Tron came out in the summer of 1982, when I was just shy of 10 years old. What I most remember from that year, though, is the video game. It was incredibly sophisticated for its time and only available at the arcade in the mall. I would ride my little one-speed bike down there, liquidate my allowance money into quarters, and spend hours feeding the machine. To this day when I see that logo I remember the exact mall smell, the clammy mix of sweat and industrial carpet cleaner, the low, constant buzzing of conversations and dings and beeps, the sense of moving through a dimly lit bubble outside the spacetime continuum of ordinary life.
They’re remaking the movie, but frankly my hopes are not high. What can be new any more about computers? What amount of CGI can impress us any more?
There will probably be a new video game too, but believe it or not, kids, you lose something when you play all your video games in your bedroom. Do they even have arcades any more?
One bright side of the new movie is that they’ve commissioned Daft Punk to do the soundtrack. It’s more sountrack-y and less Daft Punk-y than I expected, if that makes sense, but it’s good. This track, “The Grid,” sums up what has happened between 1982 and today about as well as anything could. We got in!
——
Bonus trailers!
Here’s the trailer for the original Tron — classic stuff:
Here’s the trailer for the new one:
