Why blow $170m on a film like Tron?

                                Why blow $170m on a film like Tron?

THE geeks have won the battle of the fuure, and they're dragging everyone into the Troniverse.

Seriously. If you are going to gamble $170 million on a franchise-building epic that will employ the latest 3D technology, the latest in digital effects and the latest techno sounds from French electronic duo Daft Punk, why choose as your inspiration a little-remembered film from the Eighties that flopped at box office?

But that's what the makers of Tron: Legacy have done.

Tron: Legacy is being trumpteted as the can't-miss, cinematic event of the year, and Disney has spent the last two years and upwards of $100 million convincing the world that this is so. The movie is a belated sequel to Tron, a strange sci-fi flick that came out in the US summer of 1982 and promptly crashed at the box office. More people were interested in seeing Gandhi and Dustin Hoffman in drag, and this was a year when fantasy movies were in vogue.

Tron was Walt Disney's attempt to cash in on the Eighties explosion in video arcade games, and has a plot that's ridiculous even by the standards of the decade. Jeff Bridges plays a computer hacker who is literally abducted into the world of a computer and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program. He isn't even the film's titular hero - that role went to Bruce Boxleitner. Yes, the Bruce Boxleitner, an actor whose name registers only a furrowed brow.

The film did so badly Disney gave up on big-budget, live-action movies for almost 20 years.

If Tron is remembered for anything, it's for the motorcycles that trail solid walls of light, frisbee fights and the neon and chalk-white armour everyone seems to wear in computer world.

Blast from the past: Watch Tron trailer

So, again. Why bet the farm on a flop no one really remembers?

The answer: Geeks.

Geeks won the battle of Hollywood long ago. Geeks love Tron's cool motorcycles - or light cycles, as they're called in the film. And geeks made Tron's digital world come true.

Tron managed to predict the future. As Wired magazine gushed, Tron "distilled and made visible a powerful idea - that inside a computer is a world you can go and live. This idea didn't make much sense at the time, and the technology to pull it off didn’t really exist. The metaphor, however, lived on."

It was the first, albeit clumsy, attempt to bring sci-fi ideas of cyberspace and cyberpunk to a mass audience. Without Tron, there would be no trip into the Matrix, no Avatar. (Tron also managed to predict the future of animation. Disney's artists had refused to work on the movie because they thought computer-animation would put them out of business. They were right: Disney closed its hand-drawn animation studio in favour of CGI animation in 2003.)

Sounds of the future: Daft Punk's Tron score

The guys now calling the shots in Hollywood - the studio heads, producers, directors, screenwriters, animators, and programmers - are from the Star Wars generation. They grew up in the Eighties and have resurrected every cartoon, toy, movie, TV series and book from their childhood and reintroduced it into popular culture. Think about the movies that have assaulted your senses in the last few years: Transformers, Indiana Jones, Batman Begins, Watchmen, the Star Wars prequels, Predators, Terminator Salvation - they are all Eighties' spawn.

The writers of Tron: Legacy are Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who were executive producers on Lost, a show that was filled to the brim with nerdy pop culture references and a genuine success.

Disney is convinced they can do the same for Tron: Legacy. The studio craves another Pirates of the Caribbean-sized franchise that will hook boys and their families and make billions.

Trailers and clips from the movie have already thrilled countless geeks (on seeing test footage two years ago at the annual Comic Con in San Diego, one blogger wrote: "Nerds like me weep with joy") but a stamp of approval from the geek community doesn't always translate into fat profits.

Comic fans enthused endlessly about the superhero epics Watchmen and Kick-Ass, tricking studios into thinking they had hits on their hands, but everybody else just shrugged their shoulders and stayed at home. If the superero isn't Batman or Spider-man or the fantasy epic straight-forward enough to understand, then the public isn't interested.

And that's where the makers of Tron: Legacy have got their work cut out. Why go and see a sequel to a film that's almost 30 years old and is only truly beloved by geeks?

Tron cheat-sheet

Who's Tron?

Tron is a computer security program and the hero of the film. Now, a film where the hero is just lines of complex coding and carries out Norton Security-like tasks would be dull, even to lovers of arthouse cinema, but Tron lives in a Matrix-like world - the Troniverse - where programs appear human, dress in neon blue and anaemic white armour. Tron is the leader of an underground rebellion against a billigerant piece of artificial intelligence called Master Control Program - imagine Microsoft Windows as moustache-twirling villain.

What's with neon frisbees and motorbikes?

Tron battles MCP's goons in series of gladiatorial contests that look suspiciously like old school arcade games. Although throwing frisbees and riding motorcycles that trail solid blocks of colour doesn't exactly scream excitement or danger, those who lose the games end up being sent to the trash bin and getting deleted. Tron, however, is helped in his struggle by a hacker/video game addict (played by Jeff Bridges) who has been magically sucked into the digital world.

Why are there two Jeff Bridges in the new Tron movie - one old and Lebowski-like, the other young and spunky?

Tron: Legacy pits Jeff Bridge's older and craggier hacker against a computer program he created back in the Eighties for good but which has since gone bad and power-crazy. Thanks to special effects wizardry the villainous Jeff Bridges appears exactly as Jeff did in the first film.

Is there a danger I'll get sucked into my computer if I use Facebook too much?

No, but your boss may get cranky.

Watch the light bikes (and cutting computer animation from the Eighties) in action