Hacker Cinema
TRON: Legacy
2010 · Film · 126 min
Part of TRON Collection
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
AdventureActionScience Fiction
Sam Flynn, the tech-savvy and daring son of Kevin Flynn, investigates his father's disappearance and is pulled into The Grid. With the help of a mysterious program named Quorra, Sam quests to stop evil dictator Clu from crossing into the real world.
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98 comments on Hacker News
There are a lot of movies explain their themes outright. You don't have to try that hard to remember what they're fighting for in the Incredibles for example. But what is the theme of Tron Legacy? I had to get Google to explain that the movie is about perfectionism. That's an interesting theme but I didn't realize that in the theater.
I for one, am absolutely fascinated with Tron Legacy. It was the first Tron movie I saw as a kid in middle school. In some ways, it's responsible for the trajectory of my career.
Apart from the obvious reasons about the DP soundtrack and the visuals, I love the theme of chasing perfection and the way it backfires.
Kevin Flynn says to CLU in the end "The thing about perfection, is that it's unknowable. You don't know that because I didn't know it when I created you" and I love the fact that it says how we can put our best and our worst into what we create. That we're not just responsible for lifeless machines, that it's more than that. And it's a hauntingly beautiful thought.
Tron Legacy was, I think, only the second film soundtrack I ever purchased (first one being Lord of the Rings). It's still among my favorite music to listen to while coding; something about it just puts me in the "flow" frame of mind right away.
I forgot to add that in the case of Tron: Legacy's on-screen graphics, the fact they're so good is probably due to a combination of two things. First, the director cared enough to make it credible instead of just plausible. Blocking out and shooting a couple extra rounds of "type, read, then react" can easily add another hour to an already packed schedule which equates to at least thousands of extra dollars and increased schedule risk. There's always pressure from producers to just trim "that techie stuff" from the script.
Second, IMHO, it's likely that the playback team decided to over achieve and spend more time on the project than they were paid for. The guys I met were almost all computer nerd, sci-fi fan, film buffs and this kind of over-achieving occurred fairly often, even on projects where the director didn't care to do more than "plausible", when the playback team liked the project, they'd work late to make it as good as they could. They know at least their fellow computer nerd, sci-fi fan, computer buffs will appreciate it even if no else does. In one case I know of first-hand, the playback team successfully pitched the production on doing a more involved sequence than initially written to make it more realistic.
While the article credits "the filmmakers", the level of Unix veracity and depth seen in those on-screens was almost certainly thanks to one or two playback engineers going above and beyond when the script direction probably just said something as vague as [HE LOGS IN AND LOOKS FOR TRACES OF HIS FATHER, THEN ACTIVATES THE LASER] combined with the director liking the look enough to keep it in.
The video tech one of my startups made was to enable "On-Set Video Playback" exactly like this in a bunch of movies and TV shows. We didn't make the product for that purpose and only learned this was a thing when a playback company contacted us asking for a change in the firmware to enable external synchronization to a 48fps source clock.
Since it wasn't a difficult change and the application was neat, we made a custom version for them. That's how I got to know some of the people who do this work and even got to visit some movie and TV sets. So, based on that, I'll share some insight relating to TFA.
The first thing is that on-set video playback for film and TV production is a specialized service because it can require fairly arcane knowledge to properly interface various video displays with 24 fps film cameras. This used to involve a lot of custom modified displays, hand-built or modified interface boxes and various arcane cables/adapters but it's gotten somewhat easier with the advent of variable frame displays and GPUs.
Since time is money on-set, productions just hire this out on a project basis to one of a few specialized firms in Hollywood as it's a niche thing. These firms are usually just a handful of A/V knowledgeable guys who have acquired a wide variety of different customized gear, types of displays and have practical experience in making it work reliably with cinema cameras.
There are two main parts to a project: 1) Making the screen look right on camera, and 2) Getting the right images on the screen at the right time.
1) Making it look right breaks down into three parts: A) Getting the source on the screen, B) Synchronizing the source with the cinema camera so there's no screen flicker or rolling, and C) Adjusting the screen's brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation, etc to 'read' well on-camera along with minimizing any light glare and reflections. Depending on the ambient scene brightness, and camera's shutter speed, iris, etc these adjustments can sometimes be much darker or brighter than the display's native adjustments allow. the playback team has tools for this including stand-alone signal processing boxes that range from simple knob adjustments all the way to 3D LUTs that can remap any pixel value to any other. They might also use old-school tricks like covering the screen with neutral density film similar to window tinting.
2) Getting the right images on the screen at the right time breaks into two parts. A) Creating the video source imagery, and B) Triggering the playback on cue. For most projects the production will just have the playback team create the source imagery, with the only exceptions being very involved shows where the on-screen parts are frequent and integral to the story. In those cases, the on-screen content will usually be the responsibility of a designer working under production's art director and the playback team will just be getting the source on the screen. The on-screen imagery for Tron: Legacy is pretty minimal and contained to a few scenes so it was probably designed and created by the playback team as a per-hour line item on their project bid.
In those cases, the playback team will receive the relevant script pages and a few storyboards. Based on those and perhaps a phone call with a line producer or AD, they'll make some comp stills and send them over for pre-approval. Once approved, they'll do the actual source content and send clips for approval. Depending on the production, this may just be signed off by the line-producer or an AD but, in other cases, the director will want to at least see it. If the playback team is providing the display they'll send over photos so the production designer and set dressers know what will be coming.
When the shoot day arrives the team arrives early and coordinates with the set dressers to get the display in place, electricians for power and then the DP and camera crew to test sync, brightness, etc. The type of content going on-screen and how interactive it needs to be will determine if they pre-record the source and just play it back on-set, use an interactive playback source to sequence or animate the content or actually use a "live" source.
In the case of Tron: Legacy, it's hard to tell if they pre-recorded the sequences from a Linux computer and triggered playback in steps on-set or used a live Linux computer since, done properly, they can look essentially identical. I can say that the strong preference is to pre-record everything and sequence or animate it but sometimes that's not possible due to keyboard/mouse activity. The reason is that any live computer might crash or respond at slightly different speeds from take to take, especially when there's repeated re-takes and/or on-set heat from lights, etc. Any delay due to playback not being ready, or worse, killing a take, can have severe reputational consequences.
In the case where a live computer is required, the strong preference is for someone from the playback team to do all the operation off-camera while the actor uses a dummy keyboard and mouse. This usually works fine because there's rarely a need to hold on an all-in-one medium shot showing the screen and keyboard/mouse during actual interaction. On-screen interaction is almost always shown in an insert close-up of the just the screen and bezel. Either way, the sound of keypresses and clicks are dubbed in later by foley artists just like footsteps and doors closing, etc. The absolute nightmare scenario for any playback artist is when a live computer is required that an actor actually operates. It never goes well. Not because all actors are dummies but because they have to focus first on hitting their marks, saying their lines and actually, you know, acting. Under those conditions, typing the exact same techno-gibberish exactly the same way, with the same timing over 30 takes would likely foil most of us too.
I feel that way. I liked Tron when it was in theaters, Tron Legacy just felt so... Sony with its weird sexless glowing eroticism. Definitely Legacy did not prime me to be interested in a new Tron movie.
The criticisms around Ares sounds a lot like the criticisms of Legacy when it came out so I'm actually pretty excited. Tron: Legacy is one of my all-time favorite movies and it's basically a two hour Daft Punk music video.
If data integrity is assured, and thus there is no change in the data to store/transfer, then that's the opposite of computationally transforming the data?
How do we see robot and AI and helping interactions in film and tv and games?
A curated list of films for consideration:
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or "The Modern Prometheus" (1818), Metropolis (1927), I\, Robot (1940-1950; Three Laws of Robotics, robopsychology), Macy Conferences (1941-1960; Cybernetics), Tobor the Great (1954), Here Comes Tobor (1956), Jetsons' maid's name: Rosie (1962), Lost in Space (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Star Wars (1977), Terminator (1984), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Flubber (1997, 1961), Futurama (TV, 1999-), Star Wars: Phantom Menace (1999), The Iron Giant (1999), Bicentennial Man (1999), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2003), I\, Robot (2004), Team America: World Police (2004), Wall-E (2008), Iron Man (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Moon (2009), Surrogates (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Hugo (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Wild Robot (2016, 2024), Ghost in the Shell (2017),
Giant f robots: Gundam (1979), Transformers (TV: 1984-1987, 2007-), Voltron (1984-1985), MechWarrior (1989), Matrix II: Revolutions (2003), Avatar (2009, 2022, 2025), Pacific Rim (2013-), RoboCop (1987, 2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014),
~AI vehicle: Herbie, The Love Bug (1968-), Knight Rider (TV, 1982-1986), Thunder in Paradise (TV, 1993-95), Heat Vision and Jack (1999), Transformers (2007), Bumblebee (2018)
Games: Portal (2007), LEGO Bricktales (2022), While True: learn() (2018), "NPC" Non-Player Character
Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence
List of artificial intelligence films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films
Category:Films_about_robots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_robots
Category:American_robot_films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_robot_films
I have said many times that while TRON:Legacy wasn't a very good movie, it was absolutely the best-ever Daft Punk video.
Tron:Legacy still lives in my head. I'm still chasing the music I imagined after seeing the movie/hearing the soundtrack. Also half of Daft Punk Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's work in Kavinsky’s 'Nightcall'.
The TRON:Legacy soundtrack was an incredible piece of work. Fit the movie exactly.
I have a handful of "regulars" that I watch repeatedly. Most of them are at the point now that I've seen them so many times that they can work as "background noise" when I'm coding or doing something else. IOW, I can turn the volume down fairly low and it serves a purpose, but I'm so familiar with the story already that I'm not likely to get drawn into actually paying attention to the movie (as opposed to whatever I'm working on) unless I'm at a point where I need a break anyway.
Some of the ones that are on that list for me:
The Matrix
The Matrix Resurrections
The Social Network
Inception
Sneakers
Hackers
Antitrust
Rad
Tron: Legacy
Vision Quest
Rocky (really the entire Rocky franchise)
The Karate Kid
Kickboxer
Bloodsport
Hard To Kill
Above The Law
The example of "Clu" in TRON: Legacy is a bad example. In the movie they are inside a simulation and everybody besides the real humans do look a bit off, on purpose. So 3D generated young Jeff Bridges fits perfectly. It does add to the movie that they look "not completely real".
Great soundtrack by Daft Punk by the way. The story is linear but it's still an impressive movie.
No, I meant Tron: Legacy. The second Tron film. I didn’t know they were doing a third one.
Not sure if Tron Legacy is under Disney but I would love to watch another movie on the Tron universe.
Tron Legacy. Such a good film. My kids and I watch it a few times a year. I tried watching the original from 1982 and it just felt so... dated? Perhaps I'm spoiled like most people from all the great CGI and effects.
My favorite movie hacker tech is Tron: Legacy.
They literally just used Linux and Emacs, and it looks beautiful.
My favorite thing about Tron Legacy is that my dad got to see his son’s name way, way down the credit roll before he died.
My second favorite thing is that night we all went out into the parking lot outside the Whale and contributed the backs of our heads to the crowd fill.
My third favorite thing is that I’m pretty sure the movie wouldn’t have made its premiere if it hadn’t been for some last-minute Python I wrote to fill the last drive to rush out the door.
God, was DD a good place to work.
Tron Legacy is an amazing visual spectacle paired with an enjoyable story. Kosinksi is an incredibly talented director. It's to Disney's shame that they have not released more Tron films. Hopefully the planed Ares sequel delivers the goods.
It's disappointing that this site uses Vimeo embeds rather than Youtube. On Youtube, you can pause and use the , and . keys to advance and reverse by single frames to truly enjoy the wonder of the animation. On Vimeo, no such frame-by-frame scrubbing seems to be available.
I have a handful (50 ~~ 100) of vinyl records.
Limited edition type stuff or just eclectic music I enjoy.
I bought an Audio-Technica AT-LP120BK-USB (and a cartridge, because, the one which came with my 300 record player was "trash") after I had accumulated a handful of them. Picked out the TRON: Legacy soundtrack and got it all hooked up.
For some context, I have a nice sound system which is optimized for movies/tv though I listen to a fair bit of music too.
If you're not aware, the TRON: Legacy soundtrack was produced by Daft Punk and Daft Punk was made for TRON: Legacy and TRON: Legacy was made for Daft Punk and the result is magical.
Started playing and the sound was great. Flipped over to Spotify and played the same album and the sound was also great.
Honestly, couldn't tell the difference.
Played one or two other things, but, the record player went on a shelf that day and is still there.
I still collect records, especially rare or limited ones of things I particularly like, or ones where there's something unique or special about the vinyl copy, but, I don't listen to them anymore.
I haven't seen these mentioned yet: Galaxy Quest, The Fifth Element, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Oblivion, Tron: Legacy, Mission to Mars, Pacific Rim, Bicentennial Man, Alita: Battle Angel (some of these may be PG-13)
Treasure Planet and Titan A.E. are also good animated movies, although Treasure Planet is more science-fantasy.
I'd also second Back to the Future, Contact, Interstellar, Gattaca, October Sky
Tron: Legacy soundtrack was done by Daft Punk. Not exactly your run of the mill movie studio hack job...
Other interesting soundtracks done by musicians not known for soundtrack work you might find interesting: Fight Club (Dust Brothers) Event Horizon (Orbital with London Symphony Orchestra) Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3 (game) (Amon Tobin)
One other difference: sounds & soundtracks. I don't mean the foley work per se, but songs you would want to listen to very often written for the movie.
With the explosion of synthesis software and digital audio workstations its easy for a small team to score a sound track on the cheap.
As with everything tough, there's always a few outliers, like (both) of the Tron: Legacy soundtracks.
Also Tron 2.0 game nailed the aesthetic, I wish Tron Legacy did. It just looked like your run-of-the-mill orange-and-teal sci-fi film. Such a wasted opportunity.
edited: You know I never paid attention to the soundtrack to the game, just listened to it... holy cow you're right they did a great job! Tons of cues from the original film... thanks for this!
I would also recommend the Tron 2.0 (which was a video game released before Tron Legacy) soundtrack. It reimagines a few tracks and otherwise expands in a similar style to the first movie.
There are still reasons people might want to go to the theater (and they do since there are some movies like Top Gun and Wakanda Forver have raked in money). One is you don't want to wait. Another would be that you like going to the theater, particularly if you have a nice one nearby. It's an afternoon or night out. A third would be that some movies you want to enjoy with a crowd. End Game or Avatar come to mind.
There are also dates, and it's a place teenagers can hang out, and you something for your kids to do away from the house. The socializing stuff you might not get as much of at home.
I went to the theater a couple months ago because Smile looked like a good enough horror movie that I wanted to see it when it came out. I enjoy the theater experience for certain movies. Dune was a really nice theater experience. There's been a few that were great to see in IMAX 3D, like Prometheus or Tron: Legacy. Infinity War and Endgame were magical becuase of the audience reactions and just they incredible excitement around them across the globe. Granted, that was pre-pandemic, but maybe the latest Avatar recaptures some of that.
2010 was truly a phenomenal year to be a film soundtrack enjoyer. It's hard to believe that we got Ross and Reznor on Social Network, John Powell on How To Train Your Dragon, Zimmer on Inception, and Daft Punk on Tron: Legacy. All 4 of those scores are amazing and it blows my mind that they all released in the same year.
My dad passed in the mid-2000s. We were estranged, and I found out he died about 10 years after the fact.
He left before so many things he would have geeked out about: smartphones, raspberry pi, hobbyist microcontrollers and arduino, Tron Legacy movie, Marvel movies starting with Iron Man, and loads of cool Lego.
I was building the new Lego Galaxy Explorer yesterday, and thought of him. It was bittersweet but cathartic I think. We built the original set together on a flight from London to Toronto when I was 4 years old in 1978/9 and it's about my earliest memory.
Tron:Legacy is one of my favorite movies. I probably like it more than the original. At the very least, I watch it more often than the original. It's funny though: when I saw it in the theater the first time, I thought it was dragging a bit towards the middle, and was getting a little restless and wondering if this was really the Tron successor I wanted. But then I watched it again later and enjoyed it even more. I've only grown to appreciate it more and more with subsequent viewings. Go figure, right?
Tron: Legacy has its flaws.
Blade Runner: 2049 is critically acclaimed and one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. It's beautifully shot and wondrously cinematic, with incredible visual effects. Better than the original.
RPO is a disappointment full of fanservice. Overall, a much must forgettable movie than Tron: Legacy.
I'm probably going to be killed by my comment here, but Tron Legacy is my favorite movie!
The atmosphere, music, nostalgia and other things makes it the most enjoyable movie that I know. It's more of a personal connection that really an objective "this is the best movie ever made".
This source [0], which is from a company selling analysis services of movies financials (so probably accurate) say total costs $200m, which likely includes marketing.
Note also that the movie had a sizeable merchandising output, so the $400m box-office doesn't tell the full story; total revenue was probably several millions higher.
[0] https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Tron-Legacy#tab=summary
Loved the movie as a kid; it changed my life (even though it took me a few times of watching it to fully understand what was happening.)
The sequel, "Tron Legacy", was a fun action movie, with a great sound-track but it's computer world felt "smaller" than the 1982 original and it didn't deliver on the deeper themes.
I would still watch either one today and am hoping for a third. Until then, there's always riding light cycles at Disney World: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2022/07/celebrate-the-40th-anniversary-of-tron-with-a-new-look-at-tron-lightcycle-run-in-magic-kingdom-park/
> it was bad enough not to justify one.
Hollywood doesn't greenlight sequels based on how good or bad a film actually is. It's all about the numbers.
The budget for Tron Legacy was $170 million, and it made $400 million at the box office.
That sounds quite good - it doubled its money! - except film budgets don't include marketing costs, which for a blockbuster can be as much as the budget itself. I doubt that Tron Legacy broke even. If a blockbuster isn't making at least three times its budget it's going to be seen as something of a disappointment at the studio.
Not all the time. Every once in a while we get the interfaces in Tron Legacy or The Matrix Reloaded:
https://ilikeinterfaces.com/2015/03/19/terminal-ui-tron-legacy/
and
https://nmap.org/movies/matrix/trinity-nmapscreen-hd-crop-1200x728.jpg
or sometimes they even use real software, like NMAP
https://nmap.org/movies/
But yea, for the most part they're only for show.
I was interviewing for a job recently, and I got asked what got me into coding. It’s not the first time I got asked that same question, and it’s one of my favorites. I love to see the person’s reaction who asks me the question when I tell them the answer.
For me there wasn't one single "thing" that got me interested in coding, but there's no doubt that the book The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder played a key role.
It’s the movie Hackers from 1995! I’m not joking. That’s the movie that made me fall in love with computers, coding, and hacking. Many people consider it cheesy, but I don’t care. I watched it probably twenty times, if not more. I watch it any time I find myself feeling down and unmotivated. It reminds me of those first days, that initial spark. Just like you would reminisce about a beautiful beginning of a past love affair when you feel lonely and unloved.
Yes, "Hackers" is cheesy as hell, but it's simultaneously a great movie in a certain sense. Like the author of TFA, I consider it one of my "comfort movies". I've probably watched it 20+ times, and can always default to watching that when I'm feeling down, strung-out, overwhelmed, etc. Doing so always puts me in a better mood. A few other movies that fall into the same category for me include "Antitrust", "The Matrix", "The Social Network", "War Games", "Tron: Legacy", "Rad", and maybe one or two others.
It depends on what I'm doing. If I'm reading/studying and trying to mostly absorb material, I usually listen to either synthwave (and related: darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, whatever you want to call it), or classical.
If I'm writing code or doing something active like that, the above applies, but add heavy metal to the list of things I might be listening to. But if I'm listening to metal it's almost always only bands and songs that I'm extremely familiar with (eg, have listened to a given song hundreds or thousands of times in my life) as those are less likely to be distracting to me, as opposed to something new where I feel obligated to really pay attention to the music.
One other option is I will sometimes put on a movie that I've watched many, many, many times (eg, The Matrix, Hackers, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, The Social Network, Rad, Vision Quest, etc) minimize the viewer window and just have the audio in my headphones.
Very rarely I might go with some sort of basically "white noise" track like
"Howling snowstorm and crackling fire" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=volQGswo3dg
"Cyberpunk city sounds" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5zX1eRKEDM&
"Twin Peaks Double R Diner" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npVellnR6D8
"Coffee shop" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMAPTo7RVCo (unless I'm actually sitting in a real-life coffee shop, which I quite often am)
etc.
Renderman was alone in its category. REYES approach brings things other renderers couldn't render; fast motion blur, per pixel displacement, aka microsurface, etc. No other renderer provide such fast implementation of this.
Renderman was hard to learn but the promise was here: It was fast. With time the REYES approach starts to show its age (need a lot of preparation work) bad raytrace performances due to “combining” REYES and ray tracing in the same engine, etc. forcing it to fall back in the same competition line (and price) than it's competitors. Full feature animation movie is not the only market.
For example Vray for Maya (used on Tron Legacy) was a good combination between ease of use inside Maya and the technical director features (features that need some dedication and knowledge, like python pre execution directly on render scene) make it a joy to use.
> It's hard to be romantic in corporate environments.
I agree it's hard, but it's not impossible. One thing that heightens the experience for me is to:
Listen to movie scores while you program.
I first started this to help drown out other noises so I could concentrate. But, I soon realized that there's a lot of drama in the sound: there are highs and lows, chaos and order, fumbles and precision, brief pauses, slow times and fast -- the sound is just like programming!
One time, as the score was building my task was nearing completion. Just as I ran the program and saw that everything worked the movie score delivered a massive crescendo. It was so cathartic and I had never felt so much emotion while programming. I actually cried with joy. That's the closest thing I've felt to actual love while programming.
A few of my favorite scores are:
TRON: Legacy - https://open.spotify.com/album/3AMXFnwHWXCvNr5NCCpLZI
Interstellar - https://open.spotify.com/album/3B61kSKTxlY36cYgzvf3cP
Inception - https://open.spotify.com/album/2qvA7HmSg1iM6XMiFF76dp
That's a great read, congratulations to the author.
I wish newer movies featured devices like Cosmo Communicator, Pro1X or upcoming PinePhone with keyboard case in the hacking scenes to give the handhelds with keyboards a second chance. Last time I saw a cool handheld in a hacking scene(movie, so no Mr.Robot) was Nokia N8 in Tron Legacy(2010), but it really should have been N9.
I went down this rabbit hole and have been listening to Daft Punk all day yesterday and today.
TRON Legacy was one of the most underrated movies and I cant believe that it's almost a decade since it's release. Daft Punk just made it even better.
I was browsing the imdb movie quotes and I got goosebumps.
[..] Kevin Flynn: The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day...
7 Year Old Sam Flynn: You got in.
Kevin Flynn: That's right, man. I got in. [..]
Why didnt the TRON franchaise go on to become like Star Wars etc? Would like to hear from TRON fans..of all genres.
Valgeind and vim are both pretty neat looking IMO. Showing the real tools occasionally is something I’ve enjoyed seeing in some recent Sci-Fi movies. Tron Legacy and Chappie are both examples and even though the end result was unrealistic I thought they did a neat job showing the engineer working for years tediously on the project.
Great find, and I'm curious who's trying to play a nine year-old single-player average game that's a tie-in to the somewhat forgettable Tron: Legacy movie. Looks like gamers were trying to play this and reported it on the Steam forums and elsewhere, but why this game specifically and why now? Was there a sale?
Mine tinnitus and hearing loss comes from a movie, specifically Tron Legacy in 2010. The theater seemed completely uninterested in my complaint.
mmmmm yeahhh, not gonna argue that, I think you're probably right on all points. haha
The reason I made it though is because of my love of the Cyberpunk genre specifically. Deus Ex, Tron Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077, and so many more shows, games, and movies are where I draw inspiration from.
They always feature this style as if it was easy to do, just wanted to give back and help bring that to reality.
Thank you!
edit: also, augmentations/augs by that name, I think, are specifically cyberpunk. Augs as an idea fits very well as an analogy for both how this works under the hood and how it's used on the surface. Soooo it's more specifically Cyberpunk than generic sci-fi in that regard, imo. :)
Tron Legacy was a gamble, as it (a) did not have an all-star cast, (b) a director with a string of successful movies, or (c) a popular IP (the first Tron was a box office failure, which is why it took several decades to make a sequel). Legacy did well on an absolute basis...but Disney barely made back its total budget. $170m was just the production budget; marketing was roughly another $150-$170m. While the movie did well-ish overseas, much of that revenue was split with theaters or local distribution partners, so from Disney's point of view, they barely broke even. (Dmoestically, studios only get the lion's share of ticket price for the first 2-3 weeks of ticket sales which is why they heavily front-load their advertising.)
PotC was most definitely not a gamble for Disney. PotC was always expected to be successful--it just turned out to be even more successful than they thought it would be.
Note: the same thing that happened to Legacy happened to the Solo movie. Solo more than made back its production budget but did not make back its total budget including marketing, which is why at first glance it looks silly than Disney killed the Star Wars Story franchise. Both Legacy and Solo actually ended up being decently profitable for Disney when partner tie-ins, DVD sales, and streaming rights are included, but those income streams aren't known until long after the movie is deemed a success or failure and for most box office "failures" these long-tail income streams don't usually bring the movie into the black.
TLDR: A movie has to make back more than its production and marketing budgets to be profitable to the studio, and since they split ticket sales with theaters and distribution partners, the movie has to do a lot better at the box office than just matching its budget.
>Pirates of the Caribbean was a Disney film from a director with a record of past successes, a team of actors largely pulled from blockbusters, and an executive producer of some of the most memorable and (at the time) highest-grossing crossover blockbusters. It was not a risk to Disney at all.
It certainly was, the first PotC movie basically established pirate movies as a blockbuster genre. And while the Mouse was already rich back in 2003, even for them $143M budget is a risk.
Even movies that made them a small but solid profit like Tron Legacy (400M box office vs 170M budget) get chucked into the bin (most unfortunately, as I really liked the movie and had hoped for a sequel).
I go on nature hikes during work less often than I drink during work.
The only 'hike' I've ever seen in a professional office setting was when the department rented out a movie theater and my boss decided that we'd walk a mile together to get to the theater. Of course that was more of an urban stroll than a nature hike. Is watching Tron Legacy a legitimate part of a professional environment? It was that day.
If anyone is interested, here's a post about the original graphics and interface design from the movie by jt nimoy:
https://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/misc/tron-legacy-effects-blog/
This is why Disney's casting of real actors for the new Solo film struck me as odd.
In Rogue One, ILM already conjured the younger forms of two actors using CG and achieved damn near photorealism in doing so. Furthermore Disney's TRON: Legacy (2010) featured a slightly uncanny but nonetheless impressive young Jeff Bridges.
A fully photorealistic and believable young Harrison Ford in about ten to fifteen years doesn't strike me as entirely beyond the pale.
Sometimes I listen to metal (my default favorite genre) and sometimes I prefer various forms of electronic music: techno, house, trance, EDM, etc. Other times I go with classical: Dvorak, Wagner, Bach, Fauré, Handel, Vivaldi, Philip Glass, Carl Orff, etc.
But a lot of times what I actually prefer is to put on a movie, one that I've seen like 100 times, so that I know it so well that I don't really get drawn into the story and lose focus. I'll turn the volume down moderately low, enough to be audible but not overly distracting, and play The Matrix, Hackers, Antitrust, Sneakers, War Games, Tron:Legacy, Rad, The Social Network, Inception, or something like that and let that serve as my background noise.
The original TRON movie came out in 1982 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/
In 2010 there was a sequel movie Tron: Legacy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/
Are there any efforts to make movie-type window styles for real use? The Tron:Legacy style would be a fun one to have, as well as the one used in the computers in Westworld (similar light-blue-on-black)[1] and Interstellar [2]. I'm sure it's a more difficult process than I'm imagining, but it would be really cool to be able to use the window and interface themes of the computers in your favorite show or movie, especially since some have such great designs.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikup60uEg0c [2] - https://youtu.be/bmz9lMP6aQU?t=2m4s, visible for a brief second just after 2m4s
It varies. Sometimes I listen to my "stock" music - hard rock and heavy metal of all varieties, with a special focus on 80's era glam metal, speed metal, and thrash metal.
Other times it's various forms of electronic music. House, trance, europop, Hi-NRG, synthwave/darkwave, etc.
And then sometimes I go with classical music. Bach, Vivaldi, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Orff, etc.
As far as specifics go, here's some stuff I've listened to lately:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OELzmpgZo&list=PL7F37BB1A67E0238D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9oTQzwXYXk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hd8Or1RrYs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4oZZhpMXP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyfL9LC1DC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajF2NOuYkjk
https://youtu.be/-7Q61fH-03E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMJ2b-3eCk
One other thing I'll sometimes do is put on a movie in the background, with the volume turned down fairly low... just enough that I hear some babble and noise, but not enough that I get caught up in what's going on. This only works if I use a movie I've seen / heard many times, so I already know what's happening and won't get drawn into the story. So, something like The Matrix, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, Hackers, Sneakers, The Social Network, etc.
These chatbots have the same issue as in the movies - the lips don't move out for many of the "R" or "U" sounds. It's very annoying. I really don't understand why they don't do that, there's obviously been a lot of work put into this technology.
At 5 seconds in the video, for the word "virtual", the lips DO move out. But at 28 seconds for "questions" they don't. Then again at 49 seconds, it looks like it might have tried but maybe the frame rate is just too slow.
I just remember the scenes in "Tron: Legacy" where Jeff Bridges is a digitally recreated younger man, the lips don't move right at all. I had assumed it was because motion capture has to be difficult with a beard in the way, but maybe there's something else going on.
Indeed, doing the real-world portions of Tron Legacy in 2D and the in-the-grid portions in 3D worked beautifully. I also happened to pick up a magazine about visual effects which contained an extensive interview with one of Tron's vfx designers, and it mentioned lots of cool details I missed when first viewing the film, e.g. check out the fireworks when they introduce the light cycle battle.
I saw Tron Legacy in 3D in theatres, and it was one of the most well-done 3D movies I've ever seen, in large part because they almost never used it. Except they did, it just wasn't obvious, and when it was it was obvious for the right reasons.
Likewise, the 3D in the Doctor Who Day of the Doctor special, which I saw in theatres, the 3D was well done because they used it in specific spots and in subtle ways.
3D should be an accent, not a centrepiece. Some movies get this right, lots get it wrong.
Hackers killed the Hollywood hacker. (Hackers as in people, not Hackers the film.) Dominic Sena, in his director's commentary for Swordfish, stated that the people who were likely to complain about the inaccuracy of the hacking shown in his movie were nerds who ultimately didn't matter. In this era where the internet response can make or break a film or TV show, the nerds do matter and directors go the extra mile to please them. This started before Mr. Robot. Think Tron: Legacy.
I don't watch anything specific in response to being "stuck", but a lot of times when I'm coding and want something in the background for stimulation and to occupy idle moments, I'll put a movie on with the sound turned down real low. I like to use something I know so well that I can practically recite the dialogue, so I am not going to actually get interested in what's going on, since I already know it so well. So usually, that turns out to be The Matrix. Occasionally it's The Social Network, Tron:Legacy, Hackers, or Inception. Something about having those going seems to help inspire me on some level.
My favorite movie UIs are in Alien (mother's terminal) and the interface in Tron Legacy to Encom OS[1].
http://jtnimoy.com/blogs/projects/14881671-tron-legacy
Tron Legacy. The programs want to break out of the VM.
Good film.
Some trivia from Wikipedia [0]:
The movie Tron: Legacy, which revolves around a world inside a computer system, features a character named Zuse [1], presumably in honour of Konrad Zuse.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010
[1] http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/?ref_=tt_cl_t7
Moviebarcode [0] provides some nice visualizations [1][2][3] of the color palette of movies and other things.
[0] http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/
[1] http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/104685404787/transformers-age-of-extinction-2014
[2] http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432016573/traffic-2000
[3] http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/8951346287/tron-legacy-2010-prints
I was reminded of the quote from TRON Legacy:
> I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways?
These shots definitely capture the city-to-circuit transitions from the films.
"The movie Tron: Legacy [1], which revolves around a world inside a computer system, features a character named Zuse [2], presumably in honour of Konrad Zuse."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010
[2] http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/
I think we are talking about CGI faces here and thats just not doable yet and this research won't change a thing about it. The last movie I remember having a CG face was Clu in Tron Legacy which certainly was state of the art CG, unfortunately 'state of the art'[1] in face modeling/animation is just not perfect yet.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvaGd4KqlvQ
The Matrix is probably my favorite movie of all time. I've watched my DVD copy so many times that the DVD is wearing out (eg, has scratches, etc.) and I just had to buy a new DVD of it.
Otherwise, I like Hackers a lot (despite the unrealistic aspects), as well as Anti-trust. War Games is another of my favorites. Also, Tron and Tron:Legacy.
Swordfish is also entertaining in its own way.
> then it is not being run by our descendants.
I see what you are saying, within the bounds of the article, the Basilisk, requires that our descendants are simulating our present. But by necessity, our genetic descendants would also be members of the simulated universe. Of course, they don't have to simulate the entire universe, they only have to simulate the local part that immediately affects what we do. So long as the model we're in produces equal results to "reality" it's good enough.
All simulation hypotheses discount two other kinds of descendants, intellectual "descendants" for one. Observers of the simulation who learn or are influenced by the simulants. Just like I might run a program on an emulated Commodore 64 and be exposed to some idea I hadn't considered before.
"Escapees" - e.g. Tron: Legacy, Agent Smith from the Matrix movies, The Doctor from Star Trek Voyager. Simulated mentalities which find an external host to "upload to". In the case of Tron movie, the particle laser thing constructed a body for Quora, in the Matrix movies, Smith uploaded his consciousness into a real human and in Voyager the doctor was given a portable hologram generator to let him leave the holodeck/sick bay. Any of these could potentially produce a long of descendants.
Did you see the article by the guy who did the effects for Tron: Legacy? Brilliant stuff.
http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178
Not a markov chain, he just recorded himself at the shell. It made me grin when I saw that bit in the movie and the commands actually made sense (the rest of the film... not so much)
>"Tron: Legacy to me is some interesting ideas coupled with a movie length absolutely fantastic Daft Punk music video, while the original excited me for the computer graphics and the ideas it presented."
Spot on.
The key with Tron: Legacy is appreciating it for what it is rather than faulting it for lacking things which it never claimed to have.
I loved the Tron sequel. I can't quite imagine making a comparison like that though - both Tron and the sequel were extremely light on story and works primarily with the combination of concept and art. In both cases the story itself is enough for about a 5 minute short.
Tron: Legacy to me is some interesting ideas coupled with a movie length absolutely fantastic Daft Punk music video, while the original excited me for the computer graphics and the ideas it presented.
I'm not sure if you are saying that just because or because you know that what you say is actually true. Tron: Legacy was actually the first movie where the soundtrack was made before the film was finished, and the film was actually edited to fit the music (all other movies are scored after the final edit and the music is fit to the film).
How did two obscure, older French guys
Yeah, that's BS, Daft Punk are regarded as the kings of commercial dance music. You don't have to be into them (I'm not, though I too like their new work) to recognize this and respect them for it. The writer omits to mention that DP also scored (and appeared in) the long-awaited and heavily-promoted Tron: Legacy film released in 2010.
The mystery of it — What did it mean? Was Daft Punk announcing a new song? A new album? Something else?—attracted millions to the site on the first day.
...which should have been a clue to their pre-existing popularity. The marketing campaign for the album was very conventional, indeed old-fashioned; straight-up saturation through old media channels like flyposters, billboards and TV. But rather than being a throwback to the 60s or 70s, this is how (mainstream) music used to be marketed up to the 00s, when file-sharing, recession and war sent the industry into a general funk.
Part of the signaling here is to position DP as a big, established act - a classic example of 'the medium is the message.' Another part is that the band members have never been into personal publicity, so TV interviews are not gong to happen and they're not especially video-oriented either.
For a less well-known act also doing a 'comeback' release but taking a much more viral approach, check out Warp Records' low-key campaign for the new Boards of Canada album, which started with a few records placed and then found by customers in record stores on 'Record Store Day' and used cryptic clues hidden in places like web page headers to guide fans to an un-advertised website, culminating in a livestream of the whole album on YouTube. See for details: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1560063/boards-of-canada-return-with-tomorrows-harvest
In The Matrix Reloaded, Trinity uses nmap and then an OpenSSH exploit that was published a couple months before the film officially opened in theaters. Contrast this with Swordfish, where you get lines like (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "We have a DS3, allowing you to access eight systems simultaneously." Ugh, just hit stop and go outside.
Back on topic, Tron: Legacy to me feels like a highly technological father/son movie, in the same way that Google is a highly technological advertising company. So it seems we're already living in the future. "The Matrix has you..."
This is a good guess. Disney just bought LucasArts, and they pulled a similar stunt for Tron Legacy: they setup a website flynnlives.com and provided hints to a location in San Diego where they had recreated a Flynn's arcade that people had to find.
However, considering the last Indiana Jones film was a miserable flop (spoiler ahead: was it the hiding in the refrigerator or the UFO that nailed that coffin), they would have to fully recreate the old Harrison Ford in CGI PERFECTLY with a great plot to get me interested, and btw Disney I expect the same for the new star wars final trilogy or the remake of the first three after removing all of the Jar Jar sequences and replacing the obi wan with a younger CGI version of Alec Guiness and getting rid of the lame Jabba, etc. bad CGI crap they added to New Hope, etc. People should learn a lesson from LucasArts; when you have customers for life, continue to cater to them as they age. Also what about some Biggs Darklighter in a new series? For the kids, how about an Ewok that learns to kick ass in a tie fighter?
Jeremy Renner, who plays Clint Barton ("Hawkeye") in the Avengers, claims he undertook extensive archery training in preparation for his role. Then, on set, they had him do things that "looked cool" rather than "were right" so it didn't really translate as he had expected.
He also said he sustained an archery related injury while filming which A) shouldn't happen if he'd had the proper training and B) would also affect his ability to use proper form while shooting.
I've been working to make a conscious effort over the past decade to willingly suspend my disbelief at the movies and just enjoy the entertainment for what it is trying to be, rather than what it is failing at. I've enjoyed movies much more the times I've been successful at it. Other times, like the "I guess we'll just make the new OS free since a copy of it leaked on the internet" scene in the new Tron, I couldn't get over, and I let it completely ruin the movie for me. (I found later that if I just start about 20 minutes into the movie and enjoy it as an awesome Daft Punk music video then I really love Tron: Legacy).
The stupidest little nitpick that I have, which shows up in nearly every movie and television show, is that someone makes an outgoing call, gets hung up on, and then the foley team adds in a new dial tone. I don't know why I continue to let it bug me, but I do. Joss Whedon complained in one of his commentaries (Joss Whedon does the best commentary tracks, by the way, check them out sometimes if you care about this stuff at all) that he always has to go back and cut out about 70% of what the foley artists try to add to every scene. Sounds exhausting, for everyone.
the hacking in the beginning of _Tron: Legacy_ looked pretty realistic to me (apart from the server's apparently being simultaneously sparc and x86).
best of all was the end of _Veronica Mars_ (yes, not a movie) which is the only even vaguely realistic decryption plot i've ever seen.
I'm happy that, finally, people are not shoving 'movie-os' in computer scenes anymore.
The first time I saw real stuff in movies was in Antitrust, then in Tron: Legacy and finally here.
I assume the op is much like myself in that I need some sort of background noise, and movies can be a great source. I personally enjoy Anti-Trust as well, and Tron: Legacy, but stuff like V for Vendetta or Hackers where I have seen the movie enough times to know the lines are great background noise that I don't have to pay attention to.
Tron: Legacy (2010) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/
"I was asked to record myself using a unix terminal doing technologically feasible things. I took extra care in babysitting the elements through to final composite to ensure that the content would not be artistically altered beyond that feasibility."
"So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron."
Source: http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178 Quite genius actually.
A little bit of backstory here: http://www.slashfilm.com/tron-next-day-flynn-lives-revealed/
Last year, before Tron Legacy was released, Disney shot some footage that didn’t appear in the film, but will show up on the DVD release that hits in April. Some of that footage became Tron: The Next Day (Flynn Lives Revealed)...
They made a computer-drawn character using footage of himself in earlier films, and (somewhat like Avatar) his new performance drove that character via motion capture.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1644706/tron-legacy-star-jeff-bridges-explains-how-plays-his-younger-self.jhtml
While the graphics are technically well done, I was offended by this movie. Prior to seeing it, I'd decided that, for me, the real 'test' of whether I could consider this a genuine sequel would be in the landscapes...
Tron came out in 1982. Ken Perlin won an Academy award for his work on the procedurally generated textures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise) used in the movie.
The Mandelbrot set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) got widespread fame in August 1985, with that famous Scientific American cover. Tron just missed that graphical opportunity! So, I figured, any true student of CGI involved in the sequel would relish the notion of putting some sort of tribute to Mandelbrot into the scenery (here are some examples: http://www.fractalforums.com/3d-fractal-generation/heightfields-using-meshes/).
How mistaken I was... Yes, I'm really bitter about producers and artists who don't care to know anything about the history of their art. And they had the presumption to call it 'Tron Legacy'??
I'm amazed to know that openframeworks gets used in movies.
A good movie is a lot about level of detail, at least if you have a good knowledge of technology similar to whats being used in the movie.
You can nearly spot a good movie just by seeing how much they have paid attention to detail, based mostly on who they target as their main audience.
This is obviously one of the things the Tron: Legacy creators did right :-)
There have been claims that Tron: Legacy was produced not as a movie, but as a 2-hour music video for Daft Punk. And I don't really mind that :)
incidentally, if you look up the "top 100" movies on piratebay right now, you'll see tron legacy show up as #3. i think this goes to show just how popular this movie is--the visual effects were incredible.
was there any information on how they created the younger version of kevin flynn?
Tron Legacy was incredible visually and musically, I'm sad the story didn't live up to the rest of the movie. I hope Disney can look pass that and maybe make a sequel.
I hope this guy does go ahead and create a OpenGL UI toolkit. He should start a donation site to fund the project.
I wonder if it will make a comeback. Tron Legacy (DVD rip) was the #4 most downloaded movie on piratebay yesterday with 12,000 seeders and the DVD doesn't release for another 2 days.
I remember seeing pictures around 2004/2005 of what new games would supposedly look like on the old 'next gen' (read current gen) consoles. The actual games were nowhere near the hype (games like Madden and FIFA). I seriously doubt that the next 'next gen' consoles will have graphics like this for the reasons you outline. I'd love to be wrong though. You could easily imagine this technology be used in movies - I thought Jeff Bridges' digitally altered younger version in Tron Legacy had such a case of the "uncanny valley" going on that it detracted from every scene he was in.
It's not new. The way I see it is as in the film industry, it's a reboot. It's shinier, it may lack the depth and revelation of the original, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in special effects and ease of consumption.
Consider Sendmail vs Exim, or Tron vs Tron:Legacy.
Both are essentially the same thing, but one is infinitely easier on the eye.
This is a great point. Theaters are pushing 3D because it means more money for them. Apparently Avatar was amazing in 3D, and theaters used that fact to make a lot of money off of underwhelming 3D experiences.
I saw Tron in 3D and suffered very mild side effects -- facial tension and a headache that went away after a few glasses of wine. The 3D effects weren't enough to make even those mild side effects worth it. I'm not even sure the 3D effects were a net plus for the experience without considering the side effects. Add a 40% premium on the ticket price, and it was a great deal for the theater and a lousy deal for me.
Until the technology changes fundamentally, I'm starting to think 3D movies are like heroin: we'll see a periodic resurgence and decline as the lessons fade away with one generation and are relearned by the next.
I find it odd that you should name Avatar as a movie appropriate to see in 3D. I find that Avatar had a ton of the problems that Walter Murch was talking about. It gave me a massive headache because often times the focus wasn't where I wanted it to be.
Tron on the other hand, generally didn't have this problem, there was huge depth of field throughout, and generally nothing too straining.
It wasn't an overt knock on TSN -- I just don't watch many movies, so I really don't know what to expect. Aside from the geek jargon and a bit of drama, I suppose I was surprised that it was Best Picture material. I think the only movie I saw on the big screen in 2010 was TRON Legacy, which was technically part of the 2011 movie year anyway.
Cool, it deserved it. It was an excellent movie. The Social Network was my own personal pick for "best movie of 2010", although - to be fair - I didn't see every movie released in 2010. But I would rank it above Inception, Shutter Island, Tron:Legacy, True Grit, Harry Potter, and Red - out of the other good movies that come to mind from last year.
Nice pacing, good acting, great score, inspirational, entertaining, thought-provoking, it really had everything. It was a great trip inside the world that a lot of us live in / aspire to live in. Maybe a non-hacker wouldn't see it in quite the same light, but I really thought it was just excellent.
'Swordfish' was 9 years ago and 'Hackers' was 15.
'The Social Network' made me giggle in geek happiness when every glimpse of technical detail the was a legitimate tech shoutout. The following is a screenshot from 'Tron: Legacy' http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101111213709/tron/images/f/f9/Tron-Legacy_SolarOS-frame.png
When computers were exotic, any hack could invoke utter wizardry and magic. The creative types behind modern movies are sufficiently aware and sufficiently confident the median American will be aware that the serious shit that happens to make computers work is a lot of typing plain text on flat, stationary screens, and some wonderful dramatic devices have been developed to extract accessible engagement from technical scenes beyond the old attempts at whiz-bang shiny awe (which never really worked anyway). So today you see a lot of bash, because the producers need text, and the graphic artists are like "why not make this legit?"
My Choice: The Social Network
Why? Largely because I find it inspirational, vis-a-vis my own entrepreneurial ambitions. I've watched it twice already, and every time I watch that, I feel very inspired to sit down and start hacking, and work on building something.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of Mark Zuckerberg, or even of Facebook; but the movie was well-done, entertaining AND inspirational. What more can you ask for?
Honorable Mentions:
Red
Inception
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt 1
Looking forward to:
Tron: Legacy
Wikipedia has a brief description of this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_Legacy
I think rather than being a full trailer for the movie, this is more of a single, and visually cool, scene to hype up people not familiar to the original.