TRON/Trivia

• The original TRON animation created by Lisberger Studios was marketed by Steve Lisberger as a television advertisement for various radio stations.
• The Tron Lines on the helicopter in the opening filmed sequence was neither CGI nor painted cel animation, but reflective tape placed on the helicopter and filmed with red lights from a distance.
• Acting for Two:
  • Dillinger, Sark and the MCP are all played by David Warner.
  • All programs have the same actor as their Users: Flynn and Clu, Alan and Tron, Lora and Yori...
  • Even the PA announcements in the laser bay were done by the same person voicing the announcements inside the Game Grid.
• Defictionalization:
  • The "Light Cycle" game became a popular arcade game pretty quickly, which is somewhat recursive considering that it itself was based on one of the first arcade games.
  • Inverted with the TRON arcade game (whose cabinet is briefly seen) which was released just shortly before the movie (and spawned both a sequel and a few home games). The movie received not one, but two arcade games: TRON and Discs of TRON. Discs was originally supposed to be part of the former, but was cut for time. Interestingly, the "Grid Bugs" appear in the game TRON, but only receive a comment in the movie TRON!
  • Eventually played straight with Space Paranoids, which was released as an online game in 2009.
• Deleted Scene: The "love" scene between Tron and Yori, including Yori getting a new outfit before they head for the I/O Tower. Described in detail in the novel.
• Doing It for the Art: Stephen Lisberger said he originally had the solar sailer's wings be opaque, since making them translucent would cost an arm and a leg. He was finally convinced, and was happy that he was, stating that the sailer was far more beautiful, delicate and butterfly-like with translucent wings.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Show this one to a Babylon 5 fan. Boxlitner's obvious, as is the guy after the Holy Grail, but the future Centauri ambassador is harder to spot...
  • And you might also notice that Mr. The Kid plays Ram.
  • Harder to put a finger on, but the main bad of the movie, (all three of them) would 15 years later be Lovejoy in Titanic
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: By the time of Tron: Legacy's release in 2010, the film was hard to find on either DVD or Netflix. Seemed weird, as studios normally use sequels to put some films back in the market (TRON only got that when Legacy hit shelves in 2011).
• Nothing Left to the Imagination: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences explicitly disqualified Tron from receiving a special effects Oscar, declaring the use of computers to be "cheating".
• Talking to Himself: David Warner plays Dillinger, Sark and the MCP. The MCP is shown to interact with the other two on numerous separate occasions.
• Technology Marches On: Sort of -- the film is based in an 80's supercomputer, and the angular look was a deliberate aesthetic choice to make TRON look like a 16-bit world.
• Throw It In: When the prints came back from Taiwan, there were often errors in the frames that looked like flashes of light. Since it would cost way too much to have it done over, Lisberger had a Eureka Moment and realized, of course, the computer world would have electric glitches. So, basically, he added a sound effect and it became atmosphere.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The general look and feel of the computer world, meant to resemble the computer displays and games of the time (black backgrounds! semi-wireframe 3D graphics!), as well as the computer technology itself (command-line interfaces! teleprinters!) must have looked awfully cutting-edge and modern at the time. Now, it looks pretty retro.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The director asked Peter O'Toole to play Dillinger... however, he really wanted to play Tron and even went so far as to go jumping up and down on beds and furniture just to prove he was still nimble enough for such a physically demanding job.
  • On the DVD's "Making of" documentary, they explain that O'Toole bowed out after finding out that the majority of the film would be shot in front of blue-screen (or black, whatever) instead of on sets and locations. Technically, any scenes in the electronic world that had actors in them were filmed on sets. They were just all black with backlit animation added in post-production.