anyone see the new TRON? - a bit of spoiler alert

[kensuguro]

I just saw TRON legend this past weekend... got mixed feelings about it, and was wondering what you guys thought.

I was only 4-5 when I saw the original.. didn't care much for it apart from the cool graphics. The game world looked unworldly in the most extreme sense. The colors were screwed up, the scenes looked like you were watching everything through a nightvision scope. I do remember the light cycle scene, but I couldn't remember anything about the story. I also remembered the guys had frisbees that flew very fast, and also drank water from it. There were red guys, and blue guys, and sometimes they changed color.. I also learned way later, at music school, that Wendy Carlos did the music. So that's my impression of the old one, just to put things in perspective.

From my perspective, the new one missed the mark on some critical fronts. The story? I didn't really care. I did feel like the script was trying too hard to be epic, which it didn't need to be. I mainly had problem with the visuals.

Most people seemed content that TRON got updated with modern, photorealistic visuals, but that completely misses the point of why TRON used CGI in the first place. For TRON, CGI is used to draw the imaginary world of the Grid. The Grid is meant to be presented and perceived as this otherworldly place. That is why the old wireframe, semi-painted, strangely lit visuals worked. It looked so messed up, that everything about it was unreal. So the distinction of "real", and "unreal", was emphasized by the visuals.

Not take the Grid, and make it photorealistic. The people are lit perfectly, and everything in the world is concretely defined. So my question was... then why does it have to be in the Grid? In this case, the Portal can be replaced with a time machine, and the Grid can be replaced by a future world. There's nothing about the Grid that visually communicates that it is an unworldly place. The distinction is there, but it is not as visually pronounced as the original.

What bugs me about this is that the production failed to recognize the single most important trait of the original. That "look" was what made TRON, and defines TRON. Replacing Wendy Carlos with Daft Punk? A little barbaric, but who cares, I think Daft Punk is okay. A strange fairy tale / legend like story that doesn't really fit the theme? Again, TRON isn't even a movie about story. So at least they could have kept with the theme of otherworldly visuals.

This falls in line with a conversation I have with my sister (who is now a script writer in Japan) at least once a year. In communication, you can be ambiguous, or specific. An icon may be simple, but it is also ambiguous. Fairytales and lores are full of ambiguous characters. The details are left out, so they may be filled in by the listener, or by the story teller to suite preference, different times. Specifics are effective too, but also creates many dependencies. A detailed story or visuals ask less of the listener, with the trade off of being tied to a very specific point in time, a specific interpretation, or catering to a particular preference.

With technology, it's easy to get into detail and specifics. The bandwidth of everything is increasing, and productions can squeeze in a little more every year. But does that mean the natural progression is from the general to the specific? Does it mean we MUST go from iconic to extreme detail? I don't think so. The level of detail is context specific, not time or technology specific. I think creative products do not need to, or should not provide complete detail. It should be inspiring, asking the user to participate using their imagination. I think this is not being naive, I believe this both idealistically, and from a product design perspective.

It's sort of like a synth sound. Let's say it's a typical acid TB303 sound. Whatever sound it is, you know that it's not a wood bass. It could be, at times. But it is most definitely not a perfect reproduction of a wood bass, nor it is of an electric bass. A TB303 is sort of its own thing, but it's characteristic is ambiguous enough that the listener (especially if they don't know what a TB303 is) is free to associate with it, whatever they wish. Of course, the cost of this, is that a TB303 will is not designed to replicate a wood bass, or any real instrument.

On the other hand, a physmod electric bass synth is the opposite. A bunch of computation goes in to calculate the details that define an electric bass's sound. It is much more obvious to the listener that the sound is an electric bass. The purpose of a physmod synth, then, is to replicate as accurately as possible. From the listener's end though, it doesn't matter whether it's physmod or a real one. Going down the realism route communicates to the listener that if you are a physmod, then your job is to replicate. If you don't, then the synth's rational for existence has failed. For the user, it merely registers as "a strange electric bass sound". Not only has the sound failed to inspire, it has failed to justify its existence.

It's no surprise that photorealism ended quite a while ago in art. There is a limit to what it can do, or more precisely, it serves a specific purpose. So again, to me it seems absurd that with CGI's application only goes towards photorealism. Technically, I believe photorealism is important, but in its application, I believe going for only photorealism is very limiting. True, there are great photos, but that doesn't mean painting is less inspiring, or less effective. It isn't a linear progression.

So TRON's move from iconic, abstract visuals, to complete photorealism, even when it goes against its visual purpose of depicting an unworldly space, seemed to rub in my face the tendency to believe in this sort of progression.

Anyway, to end this insanely long post, I'll just say that perhaps not too many people felt the sort of crush that I felt. I know I'm a fringe person with fringe ideals. So to the masses it must have been yet another cool CGI film that you'd rather watch in the theater than at home. Daft Punk had mildly cool sounding material, orchestrated and arranged by some other person. Some parts of the movie was 3D. As a product, it was pieced together to standard. But it will only be that. 20 years from now, let alone 1 months from now, it most likely will have disappeared from people's memories.

[dawman]

Dude that was like the best critique of a movie/music trailer I have ever read.
You have nailed it too. Old Tron was the bomb back in 1980, even the video game was cool.
Thats the problem with multiple producers. Safe plays and comprimises and loss of the entire original concept. I dont even want to see it now, but I know my kid will force me.
We have seen a few movies that really suck, but I didn't know that until I left the theater.
I was too busy being dazzled by real 3d.

Anyways thanks for the warning, and you really should offer your skills to a production company. You probably added more excitement to the movie inadvertantly.


CiaoMein,

[garyb]

they're just getting you ready for your VR implant and plug in to the Matrix v1.1...

everything else just needs to be mildly entertaining.

[dante]

When I saw the new TRON it was more or less as I expected. I didnt expect it would be the old vector graphics of the original, so I wasnt disappointed. I guess Ken, although I agree with most of what you say I didnt find the new version disappointing because of it. I sorta expected the graphics would be evolved highly detailed 3D.

I too preferred the original light cycles battling on a flat plane where the sharp 90 degree turn in front of the enemy was just about the only strategic trump card instead of this over and under stuff. But making a souped up version of the ol' vector graphics world may have appealled only to us GenX from the 80's (who played the original Star Wars trench fighter and Battle Zone games), but in remakes these days they try to capture the newbies more than just satisfy us oldies, its a numbers marketing game. So you kinda have to try to watch these things with younger eyes I guess.

[kensuguro]

well, it's a little more than nostalgia for vector graphics.. I mean more about understanding the purpose of the visual representation, and choosing the idiom most suitable for the context. I'd care less about whether it was photo realistic or not, if it pulled off the effect of depicting the grid as a "fake" place, which is the opposite of the real world. But anyway.. I guess my frustration from my producer position (of games) since seemingly, it was a bad production call.

[dante]

...it still looks fake though....a lot more fake than say the matrix

[ChrisWerner]

I've seen the official DVD now at home.
Damn, I have to recant my first impression. I can close my eyes trough the whole movie but damn the audio track is just amazing.

No Wendy but good.