spoiler (click to show/hide)
- The digital Tron world is a creation of Flynn and is hosted on private 1989 servers, not connected to the internet.
- The producers described this digital world as the computer equivalent of the Galapagos Islands. The digital world has evolved on its own, with no outside influence since Flynn built it.
- The world is darker than the previous, with an obvious BLADE RUNNER influence, apt because the designer of Ridley Scott’s futurist world was Syd Mead who also designed much of the original TRON world.
- Syd Mead came in for a day to give his thoughts on what the design team has churned out thus far.
- There’s a stadium where games are played this time out, presided over by Clu.
- When talking to the producers they said they went into this sequel (which holds the record for most time passed between an original film and its sequel, with returning cast, we were told) with the mindset that there were 4 things they owed the fans: Lit suits, Jeff Bridges, light cycles and a feeling that this movie is something new just as the original was something no one had seen before.
- They made mention that Flynn and Clu square off at some point in the movie. I. Can’t. Wait. The Dude vs. Starman? Brilliant.
- Director Joseph Kosinski is a first time feature director, but you know his work from the GEARS OF WAR Mad World commercial and that great HALO 3 Starry Night commercial. He’s a graduate of Columbia with a degree in architecture, so the visual look of the film is extremely important to him.
- TRON: LEGACY is NOT a mo-cap production. They’re shooting 64 or 65 days with real sets. Obviously blue-screen plays a large role to help create the digital world of Tron, but a lot of real sets are not only built, but used throughout the film.
- Kosinski plans to vary up his shooting techniques throughout the production in order to never tip his hand on how the world is being presented to the audience. There will be motion capture for some scenes (lightcycles) and characters (but with the real actor’s faces filmed and put onto the CG character), but totally in-camera segments for others. Sometimes he’ll mix and match depending on what’s best for the scene.
- There is some exploration of the religious undertones of the original, ie The Users. This time I’m guessing Flynn himself is a deity since he is the creator of this world and inhabits it.
- Bit will not make an appearance, which makes me sad. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
- The name of the company that created the shipping containers that Sam lives in at the beginning of the story is DUMONT (at least in the production art). Nice nod, eh?
- There will be new disk game played, but we weren’t told what they’d be. We did see some artwork from an arena which was just four hallways intersecting at a circular chamber.
- There’s a new Solar Sailor, which looks pretty much like the original, but with a purple color scheme and a thicker middle to hold more programs.
- Look for a vehicle called the Light Runner, a low-riding car built for speed, but that turns into a dune buggy type vehicle when off-road. It’s not a drastic change or a morphing thing… essentially the cab sits up a little higher and the wheels sprout ridges like a kleet.
- Another new vehicle was called Clu’s Throne Ship, dark black ship with Clu’s dark orange light scheme… think the basic shape of Luke’s landspeeder, but much larger and as an enclosed ship with glass ceilings. Also there was a little hammerhead-like shape instead of a rounded or pointed front. There was some beautiful artwork of Clu lounging on an obsidian throne in the ship, the world of TRON seen through the large windows above.
- The world of Tron is one big city and the more you get out of the city center you lose definition and symmetry, eventually falling off into the Sea of Simulation according to the production designer, Darren Gilford.
- Gilford also said there are a lot of soft-cornered hexagons built into the architecture of the world.
- There will be an interim lightcycle, bridging the first movie to the second. The riders are exposed in the 2010 Tron universe, something Steven Lisberger tried to do with the original, but the technology wasn’t there, so they had to dome it, apparently that dome being one of the most complicated effects for the computers to pull off back in the day. So between the old lightcycles and the new, rider-exposed cycles there is one that Flynn rides that is an amalgam of the two, with the newer design and look, but the dome of the original.
- The Recognizors are back and they have a loading system where programs can enter the “feet,” a sort of elevator-like enclosure, that takes them to the bridge. Other than a little more texture and definition they seem relatively unchanged.