Thursday, August 4, 2011

BD impressions: TRON

8:37 PM / BD Impressions / Comments5 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

The film: Pixar and Disney creative lead John Lasseter credits TRON as the film that inspired him to explore CG animation - if memory serves (and I'm paraphrasing here), not because of what he saw but because of the POTENTIAL he saw. And I think that's ultimately TRON's legacy, hardcore fans notwithstanding: a trial run, a launching-off point, a suggestion of what was to come later. Taken on its own merits, TRON is not a particularly good film, and I doubt it would have been any better even if the visual effects hadn't dated so much. As it is, they certainly don't help: the movie is so abstract in terms of its visual that I found myself incredibly distanced from the action to the extent that I struggled to care about what was going on. Underneath the admittedly arresting graphics is an archetypal "defeat the evil emperor" quest in the swords-and-sorcery vein, albeit transplanted into a sci-fi world. Like Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, I find it more interesting for its historical significance than for any pleasure I derive out of watching the film itself, though it has to be said David Warner does make for a deliciously dastardly villain. 5/10

Image quality: In stark contrast to the way in which they treat their animated features, Disney have had the good sense to leave TRON completely alone, as far as I can tell. The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70, a 70mm process, and the benefits are clear. Given that every shot that takes place inside the Grid is an optical effect, often with several different layers, the increased resolution of 70mm provides an effective "buffer" against the detail loss incurred.

Unsurprisingly the material taking place in the real world, which for the most part is devoid of visual effects, looks the best, with detail often razor sharp (see Example 4. In his review, Adam Tyner stated that "there are plenty of moments in this thirty year old film that look like cameras were rolling last Thursday", something I concur with completely. Understandably, detail is less impressive on the material inside the Grid (though still very impressive), and various rendering and optical processing artefacts can be glimpsed in the form of blocking (see Example 35) and ghosted lines (see Example 45).

Still, though, an extremely satisfying presentation all round and one that actually offers more detail than the BD of the 2010 sequel (more on that in a subsequent review). Recommended without hesitation.

TRON
label: Buena vista; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.20:1

TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON TRON

 
5 Comments

1. FoxyMulder said:

The live action sequences were 70mm - Super Panavision 70 but the computer graphic sequences were all VistaVision.

Does this use the original 6 track magnetic soundtrack or a re-mix from that version, of course with magnetic soundtracks the high end frequencies tend to deteriorate so they probably couldn't use that or if they did then they would have needed to do some resoration work on the sound.

(Posted on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 8:57 AM)

2. FoxyMulder said:

Just had a look at some of the screencaps, very impressive image quality indeed, if only they paid such attention to their animated classics, mind you if reviewers across the web stopped praising such classics for their "clean" look it would help, at least when the Lion King is released i know it will look clean because it comes from the computer files so i'm fine with that although i would like to see some fine grain in the animation to give me the illusion of watching a movie, oh they will probably screw the colours up like they have with all their animated classics on blu ray.

You would think the guys in charge wouldn't allow this, isn't the Pixar guy running the show and i thought he would have more respect for Disneys history and stop this colour revisionism going on.

(Posted on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 9:02 AM)

3. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

I watched this a couple months ago and was thoroughly impressed by the image quality. I wish Disney would take a similar approach to their hand-drawn animated line, 'cos seeing all that grain is very pleasing.

Fun movie, too. I liked the visuals and the simple but exciting story. The sequel bored me to tears start to finish; big action romps like that tire my brain and cause me to lose interest very quickly. The whole time I watched, I felt like I'd rather be watching the latter two Matrix movies.

(Posted on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 10:33 AM)

4. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

Also, Cindy Morgan in that tight gray suit... Mee-yow.

(Posted on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 10:36 AM)

5. Kram Sacul said:

It's about time that a film shot in 70mm actually looks like it was shot in that format on Blu-ray.

(Posted on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 12:16 PM)

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at m.r.mackenzie[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.

 
Archives
Categories
Recent posts