mlai
What was so "groundbreaking" about Tron?

I'm taking this from Wiki:

Someone
Being one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style.

Also, the way they filmed it and the way it looked as a result was very ground-breaking in itself.

Someone
Most of the scenes, backgrounds and visual effects in the film were created using more traditional techniques and a unique process known as "backlit animation". In this process, live-action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white on an entirely black set, printed on large-format high-contrast film, then colorized with photographic and rotoscopic techniques to give them a "technological" feel. With multiple layers of high-contrast, large-format positives and negatives, this process required truckloads of sheet film and a workload even greater than that of a conventional cel-animated feature. In addition, the varying quality and age of the film layers caused differing brightness levels for the backlit effects from frame to frame, explaining why glowing outlines and circuit traces tended to flicker in the original film. Due to its difficulty and cost, this process would never be repeated for another feature film.

It's the fact that they filmed on an entirely black set in order to create the effect they wanted. I was watching "The Making of Tron" the other day and a lighting specialist had mentioned that this has never been done before and will probably never be repeated again.

I understand how it was groundbreaking because of its SFX in an early sci-fi film industry. I meant how it was groundbreaking in terms of storyline. From previous posts, it seems they thought the story was really deep and ahead of its time etc.

There are plenty of old stories about the protagonist getting sucked into a book or a painting, into a supernatural world. Tron is simply taking that old story structure and laying it onto a new technological medium. Unless Tron is innovative in other ways which I can't recall, since I watched it so long ago.

mlai
There are plenty of old stories about the protagonist getting sucked into a book or a painting, into a supernatural world. Tron is simply taking that old story structure and laying it onto a new technological medium. Unless Tron is innovative in other ways which I can't recall, since I watched it so long ago.

Actually that is innovative in a way Mlai, since in those other examples people are sucked into easily understandable functioning worlds, even if they're weird like OZ, and they're either "another place" or some pre-existing narrative- like that in a painting or written story.

With the Tron Story you're representing the insides and the functioning of an inanimate machine and technological, electrical processes as human characters... That's a bit more abstract than the normal fish-out-of-water fantasy scenario.

It's since been done with stuff like Reeboot (not with an outside person inside though), so it wouldn't be quite as striking.

It also symbolizes freedom of religion, the persecution of belief by a more powerful entity than you (ie- your government), and an actual 'savior' sent form said place of belief.

RAM: Do you believe in users?
CROM: Of course! If there aren't any users, then who made me?

SpANG
If there aren't any users, then who made me?

HAL

ozoneocean

SpANG
If there aren't any users, then who made me?

HAL

HAL is too busy with Dave to have anything to do with those guys. ;)

I just rented tron and re-watched it again. It's been a while and now that I think about it so much stuff seemed to have had been influenced by tron

As long as it has a 30-foot David Warner breathing fire and screaming the Godzilla yell, I'll be happy.

"Mega-David Warner! Mega-David Warnder"(to the tune of "Mecha-Streisand")