the good old days

It’s not so easy to find somebody who doesn’t already know the twist at the the of The Empire Strikes Back.  So it was a real treat when cleanser and I sat down yesterday to watch the movie with our five-year-old daughter.  Honestly, I’d looked forward to watching this film with my kids since before they were even born.

When I saw Empire, during its original theatrical release, I was only two.  But I still recall my father leaning over toward me and saying, “Whoa!” when Vader revealed his secret.  Everything else from the first viewing was a blur; I had only vague memories of the battle in the snow and Yoda, but the climax I still recall with perfect clarity.

Cleanser was dubious about whether the film might be too scary for our daughter, but she’s watched (and loved) scarier things.  In fact, she’s pretty idiosyncratic about what scares her.  Cleanser was really worried about Luke losing his hand, but it hardly phased our daughter.  At first, the five-year-old was a bit leery of watching, although she’d loved the first film.  She knew this one was somewhat scarier, and was being very cautious.  But once we situated her on my lap, with a blanket to hide under, she was ready to go.  As I expected, she never used the blanket for more than a second or two; her desire to see what was going on always won out over any fear.

I thought the extended light saber duel might freak her out, but she never looked away from the screen.  When Vader pronounced, “No, I am your father,” her eyes widened.  She was silent for few second, then said, “Wow.”  After a few more moments’ consideration, she asked, “Why did he say that?” but her mother told her she should just watch.  Through the extended final escape from Cloud City, she was shaking—not with fear, but with raw excitement.  It was a real treat to see my little darling so completely enthralled by something that I myself really enjoy and can remember seeing when I was little too.

During the credits, she just sat there for a while, thunderstruck.  I was a little worried that it had been too much for her.  When I asked her if she’d liked Yoda, at first she was unsure.  What she really wanted to talk about was whether Darth Vader could really be Luke’s father.  I told her that she’d have to watch Return of the Jedi to find out, and I asked her again whether she’d liked Yoda.  Well of course she had!  He was a muppet alien!  And she started talking about all the other things she’d liked, like the space slug, and how the Millennium Falcon landed on the star destroyer; and  pretty soon, she was asking her mother if she should watch the sequel the next day.

TRON is the story of Kevin Flynn, a rogue computer programmer who gets pulled into the digital world he helped create.  There he meets other programs, written by his friends and enemies, in a world controlled by the sinister Master Control Program.  Together with TRON, the electronic creation of Flynn’s sometime romantic rival Alan Bradley, he goes after the MCP.

I remember a time in the mid-1980s, when TRON was (after Star Wars) the most popular piece of science fiction entertainment around.  And while Kevin Flynn does not enjoy the universal name recognition of Luke Skywalker, there are still many references to TRON in the popular culture.  I was surprised to see a commercial released in 2006 featuring the distinctive imagery and odd color scheme of the film.  To a younger friend of mine who didn’t recognize the commercial as a direct allusion to TRON, it simply evoked an impression of being being “electronic,” because the style of the movie is now so closely associated with computing in our cultural consciousness.

You might worry that TRON won’t have aged well, but it stands up pretty nicely.  Computer animation has come a long way, to the point where companies can animate nearly photo-realistic human faces.  TRON took computer animation in another direction.  Since computer graphics couldn’t be used to produce anything even approaching reality, the filmmakers used them to produce a completely alien world, and they did a marvelous job.  Actually, most of the movie’s animation was done conventionally, with a legion of cel painters, who worked to match the computer animation style.  Partially, this was done as a matter of necessity; the world didn’t have the manpower needed to animate everything digitally; essentially every electronic animation company in America was employed in the making of TRON.  I don’t know whether they also preferred to have some ordinary animation included for stylistic reasons, but looking at the film now, it was definitely the right decision.  The one real weakness of the computer graphics is its paucity of detail.  There are great, broad surfaces which are perfectly smooth.  It’s a nice effect, in moderation, but the scenes that are completely computer animated get to look rather plain and boring if they aren’t broken up with other formats now and then.  The conventional animation is very nice in that it’s often hardly noticeable as animation.  The live action scenes inside the computer were filmed in black and white on stark black sets; all the color—the off flesh tones of the programs and the buzzing circuits on the walls—was painted in by hand.  And despite the generally seamless integration, there are no scenes that contain both live action and computer animation.

This film is noteworthy in that it has two essentially co-equal heroes:  Flynn and TRON.  Flynn is the viewpoint character—the human transported in the electronic world—and he saves the day several times.  But the real action hero is the security program, TRON.  In the real world, TRON is capable of halting the execution of any program that is communicating outside the system without proper authorization.  Inside the mainframe, he’s a somber superhero, blasting away his enemies with his energized code disc.  (For whatever reason, I always found Bruce Boxleitner’s line as TRON receives his final code update from his programmer Alan—also played by Boxleitner—”This the key to a new order.  This code disc means freedom!” particularly affecting.  I can’t have been alone in my reaction to that scene, since the corresponding image of TRON holding his disc aloft was used extensively in the film’s promotional materials).

After the computer graphics, the film’s greatest innovation was the way the actors were used.  Each of the key members of the cast (and a few minor members as well) plays two roles.  They each play a programmer in the real world and “on the other side of the screen,” a program the first character wrote.  In TRON’s case especially, the program seems to be a better version of his creator—as if Alan Bradley had imbued his greatest achievement with only the purest extract of his own essence.  In reality, we expect any complicated piece of software to reflect some of the idiosyncrasies of its’ creator, but TRON takes that to another level.

Boxleitner’s dual performance is impressive.  Jeff Bridges as Flynn (and KLU) is interesting, but he has always seemed more energetic and physical than his part called for.  He certainly doesn’t come off as a stereotypically nerd.  David Warner, as the villains, does very well.  All three of his characters—Ed Dillinger, command program SARC, and the dreaded Master Control Program—are clearly driven by, more than anything else, fear.  It’s very interesting when, during the climactic encounter, after TRON has dispatched SARC, the MCP reveals its raw and pathetic terror.  Unlike the other programs, the MCP is not human enough to seem worthy of my pity, but that may make the scene more effective, since the huge, inhuman, ultimate evil (who has made even its human creator its servant) is finally revealed as weak, petty, and small.

Supposedly, there’s going to be a sequel to TRON coming out in 2011.  Personally, I think making a sequel is probably a mistake.  The original film is so iconic; adding a new chapter would be very difficult.  I also can’t see how the could replicate the distinctive look of the original with today’s computer graphics.  I may have criticized the sometime lack of detail, but adding textures to every surface will merely make it seem disconnected from the original.

The Thing is, in my view, one of the ten best science fiction films ever made.  The reason for this is that it has a truly sophisticated science fiction plot.  There are many movies where human heroes face off against terrifying and/or horrifying aliens, but few tap into human emotions as basic as those in The Thing.  The movie tells the story of a band of antarctic researchers, who face off against a shape-shifting, all-devouring alien—the modern incarnation of the Wendigo.

The Wendigo is a moster from Algonquin folklore.  Every prescientific culture had its bogeymen.  Some were inhuman ogres, like the Wendigo or vampires in the Balkans.  Other groups, such as the Azande or the Fore, recognized only human sorcery.  These bugbears had some general characteristics, as they were invoked to frighten unruly children, but each typically also personified some of the very particular fears of its native culture.  Life for the Algonquins was hard, especially during the colder months.  Although food was plentiful in the northern Great Lakes region in summer and fall, the bands often found themselves hard pressed in winter.  But their greatest cultural fear was not of death from starvation or exposure, but from cannibalism.  The Canadian wastes were harsh and uncaring, but the very amorality of Nature made them less horrible than the men who might, under conditions of privation, become beasts.

The Wendigo was the spirit of the cold lands and of cannibalism.  A hunter who turned on his comrades for food was believed to have glimpsed the monster and come under its spell.  The Thing translates this primordial fear into modern language—the villain is an alien instead of a malignant tundra spirit—but the basic situation, of a small group of men cut off from the world, battling against something that can take them over and force them to devour their companions, is the same.  To better capture this atavistic fear may have been the reason that the film was given an entirely male cast.

The cast is generally good.  Aside from Kurt Russell, the denizens of the antarctic outpost are played by a crop of familiar yet not distracting character actors.  They display a natural range of responses to the crisis they face, some portrayed with more skill and diversity than others.  Wilford Brimley manages to be effective as everything from earnest scientific investigator, to dotty old man, to horror that has no name.  In some ways, Russell, as the star, may be the weakest character—not because he isn’t believable, but because he seems too much like the “designated hero.”

The only other film I can think of that is comparable to The Thing is Alien.  In fact, the success of Alien got people interested in re-making The Thing From Another World, which was a pretty good alien invasion movie, but the producers felt the 1951 audiences wouldn’t appreciate the sophisticated science fiction storyline of “Who Goes There,” the novella on which the movies were based.  So the original film lacked the story’s main plot element, which the 1982 re-make restored.  What Alien and The Thing have in common is that they capitalize on different but equally primordial human fears.  And what makes the two movies so scary is that these archetypal fears manifest themselves through creatures that are utterly alien.  Their malevolence can be part of their essential makeup, because they are so emphatically inhuman.

At this point, I still haven’t said that much about the film.  I have to admit, I hesitate to give things about this film away.  The Thing may be one of the scariest films every made, and I still remember seeing it for the first time, when I was five.  (That’s right, I was five years old.  I won’t show the movie to my daughter until she’s at least ten, but I never scared easily.  Even so, The Thing was one of only two films that ever gave me nighmares.  Yet I’m glad my parents took me to see it at the drive-in.)  The film has surprise after surprise, and some of its twists are among the most memorable movies elements I’ve ever seen.

One of the things I will talk about is the special effects.  The alien models are truly disgusting, red and brown and dripping with slime.  Some of the scenes still make me queasy.  And everything, except for some matte paintings was done at full size, in the studio.  This lends the effects a gritty realism that might otherwise be lacking in a film with such an exotic story.  There is deleted model shot on the DVD version; it was to be part of the final confrontation between Russell’s McReady and the the Thing.  It ended up not getting used, because it wasn’t deemed to be up to snuff.  I agree with that decision, but I wish they had been able to animate a slightly better model, becuase it really would have added to the climax.