It was widely viewed as a cynical attempt by Hollywood to cash in on the skyrocketing popularity of videogames at the time – and, while there’s a case for Frenchman Jean Giraud’s set design achieving iconic status the other side of New Rave, not to mention a lengthy Daft Punk career – beneath the visual bluster of director Steven Lisberger’s film laid a movie skeletal, inane and cold.ĭespite all reason suggesting otherwise, Disney have succeeded in making you believe this is a film you want to see, yet cultural reinvention aside, Tron: Legacy learns little from its elder brother’s mistakes. It achieved a modest return at the box-office. Tron wasn’t a great sci-film in 1982, let alone laid out amongst the many genre triumphs of the era. Yet of all their technical achievements on screen, it’s within the cultural ephemera that Disney deserve most of their dues. $150 million has been spent on marketing, the film was trailed by one of the most talked about viral campaigns of the year, while in pairing up craggy ol’ Jeff Bridges with his more spritely younger self, they’ve set a precedent for aging thesps to revisit former glories that will be either interesting or plain depressing to see play out from here. Similar plans to produce The Cabbage Patch Kids: Redux are as yet unconfirmed.Ĭasting bright young things Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, the studio have said much that is boastful about the new film’s technical ingenuity. It’s a rebirth for the eighties curio that Disney are banking on now becoming a franchise. Now, in the shape of Tron: Legacy supposition has become fact. or Blade Runner, that would be ripe for reappraisal almost thirty years later.
Of all the sci-fi released in 1982, few would have predicted it would be Tron, and not E.T.