[NobleSavage]

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/03/09/tron-legacy-trailer/

Looks nifty. The guy playing Flynn's son looks like he might be a major toolshed, though.
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Ever kick somebody in the 'nads? Gouge somebody's eye? Well, that's krav maga. Just a little more formalized.

[timd]

Question Ron. Is Tron worth seeing?

And I swear to God, if you give me another dose of Terminator, I'll end your life for real.
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[NobleSavage]

Tough to say. Is Tron a very good movie? Probably not. But it was the first sci-fi movie a lot of us remember seeing that actually took place within a video game, it was the first CGI movie most of us saw, and most of us saw it when we were young enough for it to make a huge impression. Tron was a big thing because it was all CGI, not because of acting or plot.

I guess if Terminator wasn't that impressive to you, I'd skip Tron, although I still feel they're both classics that you need to have seen to understand the foundation on which today's sci-fi movies are built...
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Ever kick somebody in the 'nads? Gouge somebody's eye? Well, that's krav maga. Just a little more formalized.

[Drool_bucket]

I have very fond memories of Tron. Watching it with my older brother on his little TV in our bedroom, thinking how cool it was and wanting to play the frisbee and motorcycle-wall games...

I watched it about two months ago and was thinking how much better it was in my memory, which is often the case with things from our childhoods. That being said, I still enjoyed it for, as Ron put it, a reminder of where a lot of the stuff we like nowadays comes from.

I would suggest watching it.

and do you really not like Termintor?
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TAFK

[afeinman]

Tron is worth watching. It is cheesy in spots, but it is engaging. You'll wince at spots but it's not awful.

It also gives you a view into the world *we* grew up in, where there was an "arcade" on the corner that you could go to and play video games--where people actually hung out to play video games in a public space, and quarters were worth twice as much as any other money because they could buy you more video game time.

If you're expecting impressive special effects, just think that all of that crap was done on a computer whose processing power is dwarfed by most cameras/phones/etc. nowadays. Literally dwarfed. Like an iPhone could render it in real-time, when it took months and months to render each scene in Tron.

[eric]

I loved Tron as a kid. Not only is it "one of the first movies set in a video game", it's one of the works of sci-fi that introduced the concept of cyberspace- before William Gibson even created the word, I believe. It's also one of the first films to heavily use computer graphics, rather nicely as it took advantage of the limitations of the medium to create the aesthetic for the world inside the computer (unlike The Last Starfighter, which was heralded for it's use of CGI, where the climax ends up looking like a slightly more advanced version of the titular arcade game the hero plays at the start of the film, setting events in motion).

I think Tron still holds up- it's a pretty simple allegory for a guy getting pulled into a fantasy realm (sort of a cyber-Arcadia) and overthrowing the evil regime that's oppressing the native protagonists. It's got everything a Hero's Journey should- allies, a trek across dangerous/unfamiliar/hostile territory, special weapons granted only to a class of warriors, a gate guardian, and so on. It also features another common theme to these kinds of fairy tales- the main character shows up and due to some quality of being from where he's from, he is immediately better suited to save the natives than they are themselves (see Superman, or Christopher Columbus)- in this case because he's a "User", not a "Program" like the other characters.

Some of the metaphors for life inside the computer are imperfect, especially with the knowledge the average person now has about computer use (versus the average person's knowledge in 198X when the first one was released). But if you can sit back and enjoy it as a sci-fi/fantasy adventure and overlook the obvious shortcomings any 20-odd year-old movie about computers would have, it's definitely worth watching- especially to prepare for the sequel, which looks pretty good.

[web ghost]

I'm sure it will be good. It looks to me like they kind of dispensed with that blacklight luminescent look a little bit. That aesthetic was what made the first one IMO. We'll see.

Tim: If you didn't like Terminator, you're hopeless; don't bother watching Tron, you won't get it. Nothing personal, but if you can't get past older special effects and see that Terminator, regardless of the fact that it doesn't look like Avatar, is a good movie, then you'd get nothing out of Tron.

Hmmm... I wonder who directed Terminator 2?
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"Beware of this and that." Edward Gorey

[mace_ace]

I finally watched the trailer and am at least intrigued about this.
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"well, you can split fire between four seperate units, plus that squad can make french fries and cure cancer! And they never miss!" -Tunderjaw