly. Uh says something about what the
Speaker 3: movie was able to accomplish. And you know, we say
Speaker 3: this often.
Speaker 1: You know, there is sort of temporal metric for success,
Speaker 1: which is how did it do at the box office?
Speaker 1: And this one only did okay if that, But I
Speaker 1: think I think there's also the temporal metric of longevity,
Speaker 1: cultural longevity, mm hmm. And and you know, for a while,
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this before.
Speaker 3: Where there was that that Simpsons gag where you know,
Speaker 3: Homer is in the three D world, right, yes, and
Speaker 3: they're like, Homer, what is it like? He's like, have
Speaker 3: you seen Tron? And I was like, no, no, no, no, anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, and and and the joke was nobody's seen Tron, right,
Speaker 3: And that was for me, honestly, that was the first
Speaker 3: time I was like, oh, is Tron like not not
Speaker 3: thought of?
Speaker 1: Well, like you know, Zachie, I thought of that yesterday.
Speaker 1: And I I always take it personally when the Simpsons
Speaker 1: attack something that I love, So I'm like, wait, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that was a thing. Am I wrong? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean for me, one of them was Arby's,
Speaker 1: you know, when the kids are stuck on the desert
Speaker 1: Island and one of the Twins is just like, I'm
Speaker 1: so hungry I could eat Arby's and the kids are like,
Speaker 1: oh no, and I was as a kid, I was like,
Speaker 1: wait what, I love Arby's. Yeah. And so then yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the joke about Tron and thinking, oh, this
Speaker 1: does look like Tron. Yeah. And then when everybody's like
Speaker 1: not wanting to admit that either they don't know what
Speaker 1: it is or Chief Wigham doesn't want to admit that
Speaker 1: he knows what Tron is, that's right, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh I didn't. I didn't realize that was That was
Speaker 1: the moment for me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting because that was not that was what
Speaker 3: maybe ten or twelve years after Tron came out. Oh yeah, weird,
Speaker 3: it was relatively recent, so uh that joke notwithstanding, I
Speaker 3: think that there there's been a general recognition of how
Speaker 3: ahead of its time the movie was, both in terms
Speaker 3: of the aesthetic but also like, again, how it really
Speaker 3: anticipated the symbiotic relationship we would have with our technology. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and the notion of of the program being
Speaker 3: an avatar of its user.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at look at people who live.
Speaker 3: Online lives and things like that, right, I mean, this
Speaker 3: it's it's a reflection of that or an anticipation of it,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, but I think I think it remains
Speaker 3: a fascinating artifact.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, agreed. You know two things I want to
Speaker 1: throw out, just because I have them written out here
Speaker 1: and we're at the end. But when you're talking about
Speaker 1: its reception, it currently has a sixty seven percent on
Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes. But I noticed that both Roger Ebert and
Speaker 1: Gene Siskel gave it four stars. Oh yeah, yeah. Ibert
Speaker 1: loved it. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he spoke well of it.
Speaker 3: You know, I remember Ebert fest like, you know, he
Speaker 3: screened it at his film festival and stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and you get it because I remember, you know, just
Speaker 3: under twenty years after he was such a champion for
Speaker 3: Dark City. Yeah that's right, that's right, right, and very
Speaker 3: different films, but also similarly informed by a very unique esthetic,
Speaker 3: you know, and almost almost more esthetically appealing than the
Speaker 3: characters are, right right, you know, so you sort of
Speaker 3: see where his where his predilections.
Speaker 1: Were, you know. Definitely that's a good point. And then lastly,
Speaker 1: I have this fact that I thought was kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: so out of curiosity, I looked up the average computer
Speaker 1: today has sixteen gigs of ram SO memory and about
Speaker 1: five hundred and twelve gigs or to a terabyte of storage,
Speaker 1: and the state of the art computers that were used
Speaker 1: for this movie's special effects had two megabytes of memory
Speaker 1: and three hundred and thirty mega megabytes of storage. That's
Speaker 1: crazy wild, I mean, I was thinking that, like, can
Speaker 1: you imagine rendering out these shots that must have just
Speaker 1: I don't even know the time, and the gargantuan task
Speaker 1: that must have been back in the day.
Speaker 3: Well, well, one of the effects technicians talked about how
Speaker 3: they had to render entire sequences without the benefit of
Speaker 3: like they would plot them out on on grids.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 3: So like like you know, nowadays you have key frame
Speaker 3: animation where you just plot your key frames and then
Speaker 3: you're able to manipulate the keyframe to have a general
Speaker 3: sense of movement. Right back, they couldn't do that, So
Speaker 3: they would be they they it would be you would
Speaker 3: had to you had to create for each movement, you
Speaker 3: had like six coordinates, and so you're plotting coordinates on
Speaker 3: a time grid and you're putting those into a computer
Speaker 3: and you're hoping it's like, at this time it needs
Speaker 3: to be here here here, and moves here. And then
Speaker 3: at this time it needs to be here here here,
Speaker 3: and it moves here.
Speaker 1: But you're doing it.
Speaker 3: All just mathematically, not visually, and then you enter that
Speaker 3: in and it gives you this thing. I mean, think
Speaker 3: about how time intense of that is, because if you
Speaker 3: screw up, you have to essentially go back you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you're doing it, you know, one whatever, like one
Speaker 3: hundred frames at a time, which amounts to like, you know,
Speaker 3: for four seconds, I think right, twenty fives say yeah,
Speaker 3: so four seconds, you.
Speaker 1: Know, crazy? Yeah?
Speaker 3: AnyWho, Hey, let us know your thoughts on Tron. We
Speaker 3: had plenty to say, but we assume there's lots of
Speaker 3: Tron fans listening to this, So if you have any
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Speaker 1: And if you're looking for me online, you can find
Speaker 1: me on social media at Zaki's Corner That z akis Corner,
Speaker 1: and you can also read my reviews at the San
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Speaker 1: What About You. You can find episodes I've written for
Speaker 1: the show's Puppy Dog Pals and Young Jedi Adventures streaming
Speaker 1: on Disney Plus and with that on behalf of my
Speaker 1: partner Brian home. My name is Zachie Hassan. This has
Speaker 1: been our movie film commentary track for Tron. We will
Speaker 1: catch you soon. Thank you programs,