Tron’s time has finally come
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — There’s a term for movies that are ahead of their time.
Flops.
Take, for instance, 1982’s Tron, heavily hyped for its groundbreaking computerized graphics only to be snubbed at the box office by the then-pre-digital masses.
Still, the film managed to cultivate a fanbase so enthusiastic that reports have long persisted of a possible sequel.
Even star Jeff Bridges remembers hearing recurring rumours of a Tron 2.
“Over the years, somebody would say, ‘So I hear they’re making a new Tron’ and I’d say, ‘What are you talking about?’ They’d say, ‘Oh yeah, you’re kind of lost in the world, kind of Apocalypse Now — you’re (Marlon Brando’s) Kurtz or something’ and I’d say, ‘What are you talking about?’ And here it is, 30 years later. It’s quite amazing.”
First announced at last year’s Comic-Con, Tron Legacy, which has been shooting in Vancouver, is due out in the fall of 2010.
Bridges returns — as multiple versions of himself, no less — alongside Garrett Hedlund and House’s Olivia Wilde.
“It’s kind of bizarre,” says Bridges, 59. “I’m kind of reticent to discuss this stuff because it’s like a magician shows up and tells you how he’s going to do his trick.”
Behind the camera is Joseph Kosinski, a commercial director who is making his feature-film debut under the aegis of Tron creator Steven Lisberger.
Kosinski believes the plot — in which Hedlund, as Bridges’ son, enters the cyber-scape to locate his missing father — will appeal to more than just the die-hards that have been salivating decades for a sequel.
What both demos — newcomers and fans — will discover is that “the world of Tron has evolved kind of on its own like an aquarium, disconnected from the outside world for 20, 25 years,” Kosinski says. “The simulation has gotten more perfect and more realistic so the scale of the world is much bigger than it was before … The line between what’s real and what’s not should be blurred so that you can’t tell the difference.”
All of which should please Lisberger most of all. What does he think of this chance at a better-appreciated version 2.0? “It’s a generational thing,” he says philosophically. “Part of the reason Tron is happening now is that it feels like the generational wheel has aligned.”
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