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But there’s just only so much you can stuff into a movie at once and in some ways Tron nearly shudders under the weight of its own lofty ambitions. Fortunately for us all, the real star of the show is the innovative special effects, which appear somewhat quaint by today’s standards, but still bear a unique look and feel that has never been duplicated. Much is made of the movie’s groundbreaking use of CGI and it still impresses me what they were able to accomplish with such limited technology. But here’s a little known fact – in 96 minutes of running time, every CGI shot in Tron strung together end to end barely adds up to 15 minutes. The majority of the visuals you see in this film are traditional hand drawn animation and photographic treatments that are meant to resemble digital effects. The reason for this isn’t just about cost – there was simply no way at the time to combine CGI and live action in the same shot, so the film’s technical team came up with some incredibly creative workarounds for this that gave the film its memorable look. By the time the dazzling climax comes around, you’re really less interested in whether or not these paper thin characters ever earn their freedom as you are in how spectacularly shiny and colorful it all looks! It really is similar to watching a more traditional Disney classic like Cinderella. It is impossible not to note how dated it looks, but the quality achieved was nothing short of timeless by contemporary standards.

While I enthusiastically welcome the sequel, I wonder... Tron came into being despite a great deal of force being arrayed against it. And the technical challenges involved with creating the film spurred the sort of fierce creativity that you don’t see enough of these days in Hollywood. But today, high quality digital effects shouldn’t be a pleasant surprise; they are expected. Nobody doubts that Tron: Legacy will effectively live up to the visual standard set by its predecessor, but if the story doesn’t carry any more water than the original, it might be hard to care. When all is said and done, I think that Tron’s greatest asset is its sunny optimism and damn-the-torpedoes can-do attitude. This was a movie that refused not to be made, and the pioneering creative drive of everyone who fought to make it a reality is evident in every frame. What Tron lacks in gravitas it more than makes up for in style, energy and momentum – it is still fun to watch and despite its age it still has an adventurous sense of freshness that’s sadly lacking in far too many films today. And even had a sequel not been green-lighted and Disney had kept the thing buried in Walt’s backyard, the fact remains that Tron sparked a revolution in film that might not have happened otherwise. The crowd pleasing digital eye candy we all take for granted today might never have happened, or perhaps The Lord of the Rings would have been made in 2025 instead of 2001. So go ahead - lace up your Chuck Taylors, brush out your mullet and settle back into a bean bag – and raise a Jolt Cola to Tron, the little movie about computers that could not be killed. To paraphrase one of the film’s most ear splittingly dreadful lines of dialogue: “You can remove people like us from the system, but our spirit remains in everything you create!”

Truer words were never spoken. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, mister high and mighty Master Control.

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