Back to the 80s Month: Tron (Dir. Steven Lisberger, 1h 36m, 1982)

 
What does it mean, in cinema, to be a visionary? Today, it seems to be slapped onto any director not churning out the mass produced byproduct of the return of the studio system, be they meriting the label or otherwise, such that this particular plaudit has been affixed to such cinematic titans as Eli Roth, Zack Snyder, and for some bizzare reason, rock-star turned film-maker Rob Zombie. What it basically means, in the modern parlance is "idiosyncratic", for better or ill, directors whose films might, respectively, have all the allure of regurgited video nasties, effects laden cheese cake, and seventies grindhouse. This is not to say cinema doesn't still produce visionaries, but in a market where every director not making endless episodes of a resurrected franchise is basically a damn auteur (and hell, some auteur directors have slummed it in the superhero little leagues), one loses the wheat for the chaff.

So why do I bring this word up, this cinematic bugbear of mine in an industry that seems to have lost the plot on what visionary film making actually looks like? Certainly, over the nearly four years of this blog, I've covered some films, and some film makers who absolutely deserve to be called, and lauded as visionaries, from Kubrick and Jodorowsky to Bunuel and Scott. Today's film, Tron, is no different. It is a nigh-perfect product of the early 80s, where the internet as we know it was barely a thought, where computers had only just begun the slow march towards common place, where computer graphics in cinema, let alone television were basic, blocky and the idea of having actors inhabit CGI worlds was but a dream.

Tron, in short, is a story of a wronged computer programmer, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, who, like most of the rest of the cast, plays a dual role as a program, in this case, the ill-fated CLU), who must escape  his entrapment in the computer world, aided by TRON (Bruce Boxleitner, who also plays Flynn's friend, Alan), with the two of them working together against the forces of the Master Control Program, and its lieutenant, Sark (David Warner, who also plays Dillinger, the creator of Master Control). Yet, in its simple, broad brushstrokes of story, and plot, as our heroes do battle through various games, outwit the forces of Sark and Master Control, attempt to send a signal to the outside world, and finally do battle with Master Control itself, so the film manages to make surprisingly nuanced commentary upon the world of the computer, and how it reflects upon society both at the beginning of the 80s and now.

Nowhere is this seen better than in the film's visual language, from its iconic, utterly alien costumes and worlds, from the pencil of the man that practically invented cyberpunk's visual language, the late Moebius, to its use of colour, to the way that the world of the then nascent computer game industry-Flynn's Arcade being a great paeon to the arcades of the early 80s, as Wreck it Ralph is, three decades later-is reconfigured and reestablished as a proving ground for programs in its most iconic scene, the lightbike race. Moreover, it, very simply, defined its protagonists and antagonists via an excellent, and unmistakable visual cue-its villains are red, its heroes blue, colours that essentially define the film throughout; the villainous Dillinger, in the real world, is depicted, in a scene that neatly blurs the digital and real, in a red outlined helicopter that connects him instantly to Sark and Master Control, whilst many of the scenes involving Bridges, inside and outside the machines, are bathed in blue.

But TRON goes further than this-its digital world is unlike anything before or since, a strange mix of cracked mesa landscape, digital cliffs, and jutting buildings on heavy black backgrounds (a necessity after the film's white-dominated digital world was found to require more lighting than its budget could cover), outlandish CGI craft, from the solar sailer that travels on strange beams of energy, to Sark's own ship, a colossal and hulking machine that draws obvious comparison to the Star Destroyers of Star Wars, five years previously. That these CGI vehicles, outlandish figures and minimal sets, entirely shot in black and white to allow the scenes, and the actors in them to be coloured by hand (an astonishing feat in the 1980s, in which two dozen truckloads of film were required to build up the glowing effect of sets and characters), holds together is a feat in itself, but to make its story entertaining and in places thoughtprovoking is nothing short of a masterclass in narrative.

Certainly, TRON, at its most basic, is a film about exploring this digital world, making sense, visually and narratively of this uncharted realm, in which its major players' avatars, from the villainous Sark and the Master Control Program to the heroic Tron do battle with each other as proxies for their creators, and right the wrongs that Dillinger, and the ever more power hungry Master Control Program has wrought in the real world. Even at this point, TRON feels remarkably prophetic-these versions of ourself that we project across the internet, across video games, and across social media may be more nuanced, more complex than the simple good and evil schism of TRON's programs, but they are our champions in the ever more present digital world. We are, after all, as Lisberger himself noted in the buildup to TRON's visually spectactular but narratively underwhelming sequel, TRON Legacy, all users now, with our programs scattered across the internet

One could, however, read TRON in other ways-undoubtedly, with the programs that believe in the users being persecuted by SARK, with several scenes noting the distaste of Sark and Master Control for those "zelots" who still believe in their users, a film about faith-TRON himself is a quasi-messianiac figure, recieving purpose from his user, and certainly the film's more philosophical moments play out like textbook, if nuanced discussions of the existence of higher powers. Undoubtedly, for all its technological marvels in front of the camera, it is also a film that, in an ever-more automated world, feels like a warning against AI and giving over too much control to the machines.

TRON, nearly four decades on, is like few other films of the 80s, let alone popular cinema in general. It is astonishing, visually and cinematically, a film that manages to create an entirely new world that to this day has been rarely bettered in its uniqueness. In its tale of a man trapped inside a computer world by sinister forces,  it is both a nuanced vision of the digital world we now find ourselves part of, and a visually astonishing, remarkably fresh glimpse of the very birth of CGI in cinema. It is, in a word, visionary.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)