Tron: Uprising

[davejames]

Christopher wrote:

---

Yeah, the use of the original white costume was a nice touch. I don't much care for the visual style of Legacy, the way it's reduced the Grid to near-monochrome. In the original movie, only the characters/programs had monochrome lighting; the world they inhabited was richly colorful. And it wasn't just a CGI approximation of the physical world, but embraced the exotic and abstract. I was bugged by the scene in this pilot where the Beck character ended up in a snowbank. That's just too mundane an environment for the Grid.

While the costumes were obviously cool as hell in the original, the world itself never did much for me. Even allowing for the simpler technology, the overall look was just way too flat and grey for my taste.

I found the black and neon look in the sequel to be MUCH more visually striking. And actually having mountain ranges and oceans makes the world somehow feel stranger and even more mysterious, I think. It makes you wonder "how the heck did that happen?" And plus, as we know from today's videogames, it's not that hard to simulate the natural world anymore. It only makes sense that something like that might pop up over there now.

[Christopher]

davejames wrote:

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I found the black and neon look in the sequel to be MUCH more visually striking.

I find it dull because it's so monochrome. The Grid in the original was not limited to just two colors. Only the characters were.

And the world of the original wasn't all that flat and gray. The few physical sets the actors interacted with, like the tank interiors, looked that way because they were filmed in black-and-white and the film frames were printed onto animation cels to be backlit for the "neon" effect. But the fully animated environments had a lot of different colors and were very vivid.

And plus, as we know from today's videogames, it's not that hard to simulate the natural world anymore. It only makes sense that something like that might pop up over there now.

But the difference is in thinking that the purpose of computer animation is to replicate the look of reality. At the time of the original film, there was no prospect of that, so computer art and animation were seen as a means of creating entirely new kinds of images, things that nobody had ever seen before, and expanding the horizons of art and animation. These days, it's all about copying reality, and that sense of embracing the new and abstract, of inventing and exploring new aesthetics that are impossible in reality, has been lost. On the DVD features of the original movie, one of its makers laments that change. They weren't trying to create a world that duplicated reality, but to create one that was entirely unlike reality, that was as new and exotic as it could possibly be.

This is the fundamental difference between TRON and TRON: Legacy. The goal of the former was essentially to create a new kind of cartoon, to make the live-action elements look like computer animation and be as far from reality as possible. The goal of the latter, like the goal of all other CG-heavy films these days, was to make a live-action film incorporating computer-generated images that looked like part of a live-action environment. They're completely opposite design philosophies.

I think I would've enjoyed Legacy a lot more if I hadn't watched the original film immediately before seeing it. The two really don't fit together all that well.

[davejames]

True, they were trying to make the Grid look like more of a real environment, but I don't have a problem with that. It still feels very much like a completely new and different world, and you can only go so abstract before you lose the audience completely.

Plus even in the all-digital world of the Grid, I still want to see characters that look like they're actually existing and interacting with the world around them, and not just superimposed over it like in much of the original.

[Christopher]

Well, as I said, the makers of the original approached it more as an animated film. If they'd kept going in that vein as the technology caught up to their ambitions, they would've probably gone more in the direction of Pixar -- maybe done a sequel where, once the live-action characters entered the Grid, they became fully CGI creations.

Of course, that's what we're getting in Uprising, a pure-cartoon version of the Grid, but I do wish it were more colorful and had some of the wild, exotic landscapes from the original's Sea of Simulation, instead of everything just being black and blue and red.

[davejames]

I'm a little confused about Tron himself now. Are we meant to believe that he was only pretending to be under Clu's control during Legacy? Or did something happen in between this series and the movie that caused him to revert back to being evil again?

[C.E. Evans]

davejames wrote:

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I'm a little confused about Tron himself now. Are we meant to believe that he was only pretending to be under Clu's control during Legacy? Or did something happen in between this series and the movie that caused him to revert back to being evil again?

Right now, Tron is under Clu's control, but he hasn't gone all the way under...yet.

[Enterprise is Great]

That was pretty dang good. The way the heads are animated is kind of weird and offputting but other than that the look of the show is awesome.

[God Magnus]

davejames wrote:

---

I'm a little confused about Tron himself now. Are we meant to believe that he was only pretending to be under Clu's control during Legacy? Or did something happen in between this series and the movie that caused him to revert back to being evil again?

My take on this is that the corruption we saw in him is slowly taking over. My guess is by the end of the series eh'll be fully under Clu's control.

[Hartzilla2007]

I just figure that CLU and Tron will have a fight later possibly in the series at some point where he gets turned.

[137th Gebirg]

Christopher wrote:

---

I find it dull because it's so monochrome. The Grid in the original was not limited to just two colors. Only the characters were.

And the world of the original wasn't all that flat and gray. The few physical sets the actors interacted with, like the tank interiors, looked that way because they were filmed in black-and-white and the film frames were printed onto animation cels to be backlit for the "neon" effect. But the fully animated environments had a lot of different colors and were very vivid.

But the difference is in thinking that the purpose of computer animation is to replicate the look of reality. At the time of the original film, there was no prospect of that, so computer art and animation were seen as a means of creating entirely new kinds of images, things that nobody had ever seen before, and expanding the horizons of art and animation. These days, it's all about copying reality, and that sense of embracing the new and abstract, of inventing and exploring new aesthetics that are impossible in reality, has been lost. On the DVD features of the original movie, one of its makers laments that change. They weren't trying to create a world that duplicated reality, but to create one that was entirely unlike reality, that was as new and exotic as it could possibly be.

This is the fundamental difference between TRON and TRON: Legacy. The goal of the former was essentially to create a new kind of cartoon, to make the live-action elements look like computer animation and be as far from reality as possible. The goal of the latter, like the goal of all other CG-heavy films these days, was to make a live-action film incorporating computer-generated images that looked like part of a live-action environment. They're completely opposite design philosophies.

If you look at the history in-universe, however, it makes sense that the Grid evolved the way that it did. The only "user" in the system was Flynn and he was the only input from the outside world to be able to influence how the inside world looked. He got stuck in there back in, what, the mid-late 80's? Flynn himself probably had no concept of where the future of CG would go and he clearly had his mind more focused on making a neo-hippie utopia than something that was a perfectly-emulated environment of our "imperfect" world. He wanted something pure, clean and under control. That's what he made and that's what we saw that evolved from the original system. The goal of the grid (to Flynn) was not a mundane exercise in alternate reality, but a philosophical and spiritual exercise in creating a paradise of simplicity. The spontaneous creation of the IO's was the perfect culmination of that dream. Then Clu had to go and sterilize it all to take it to HIS next level of perfection, believing all along that that's what Flynn programmed him to do - making things look even more stark and bleak. Again, all by design.

Everything we saw made perfect sense in that world. It may not have been highly visually stimulating to some (personally, I thought it was), but then again, it was never supposed to be.

BTW, are there going to be other episodes of Uprising? I've only seen the pilot and nothing new has popped up in my DVR in the past couple of weeks.

[sojourner]

It premieres this month I think.

[Enterprise is Great]

It premieres June 7th.

[137th Gebirg]

Awesome. Thx much!

[sojourner]

Good first episode tonight. I think Christopher will be pleased that "old tech" like the Bit seem to use the original movie's art style.

[Christopher]

The cameos by the Bit and the "classic" lightcycle were cute, but I'm still not happy with the look of this show. At least they're working in more colors -- the green armor pieces, the multicolored light show at the dance club, the subtle bits of blue or red or purple livening up the black-and-white costumes (bodies?) of the programs, and the varying hair colors of the programs. But the bizarrely staccato animation and the distorted character design style are still very unappealing to me. And the story didn't do much for me either.