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If this sounds a little obtuse today, imagine how it must have played to audiences almost 30 years ago. Flynn and his friends accurately embody the stereotypical nerd-tastic personality most people even today associate with computer enthusiasts - but their confusing techno-babble must have been a little off putting to even the savviest moviegoers at the time. At any rate, what could easily have been the most boring corporate espionage thriller ever made quickly rises to a whole new level when Flynn enters the "game grid" of the computer mainframe. Here, the MCP’s efforts to take over the system are represented by programs facing each other in sadistic gladiatorial combat. Programs themselves are represented by avatars that resemble their creators, giving Flynn some welcome company when he runs into Alan’s security program called – surprise! - Tron, and Lora’s rather dull system maintenance subroutine. Together they lead a digital insurgency to free the system from the MCP and restore autonomy to all programs. Those who rebel against the MCP insist on worshiping the humans – or Users - who created them, forming a religious cult of sorts. When Flynn is revealed to be one of these Users, he attains Messianic status among the other programs, becoming de facto head of the resistance. This lends him a remarkable set of physical abilities that are never fully explained, but in the spirit of science fiction you’ll want to just accept this. People can travel faster than light, everyone everywhere speaks English, and in the computer world Kevin Flynn can leap nested-if statements in a single bound. Tron eventually becomes less a movie about computers and more a homily on the evils of corporate conformity and the virtues of faith and freedom of thought. This mish-mash of ideas makes for an admirable stab at allegory but all the clumsy Spartacus style discourse on self-determination is really more than a film like this is equipped to handle.

Director Steven Lisberger and producer Donald Kushner tried very sincerely to create something primarily about overcoming tyranny – the cutting edge special effects were viewed simply as a natural extension of the message they were trying to convey. But the film’s philosophical underpinnings are too often sabotaged by some laughably poor dialogue and an almost nonexistent level of character development. Like any film this one has its share of weaknesses, and if you wanted to dwell on them you could levy any number of additional criticisms against it. If Dillinger was smart enough to create a super intelligent AI powerful enough to take over the world, why did he need to steal ideas from Flynn to get ahead? If Encom was such a bad place to work, couldn’t everyone have just taken their big brains over to Microsoft? And despite its generally likeable cast, the film’s performances are merely serviceable, if little more. Jeff Bridges brings his trademark anarchic flair to Flynn which is good, because the script gives him little to go on. Bruce Boxleitner was reportedly a little uncomfortable with the material and if true, it shows in his performance. But Alan’s inherent skepticism serves as a convincing foil to Flynn’s paranoid bluster – the contrast of personality actually ends up working fairly well. Master Thespian David Warner is probably the standout, as he gets to play three roles here and they’re all the sort of diabolically evil bastard that every actor dreams of playing at least once. Tron has its flaws to be sure, but as an experiment in flirting with the impossible it succeeds brilliantly. What audiences saw up on the screen in 1982 was something they’d never seen before and really have never seen again – it was a once in a lifetime experience that was special primarily by virtue of being unprecedented.

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