The Legacy of 'Tron'

OK, let's be honest here. Tron was never a great movie.

Visually stunning for its time, yes, but not much else. The story had something to do with a video game geek (Jeff Bridges) getting back the game programs that the evil corporate hot shot (David Warner) stole from him.  The game geek hangs out with the computer geek (Bruce Boxleitner) and the lab geek (the hot chick from Caddyshack). Lame dialog, trite storyline. The game geek gets zapped into a computer grid. Complications ensue.

If Disney had made Tron ten years earlier, Kurt Russell would've starred as Kevin Flynn and Cesar Romero would've been Master Control. But, this was 1982 and computer animation was about to change everything you knew about movies. What do you remember about the first time you saw Tron? It sure as heck wasn't the story. It was all about super-cool special effects and light cycle races. Am I right?

But, 28 years later, it's still with you. And come December, if you're of a certain age, you're taking your kids--maybe even your grandkids--to geek out once again on the private lives of computer chips. And the special effects might have improved just a wee bit this time around. I took in the 23-minute preview of Tron: Legacy at Thursday's nationwide "Tron Night" presentation.  As a first impression, it did not disappoint. The movie's darker, even brooding at times, with young Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) pulled into the same computer world where his father Kevin (Bridges) apparently disappeared 20 years ago. When we discover Kevin this time, though, he seems less a prisoner of the game grid and more its sullen Zen master. For now, let's just call him the Dude in the Machine.

To get to his father, Sam must fight his way through a series of games, throwing deadly lighted discs and, oh yes, racing light cycles. He's assisted by the chirpy but mysterious Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a cross between Trinity from The Matrix and Abby from NCIS.

Even in the preview, there are story elements that don't quite make sense--like why was the phone service turned off at Flynn's Arcade 20 years ago, but not the power?--but the purpose of the whole movie is to get you on the grid, and once you're there it looks fantastic. There's a sense of realism in Tron: Legacy that simply wasn't possible in 1982. The grid looks like a real place, not a day-glow computer effect. Credit director Joseph Kosinski for using real light whenever possible, even embedded in the characters' costumes. It's makes the CG enhancements that much more realistic.

Allow me to gripe about 3D again, however. It's superfluous and doesn't improve the look of Tron: Legacy. I'll be catching the final release in 2D, thank you very much.

Tron: Legacy opens December 17. I'll be the one in line with all the rabid fanboys. We've waited 28 years for this. That's an awfully long time to wait for a sequel to a mediocre movie.

But, geez, that light cycle race was cool.

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Remembering a Legend: Ollie Johnston

Disney Legend Ollie Johnston was born today in 1912.

A master of personality animation, Johnston grew up in Northern California, studied art at Stanford and later attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. In those early days, animation interested him, but he was never truly inspired by its potential until he saw Disney's 1934 Pluto cartoon Playful Pluto.

The flypaper sequence in Playful Pluto is an animation landmark for being the best earliest example of a cartoon character demonstrating a thought process. It was drawn by Norm Ferguson, a gifted Disney artist who went on to be a supervising animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. He was also an animation director on such films as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Johnston joined Disney in 1935 and had a career at the studio that spanned over 40 years. He was one of Walt's "Nine Old Men," the core group of animators who created virtually all of Disney's animated feature films from the 1930s to the 1970s. Among Johnston's most notable characters were Thumper (Bambi), Alice (Alice in Wonderland), Mr. Smee (Peter Pan), Baloo (The Jungle Book), Prince John (Robin Hood) and Sir Hiss (Robin Hood).

Johnston forged a lifelong friendship with fellow animator Frank Thomas. Together they wrote several books, including what is considered to be the bible of modern animation, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.

Johnston passed away on April 14, 2008 at the age of 95. He was Disney's last surviving "Old Man."

Video clips are from the 1995 documentary Frank and Ollie, © Disney. 

 

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The Walt Disney Family Museum: One Year Later

Richard Benefield

Walt Disney famously said, "Disneyland will never be completed as long as there is imagination left in the world." In San Francisco, the Walt Disney Family Museum is taking a similar approach.  It continually tweaks things--adding additional seating here, moving a display there--to improve the appearance and flow of the ten galleries that trace Walt's life from his humble Midwest beginnings to his perch atop an entertainment empire.  "We've done a few very minor changes," says museum executive director Richard Benefield.  And many of those changes have come at the direction of the museum's co-founder, Walt's daughter, Diane Disney Miller. "She's so much like her father," says Richard. "She knows how things have to be presented really in a high-quality way."

Presentation is everything at the museum, with multimedia screens, listening stations and hands-on activities working side-by-side with the carefully preserved artifacts of Walt's life. I visited earlier this month as the museum was celebrating its first anniversary and had the opportunity to speak with Richard in person and catch up on the developments of the past year.

Business has been brisk, but not overwhelming, with just over 120,000 people visiting in the last 12 months. "It's not as much as we thought it would be," says Richard. Still, the museum has uniquely established itself as a destination museum attracting Disney fans and historians worldwide. "Just a little over fifty percent of the total visitorship comes from the Greater Bay Area," says Richard. The rest come from elsewhere. "There are a lot of people making a pilgrimage here."

Walt Disney's special Oscar for
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

The museum benefited in September from a free "Museum Day," a nationwide program put on by the Smithsonian Institution that brought a capacity crowd of 1,402 visitors to the museum in a single day. Movie screenings and educational events have also been driving traffic. Summer camp programs were introduced earlier this year, giving kids and teens the opportunity to try their hands at digital animation, sound design, pencil animation, claymation and stop-motion photography. The museum also stepped up its Internet presence, launching its Storyboard blog over the summer. The blog shares fascinating insight into Disney history and museum activities.

November 18 is Mickey Mouse's official birthday and he'll be in the spotlight throughout the month with museum screenings of his classic cartoons, including Steamboat Willie and The Band Concert. On November 13, Vincent Vedrenne with the Walt Disney Company will give a presentation on the Evolution of Mickey Mouse. Original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers Bobby Burgess, Sharon Baird and Cubby O'Brien will be on hand November 20 to share their memories of working for Walt.

In December, the museum will bring back its popular film Christmas with Walt Disney, a compendium of winter-themed Disney cartoons and rare holiday footage of Walt at the studio and with his family. The film was produced by Don Hahn (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King), who has become a good friend of the museum. Hahn compiled material for this weekend's HallowScreen presentation of spooky Disney cartoons and reportedly has a documentary about legendary Disney artist Mary Blair in development.

Between its special presentations and detailed exhibits, the Walt Disney Family Museum has committed itself to give the most accurate account of Walt that it can. Again, Richard gives much of the credit to Diane. "She wants to get the story so right that she doesn't even trust her own memory on a lot of things. She's always willing to consult with the other experts like J. B. Kaufman and Jeff Kurtti and other people at the company to make sure everything is exactly right."

For ticket information and a full calendar of museum events, visit www.waltdisney.org.

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Other articles about the Walt Disney Family Museum:
The Walt Disney Family Museum: The Smithsonian of Walt
A Conversation with Richard Benefield with the Walt Disney Family Museum