SCANNING THE TRON LEGEND - PART 1

TRON Legacy Movie Preview [plus a review of the original TRON]

I remember seeing clips of this sci fi movie earlier in the year and thinking... WTF?
Honestly that's exactly what crossed my mind. While seated in the movie theater anticipating an action flick, a very brief clip of the forthcoming TRON Legacy movie was presented. It looked more like a video game on the big screen to me, more than anything else. Somehow the comprehensive vision I got was that the movie was all just a big race at night, conducted by a spunky hero fighting droid bad guys that could shatter like glass.

But I have to admit that the futuristic motorcycles in the trailer looked cool. The neon glows etched into the machines and the bodysuits worn by all the characters was also a cool touch. And since the scale of the digital world where 90-percent of the movie takes place was extremely epic, the trailer did trigger that inner geek within me, tapping into the same well of emotion that gives me a longing to behold larger than life sci fi worlds.

So what is TRON? 
Released in 1982, TRON is American action science fiction film that was produced by Walt Disney Studios. It was definitely a deviant vision, an anomaly in the world of giant talking mice, crystal heels and innocent fairy tales.
TRON was directed by Steven Lisberger and it was one of the first films from a major studio to use extensive computer graphics in order to contrive the interactive world of the characters and the characters themselves.

The focal character of the movie was named Kevin Flynn, who was a young gifted software engineer that worked for a software corporation called ENCOM. Kevin was a video game designer with dreams of starting his own firm.
Kevin got screwed by his rival, another programmer named Ed Dillinger, and Ed presents Kevin's work as his own. Ed gets promoted and Kevin keeps getting demoted, till he becomes the head of a local arcade center, tied to his company ENCOM.
All the main characters in this movie have their real-selfs, and their digital-personas.

Kevin later tries to hack into the mainframe of ENCOM, to find evidence that will prove Eds duplicity. His digital worm program, named Clu, is discovered and erased by the Master Control Program, the MCP.
The MCP is in league with Ed; and it tells Ed that it wants to dominate the Pentagon, in order to control the entire USA.

But some guy that works for ENCOM called Alan Bradley [who was locked out of the mainframe the same time that Kevin was locked out] comes to confront Ed, and tells him that he, Alan, was working on a security program named TRON, and he really needs access back into the system.

Ed claims he'll look into it, but the MCP tells Ed that he doesn't want to be monitored by a security program.

With the aid of his girlfriend Dr. Lora Baines [her digital-persona is called Yori], the new guy, Alan, goes to warn Kevin about the vile schemes of Ed.
Soon the three heroes, Kevin, Lora and Alan [aka TRON] break into a laser lab at ENCOM headquarters, and try to hack into the system, in order to shut down the MCP. And from that point, the adventure in the digital realm soon unfolds.
Lora has designed a system for literally digitzing humans, making them virtual-personas. She attempts to transfer Kevin into the mainframe of ENCOM, but the MCP somehow intervenes as the hacking procedure is flowing; and Kevin is zapped by a laser and transferred directly into the digital world,  where he is both a slave and a competitor. Now Kevin becomes Clu, his digital-persona.

Following a series of battles, Clu meets TRON and Yori and they start working together to shut down the MCP's main operating system.

Ed's evil digital personal is called Sark, and with the aid of the sovereign MCP, Sark and his forces strive to crush the three heroes in the digital world. Later TRON has a showdown against Sark, and he eventually prevails [even after the MCP turns the loosing Sark into an evil giant], with the aid of his two allies.

And at the end, Ed's initial scheme of intellectual property theft is revealed, the evil MCP is shut down, and Kevin is set to become the new CEO of ENCOM. I skipped a lot of details in this quick review, but I'm sure you get the picture.

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