Or so it seemed in the short term. In the long term, of course, "Tron" not only led Disney to become a studio known for more than just reassuring family entertainment, but it also led to a revolution in computer-generated imagery that would redefine how movies are made. Oh, and besides being the launch point of digital filmmaking, it also told a geeky-cool story about a programmer sucked into his own video game, a tale that became a franchise that included a sequel, an animated TV series, and several video games.
Dreamed up before everyone had PCs, smartphones, or connections to the internet, "Tron's" vision of humans literally swallowed by their own technology seems eerily prescient. Still, as familiar as "Tron" and its world seem to us today, there's a lot you may not know about the movie, from how its still-astonishing effects were created to the shocking reason it was snubbed at the Oscars. Hook up your handset modem and floppy disk drive, grab your video arcade quarters, and travel back in time to learn the "Tron" truth.
