Tron

1982 computer movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: This prequel to The Big Lebowski has The Dude, here a video gamer rather than a bowler, slurped into a computer, given a skin-tight glowing outfit and a Frisbee, and forced to battle a guy in a different colored skin-tight suit. Oh, snap!

I have mixed feelings about this one. Tron's got a unique look, but it kind of looks a little dorky. I think it even looked dorky back in '82, but in a way, it really doesn't seem dated. The computer world has to look minimalistic and cartoony, and ultimately, I always like how this movie looks. The action scenes (the motorcycle scene, that giant thing Jeff Bridges reassembles telepathically [?] and drives around, the climactic Frisbee toss) increase in lameness with each passing year, and the story is really confusing, especially for a Disney movie. Like all Disney science fiction movies, I wish this had a little more of an edge. It's vanilla sci-fi which is too bad since this could have had some interesting things to say then that would have still had relevancy today. Instead, it doesn't say much of anything. It's thematically lost. Is it a religious allegory? A fable? A warning? A muddled metaphor? Something else? The music is about perfect for the imagery. That's Wendy Carlos, formerly Walter Carlos, who did music for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Which reminds me of a question I have about this movie: Why would the programs in this have genders? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad Cindy Morgan is in this movie, probably just because I was tired of seeing only men in the skin-tight outfits. But wouldn't these programs lack genitalia? And would Jeff Bridges lose his genitals once he enters the virtual world? Or would he, since he's a programmer instead of a program, have conspicuous genitalia and become some sort of god in the computer world? It's something to think about. See, if somebody other than Disney made this movie, I'm sure genitals would have played a more prominent role.

Here's a guy who likes Tron a little more than I do: