May. 24, 2005 - 11:57 am

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Tron (1982)

Jill and i were talking about the music video for The Strokes' "12:51" and how its look is based on the rotoscoped colorization that appears in Tron. she said she hadn't seen the movie and i hadn't seen the whole thing probably since i was a kid. we decided to watch it and see what it was all about.

Tron concerns a few computer programmers in the early 80s who come to realize that the "master control program" at the company they work at is gaining too much power. they decide that they need to destroy it. Jeff Bridges' character gets sucked into the computer world and has to fight from within, alongside programs that are visually represented as humans.

as we began watching the movie there was a lot of story about being hackers and trying to take down this big control program at a major company. i started to wonder who would be interested in this story. as a rule, sci-fi and business affairs shouldn't be sewn together into a story. apparently the movie was originally a flop, but the creators did eventually end up making money on the video game.

the basic idea here is that the movie looks cool and has some OK acting, but the story is pretty poor and uninteresting.