{"id":358,"date":"2015-06-28T00:26:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2015-06-28T00:27:48","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:27:48","slug":"tron-review-the-humanist-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/tron-review-the-humanist-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Tron Review: The Humanist Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tron\u2019s in a very weird position when you think about it in terms of computer movies. On the one hand, it\u2019s caught in the \u201860\u2019s, \u201870\u2019s and early \u201880\u2019s spot where all computers are evil and are going to take over the world. And in another \u2013 largely thanks to the internal workings of the world of Tron, you can see the focus of computer movies slowly shifting to more amenable territory: computers can<\/em> work for us, but only if we\u2019re careful.<\/p>\n

This particular movie is prescient on a whole lot of levels: for example, we learn \u2013 quite early on \u2013 that a young programmer has lost his work to an older, rather lazier executive who \u2013 essentially \u2013 changed the credits on his work to turn that work into his own. Something like what ended up happening with the computer game industry \u2013 and rather early on, too, when it turned out that Atari didn\u2019t actually like their programmers being \u201cresponsible\u201d for the games they made. [this particular conceptual strand flowed all the way into the modern era where we\u2019re now more aware of publishers than we are of actual game developers.]<\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots of thematic ideas that would later get cemented in other movies \u2013 for example, the world of \u201cthe grid\u201d is vast and generally a neonscape of primary colours. Lots of other movies would realize that the actual mundane tasks performed on a computer are really pretty dull, so they would dress their computer worlds up to make them look a lot like this.<\/p>\n

Then there is the idea that the hacker is basically an oddball who isn\u2019t really out to do any particular harm. He\u2019s just hunting around the system for interesting stuff. What\u2019s especially interesting is that the makers of Tron didn\u2019t really know how to deal with this on a policing level. The concept was so novel at the time that there are no police officers involved at all throughout the entire proceedings.<\/p>\n

My point, really, is that as odd as this movie was, it fed a lot of movies after it. It fed a lot of computer culture, too. Early speculative fiction about the internet often called the idea of the internet \u201cThe Grid\u201d or \u201cThe Matrix.\u201d Hacking was often the domain of maverick programmers who could figure out systems and their layers of protection.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>
Flynn, Alan and Lora scheming together.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, having dispensed with it\u2019s place in movie history, let\u2019s talk a little about the story. Flynn, a guy who\u2019s the maverick programmer, used to work for Encom, a giant conglomerate. He would go in after hours and write video games, because back then, no one had a home computer, so he had to do this at work. Unfortunately, he\u2019s on a networked system \u2013 the Encom system \u2013 and one of the lazier higher ups spots [and steals] his work. This guy is Dillinger. Dillinger\u2019s a bit of a creep, we learn, pretty early on, so none of this is surprising.<\/p>\n

Dillinger wrote a [surprisingly good] artificial intelligence program called the Master Control Program which \u2013 as happens with most of these sorts of movies \u2013 has slowly been gaining sentience and power over the space of about three years. As the story moves along, it turns out that Dillinger [in a twist that should surprise exactly nobody at all] ceases to have effective control over the MCP and the MCP is hell bent on world domination.<\/p>\n

The MCP doesn\u2019t like the idea that Flynn\u2019s snooping around, still looking for evidence of Dillinger\u2019s tampering, so he shuts down access to some of the Encom employees. Remember, this is the dawn of the computer age, so when the MCP does this, it basically means you pack your bags and go home. There\u2019s nothing useful you can do. Flynn and Friends [Alan and a lady who\u2019s an old love interest] decide that this is bad for everyone in general and hack in to Encom so that they can get Flynn\u2019s evidence and \u2013 if possible \u2013 shut down the MCP.<\/p>\n

From here, things go a little awry and Flynn ends up actually inside the computer \u2013 a concept that was quite novel for back then.<\/p>\n

And this, ladies and gentlemen \u2013 is exactly what you came for when you went to see this movie in 1982.<\/p>\n

In much the same way as The Matrix would \u2013 in 1999 \u2013 define cinema with its visual themes of stark black leather and glowing Matrix code, so the world of Tron comes absolutely alive in 1982 through its rather clever use of computer rendered imagery.<\/p>\n

\"Inside<\/a>
The computer world of tron. Such beautiful and colourful style.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The folks in 1982 realized a couple of things really early on: They couldn\u2019t digitize humans, so they didn\u2019t bother trying. The graphics would have taken forever to render if they did anything other than simple matte shapes, so nearly everything is austere in terms of it\u2019s simple blockiness and effective shading, but most importantly, they needed a distinct layer between the real world and the computer world, so they surrounded everything in the computer world with lights of varying shades. And here, in 2015, it still looks amazing.<\/p>\n

There are problems, of course. The visual artistry on display here is stunning, but it\u2019s let down by occasional wonky acting and some very classical-sounding music that is the score. In fact, this is the most jarring thing about the movie. High speed chases are punctuated by slow moving musical arcs that feature strings and instrumentation that wouldn\u2019t sound amiss if I were attending an old-style classical concert.<\/p>\n

But that sense of visual style has had me wishing that computer systems \u2013 on the inside \u2013 looked exactly like that for nearly thirty years.<\/p>\n

Should you watch this?<\/p>\n

Oh God, yes. If you\u2019re into old computer movies, this should be so high on your list, your list should break. If you\u2019re into movies that feature computer games, then \u2013 while some of the computer game ideas here might be old-school and a little painful to watch [but not the Light Cycles \u2013 which has always been a visual treat] \u2013 you should watch this movie just for what it brings to that particular table. If you love movies with particular visual styles and you\u2019re very much into minimalism, then this movie will blow you away with its particular vision of a computer-based world.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t \u2013 whatever you do \u2013 go in expecting it to blow your mind. That worked in 1982. But we know far more about computers now than we ever did, back then. And a lot of that mystery is \u2013 alas \u2013 gone.<\/p>\n

But that aside? It\u2019s a fun movie, and you should go see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tron\u2019s in a very weird position when you think about it in terms of computer movies. On the one hand, it\u2019s caught in the \u201860\u2019s, \u201870\u2019s and early \u201880\u2019s spot where all computers are evil and are going to take over the world. And in another \u2013 largely thanks to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[54,53,52,51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}