When I entered the show room, walls lined with production art and live action stills, I could literally hear the Wendy Carlos TRON score playing in my head.
There was a character section immediately to my right as I entered the room, a series of photographs of all the main characters in costume, labeled with the character names.
Lets start with the obvious:
Kevin Flynn, Jeff Bridges. There were two sets of photos, one set featuring Flynn in a black robe with white lining. He looked a little Jedi-ish with the hood up, but fairly normal with it down. Full head of hair, full beard.
The other set featured Flynn in a white Tron world suit. Its not like the suit in the first movie, more textured with white light lines. He was barefoot in this outfit, like in the teaser. His jacket was removed in one still, his undershirt leaving his arms bare up to the shoulder.
The coolest part was a shot of him in this suit, back to the camera. There was a circular indentation on his back, lined with white light. This is obviously where his disk goes.
Right underneath Flynn was another familiar character, Clu
the Flynn program in the first film if you remember. Clus not a good guy this time out. I asked producer (Sean Bailey) about it. Is this the Clu from the first film gone bad a new character? He only grinned and said, Its Clu version 2.0.
His outfit is sleek black with dark Orange lighted lines, helmet as sleek and obsidian as his outfit. Underneath he will be 1982 Flynn.
Theres a new character that is Flynns right hand man, a program called Rinzler, also shiny black, but hes more slender with harsh yellow light lines. He wields two discs instead of one. We got a demonstration from prop master Jimmy Chow later in the visit and Rinzlers disk literally splits in half, giving him two thinner weapons.
Some of the disks this time around have holes in the middle. Rinzlers does
they look like those toys from the 80s... dont remember what theyre called, but they were thin and red. Remember those or am I going crazy?
Other new characters include someone called Jarvis, Castor (played by FROST VS. NIXONs Michael Sheen) with a light-cane, all white outfit and slicked back white hair, Sirens (female programs
in the production art they were mouthless, draped in clear overcoats and pale white with white light lines) and Black Guards, characters that are bulky and armored with translucent blue energy wings, positioned like that of a fly: two over the shoulder and two underneath each arm. Not sure what thats for
a shield of some kind, maybe?
Waiting for us on the table were Viewmasters with the TRON logo on them. Held up to the light we could see 8 or 10 stereoscopic set photos, including one shot I tried to impress on the Disney people and producers would make a KILLER teaser poster.
Its a shot of Garrett Hedlund playing Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynns son, and protagonist of the story. Hes in his Tron suit, lit up light blue, and standing in front of a strong blue light. The harsh light silhouettes him, leaving all his features and the detail of the suit in blackness. Hes kinda looking over his shoulder, the only thing you can see of the suit are the radiant light lines.
Its a striking image: a heros pose.
This is a good time to talk about the suits. There are two color systems for the light lines. The baddies have harsh colors like oranges and yellows. The goodies have more mellow colors
whites, blues and greens.
Unlike the first film the majority of the suits arent white leotards, but more rubberized black. Seeing them hanging on clothes hangers in the wardrobe department its easy to see a Nolans Batman influence, but thankfully they dont really look that when worn, with the lights illuminated. There are white suits, more like the first one, but its not the most common.
The lights are a new innovation, a type of flexible rubberized lamp that is somehow built using a sort of adapted silk screening process. Every suit has its own illumination for every shot. Because theyre shooting in 3-D its nearly impossible to add in the light as a digital effect in post.
Theyre shooting 3-D with a Sony F35, but the opening of the movie, taking place in modern day real world 2010, will be 2-D, the 3-D not kicking in until we drop into the digital world of Tron. Its a sort of WIZARD OF OZ moment when Sam Flynn drops into the TRON world in search of his missing father.
Apparently the flick opens in 1989 with Flynn being the super successful head of Encom. He had a child shortly after the events of the first film and reads a bedtime story to the now 7 year old before leaving for the night and disappearing off the face of the earth. The bedtime story is supposed to be an analogy to his work.
Its a big media event
itd be like if Bill Gates just disappeared one day. Encom tries to calm the worry over the company by saying its no big deal
Flynn was eccentric, so he probably just went on a sabbatical or something, right? A faction appears contradicting this, sure something is wrong. This group is led by one Mr. Alan Bradley, played by a returning Bruce Boxleitner.
Without a dad and, apparently, a dead mom, Sam grows up with his grandparents and even though hes now legally the largest shareholder in Encom he doesnt want any of it, living modestly in a shipping container reconstituted into a home on the river with a beautiful view of the city and Encome itself. The 2010 Encom building is the newly built Shangri La Hotel in Vancouver, by the way.
One day Alan comes to him with a bit of data he got off of an Encom computer (he still works there, but has been marginalized since Flynns disappearance) that might lead them to Kevin Flynn. Sam reluctantly goes on the search, which begins in Flynns Arcade, perfectly reconstructed from the previous film. I saw a 3-D still later in the visit of the arcade with dozens of vintage arcade games covered in plastic, with the TRON game under a bright neon sign declaring FLYNNS HOME OF TRON. Its the original TRON arcade game we all grew up with, but in this world its an Encom game, not a Ballys game. Youve seen a great deal of Flynns Arcade in the trailer and it was just as striking in the still I saw.
That begins Sams descent down the rabbits hole.
Things you should know about this world, information gathered from Q&As with the producers, art director, the tour around the production art room and some bits snatched from private conversations with the team there:
- The digital Tron world is a creation of Flynn and is hosted on private 1989 servers, not connected to the internet.
- The producers described this digital world as the computer equivalent of the Galapagos Islands. The digital world has evolved on its own, with no outside influence since Flynn built it.
- The world is darker than the previous, with an obvious BLADE RUNNER influence, apt because the designer of Ridley Scotts futurist world was Syd Mead who also designed much of the original TRON world.
- Syd Mead came in for a day to give his thoughts on what the design team has churned out thus far.
- Theres a stadium where games are played this time out, presided over by Clu.
- When talking to the producers they said they went into this sequel (which holds the record for most time passed between an original film and its sequel, with returning cast, we were told) with the mindset that there were 4 things they owed the fans: Lit suits, Jeff Bridges, light cycles and a feeling that this movie is something new just as the original was something no one had seen before.
- They made mention that Flynn and Clu square off at some point in the movie. I. Cant. Wait. The Dude vs. Starman? Brilliant.
- Director Joseph Kosinski is a first time feature director, but you know his work from the GEARS OF WAR Mad World commercial and that great HALO 3 Starry Night commercial. Hes a graduate of Columbia with a degree in architecture, so the visual look of the film is extremely important to him.
- TRON: LEGACY is NOT a mo-cap production. Theyre shooting 64 or 65 days with real sets. Obviously blue-screen plays a large role to help create the digital world of Tron, but a lot of real sets are not only built, but used throughout the film.
- Kosinski plans to vary up his shooting techniques throughout the production in order to never tip his hand on how the world is being presented to the audience. There will be motion capture for some scenes (lightcycles) and characters (but with the real actors faces filmed and put onto the CG character), but totally in-camera segments for others. Sometimes hell mix and match depending on whats best for the scene.
- There is some exploration of the religious undertones of the original, ie The Users. This time Im guessing Flynn himself is a deity since he is the creator of this world and inhabits it.
- Bit will not make an appearance, which makes me sad. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
- The name of the company that created the shipping containers that Sam lives in at the beginning of the story is DUMONT (at least in the production art). Nice nod, eh?
- There will be new disk game played, but we werent told what theyd be. We did see some artwork from an arena which was just four hallways intersecting at a circular chamber.
- Theres a new Solar Sailor, which looks pretty much like the original, but with a purple color scheme and a thicker middle to hold more programs.
- Look for a vehicle called the Light Runner, a low-riding car built for speed, but that turns into a dune buggy type vehicle when off-road. Its not a drastic change or a morphing thing
essentially the cab sits up a little higher and the wheels sprout ridges like a kleet.
- Another new vehicle was called Clus Throne Ship, dark black ship with Clus dark orange light scheme
think the basic shape of Lukes landspeeder, but much larger and as an enclosed ship with glass ceilings. Also there was a little hammerhead-like shape instead of a rounded or pointed front. There was some beautiful artwork of Clu lounging on an obsidian throne in the ship, the world of TRON seen through the large windows above.
- The world of Tron is one big city and the more you get out of the city center you lose definition and symmetry, eventually falling off into the Sea of Simulation according to the production designer, Darren Gilford.
- Gilford also said there are a lot of soft-cornered hexagons built into the architecture of the world.
- There will be an interim lightcycle, bridging the first movie to the second. The riders are exposed in the 2010 Tron universe, something Steven Lisberger tried to do with the original, but the technology wasnt there, so they had to dome it, apparently that dome being one of the most complicated effects for the computers to pull off back in the day. So between the old lightcycles and the new, rider-exposed cycles there is one that Flynn rides that is an amalgam of the two, with the newer design and look, but the dome of the original.
- The Recognizors are back and they have a loading system where programs can enter the feet, a sort of elevator-like enclosure, that takes them to the bridge. Other than a little more texture and definition they seem relatively unchanged.
- There will be a new video game released at the same time as the new TRON movie. The game developers (Disneys in-house people) have been working closely with the designers of the movie to really make it a part of the movie experience.
Ive been asked by the folks at Disney to break the report up into two pieces, one running now and one closer to release, so I figure this is a good spot to split them.
The second piece is the actual visit to the set, which was a real deal practical set (with a lot of bluescreen out the windows)
a club in the TRON world called End of Line Club run by Sheens program. Tron nerds ears perked up at that name, I bet.
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