Episode 63 – TRON (1982)

Bill and Ted discuss Steven Lisberger’s 1982 boundary pushing Sci-Fi film “TRON,” a futurist film made at the dawn of the personal computer and the explosion of the video game market. Lisberger envisions a world where analogue collides with digital in a struggle over what is real and what is programmed. Jeff Bridges stars as computer programmer Kevin Flynn, who finds himself “incarnated” inside a computer in a struggle against the Master Control Program and his formidable minion Sark (David Warner) as they plot to dominate the real world. Flynn joins the security programme TRON (Bruce Boxleitner) in the fight against the MCP’s tyranny and expanding dystopia. Filled with eye-popping images, this innovative, ambitious, and stylish film took tremendous technical risks unlocking new avenues for the filmmakers that followed.

If you enjoyed this film, you may also like these Ted’s Picks: Metropolis (1927), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Last Starfighter (1984)