Tron
Kevin Flynn, a former top-notch video game programmer, has been hacking his way into the mainframes of his ex-employer, Encom, attempting to unearth the evidence that Encom executive Ed Dillinger stole his code and passed the games off as his own, leaving Flynn to eke out a meager existence as owner of a video arcade. Dillinger begins locking every Encom employee out of their projects at the behest of his artificially intelligent management program, MCP. Programmer Alan Bradley is denied access to his work in progress, a security program called Tron. Alan and his girlfriend Lora, another Encom employee, decide to enlist Flynn’s help. Lora sneaks Flynn into Encom and into her lab – the home of a potentially hazardous teleport experiment. The MCP detects Flynn’s attempts to hack into it, and activates the teleportation equipment, sucking Flynn into its circuitry.
Flynn finds himself in a world where people’s bodies glow in circuitry patterns, and the people aren’t people at all – they are programs, each of them bearing their creators’ likeness. Flynn encounters Tron, Alan’s security program, fighting its ways through numerous video games whose deadly opponents are controlled by the MCP. Tron, imbued with Alan’s desire to override the MCP, is already planning its escape, and in the course of its resistance Tron has earned itself a formidable enemy – Sark, Dillinge r’s program which herds the rest of Encom’s programs into the MCP’s domain and keeps them there. Tron, Flynn and fellow program Ram escape during a light cycle tournament and begin working their way toward the MCP. Ram is killed en route, deleted from memory by the MCP’s video game warriors, and Tron has to abandon Flynn at one point. Determined to follow and help Tron, Flynn could use a lot of help, but receives only a bit. Though Flynn is only a trespasser in the electronic realm, he discovers that what d eletes programs will kill him too, and surviving his many challenges and defeating the MCP is the only way to work his way back into his own body in the real world.
screenplay by Steven Lisberger
story by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird
directed by Steven Lisberger
music by Wendy CarlosCast: Jeff Bridges (Kevin Flynn/Clu), Bruce Boxleitner (Alan Bradley/Tron), David Warner (Ed Dillinger/Sark), Cindy Morgan (Lora/Yori), Barnard Hughes (Dr. Walter Gibbs/Dumont), Dan Shor (Ram), Peter Jurasik (Crom), Tony Stephano (Peter/Sark’s Lieutenant), Craig Chudy (Warrior #1), Vince Deadrick (Warrior #2), Sam Schatz (Expert Disc Warrior), Jackson Bostwick (Head Guard), Dave Cass (Factory Guard), Gerald Berns (Guard #1), Bob Neill (Guard #2), Ted White (Guard #3), Mark Stewart (Guard #4), Michael Sax (Guard #5), Tony Brubaker (Guard #6), Charles Picerni (Tank Commander), Pierre Vuilleumier (Tank Gunner #1), Erik Cord (Tank Gunner #2), Loyd Catlett (Conscript #1), Michael J. Dudikoff II (Conscript #2), Richard Bruce Friedman (Video Game Player), Loyd Catlett (Video Game Cowboy), Rick Feck (Boy in video arcade), John Kenworthy (Boy in video arcade)
Notes: Bruce Boxleitner and Peter Jurasik would appear together again in the 1990s SF series Babylon 5, which, much as Tron did for movies, forever changed the landscape when it came to television’s use of computer-generated effects. Vince Deadrick would late become Patrick Stewart’s full-time stunt double for Star Trek: The Next Generation and the movies that features the Next Generation crew; Stewart would face off against David Warner in that series as well. (By that point, Warner had also appeared in Star Trek V and VI as different characters.) Dan Shor also appeared in Star Trek: TNG and Voyager as a Ferengi.
LogBook entry and review by Earl Green
Sam Flynn, the rebellious son of legendary (and now missing) ENCOM video game programmer Kevin Flynn, spends his time fixing up his father’s motorcycle and finding new ways to cause grief for the current generation of ENCOM executives. The only member of the ENCOM board that Sam can tolerate for even short amounts of time is his father’s old friend Alan Bradley, who reveals that he received a mysterious page from Flynn’s downtown arcade – which has, like its owner, been out of commission for 20 years. Sam goes to investigate, and finds a hidden office full of unusual computers and other equipment, including a laser which activates the moment Sam queries the computer about its function. Sam finds himself inside the computer, in a digital realm known as the grid. Forced to compete in deadly winner-takes-all games on the grid, Sam learns quickly that he must win to live – and to lose means death. He comes to the attention of the seemingly all-powerful digital dictator Clu, who looks like his programmer, Kevin Flynn (circa 1989). Clu takes a personal interest in challenging Sam, who is then rescued by a female program named Quorra and taken to meet his real father. Now grizzled and isolated, Flynn’s custodianship of this experimental digital world was long ago usurped by Clu, in a coup that also marked the last time Flynn saw his friend, the warrior progeam Tron. Now Clu has plans for both the world inside the computer and the real world as well. Two generations of Flynns, with Quorra’s help, might just be able to save both worlds.
Cast: Elijah Wood (Beck), Bruce Boxleitner (Tron), Emmanuelle Chriqui (Paige), Mandy Moore (Mara), Nate Corddry (Zed), Lance Henriksen (Tesler), Reginald VelJohnson (Able), Paul Reubens (Pavel), Tricia Helfer (voice of the Grid), Charlie Bean (additional voices), Elizabeth Ho (additional voices), Meeghan Holloway (additional voices), Sam Riegel (additional voices), Keith Silverstein (additional voices), Fred Tatascione (additional voices), Keone Young (additional voices)
before Tron Legacy). Bruce Boxleitner is the only cast member to have appeared in the live-action Tron franchise, starring as Tron (and his real-world alter ego Alan Bradley) in 1982’s Tron and 2010’s Tron Legacy. Elijah Wood is best known as Frodo Baggins from the 21st century big-screen Lord Of The Rings trilogy as well as the two Hobbit movies. Mandy Moore was the voice of Rapunzel in Disney’s all-CG movie Tangled, and has had recurring roles in Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, and Entourage, all while maintaining her career as a recording artist. Wood and Moore co-starred in 2002’s All I Want. Lance Henriksen’s genre resume could almost fill a book, with big-screen appearances in Aliens and several of its sequels, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, The Terminator, and The Right Stuff, and countless TV roles (including a three-year stint as star of the X-Files spinoff Millennium). Reginald VelJohnson will forever be known as Urkel’s dad from Family Matters, just as Paul Reubens will forever be associated with the character 
of Pee-Wee Herman. Tricia Helfer probably needs no introduction to genre audiences after starring as Number Six in the 21st century reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Director Charlie Bean worked on Batman: The Animated Series, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, Hercules & Xena: The Animated Movie and early episodes of Ren & Stimpy. Joseph Trapanese assisted Daft Punk on their soundtrack for Tron Legacy and takes over music duties here.
story by Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz
Notes: Storyboard artist Ricardo Delgado has been either an illustrator or storyboarder for numerous productions, from 
story by Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz
written by Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz