The Black Hole (1979)

Dash it all, Nana, don't look at me like that. It's nothing personal, it's just that...well, you're not really a nurse at all, you're...well, a dog. And the children aren't puppies, they're people. And sooner or later, Nana, people have to grow up.
--George Darling, Peter Pan

The Black Hole was a milestone for the Walt Disney studio--it was their very first PG rated production. Fifty years after the founding of the only major movie company that was devoted exclusively to squeaky-clean family-friendly entertainment, they had finally made a film where people were using CURSE WORDS. From this film grew an interest in more mature feature production which led to Disney's experimental age and later to the formation of Touchstone Pictures and their acquisition of Miramax Films. Movies like Tron, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and maybe even Pulp Fiction might not have been made if not for this film.

To put this into perspective, Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was Disney's very first PG-13 rated film, released in 2003. Safe to say we won't be getting anything with an R rating under the Walt Disney Pictures banner anytime soon, but they've been gradually coming of age.

Released in 1979 during the sci-fi movie boom following the release of the first Star Wars film and directed by Gary Nelson, who gave us a young Jodie Foster starring in the original Freaky Friday just one year before, The Black Hole was an early example of the use of computerized camera technology in motion picture. When ILM couldn't loan Disney the equipment they needed to shoot the film, they developed their own computer-controlled camera system. This won them praise from critics who were a wee bit disappointed by the story. It even got them a couple of Academy Award nominations for special effects and cinematography.

Ladies and gentlemen, the star of our film. ...At least it's not acrobatic brine shrimp.

Dan Holland (Robert Forster) is captain of the USS Palomino, a space exploration vessel currently returning from duty with its crew: the eager First Officer Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), rugged journalist Harry Booth (played by the dearly-departed Ernest Borgnine), civilian personnel Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins a.k.a. Norman "A Boy's Best Friend is His Mother" Bates) and Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), the science officer who has ESP capabilities for some unexplained reason.

And proving that even back then Disney couldn't resist putting cute talking mascot characters in their movies, there's V.I.N.CENT. (short for "Vital Information Necessary CENTralized", whatever that means), a smarmy, sarcastic little robot with a penchant for reciting axioms with a slight air of superiority in the uncredited voice of Roddy McDowall.

Now there's a face that just SCREAMS "free toy in every kids' meal."

On their way home, they pass the REAL star of our film--a massive black hole in the middle of space with a derelict spaceship hovering nearby, positively identified as the USS Cygnus which was reported missing some time ago. (Kate is especially intrigued--her father served on the ship at the time of its disappearance.) Curious as to why the ship hasn't already been sucked INTO this black hole, the Palomino investigate, and after nearly getting sucked in themselves they finally find someplace to dock when the lights suddenly come on.

Turns out someone's home--none other than the notorious eccentric and Cygnus commander Dr. Hans Reinhardt, played by German actor Maximilian Schell, who explains to them that he ordered the crew to abandon ship after being crippled in a meteor shower--only he and Kate's father stayed behind, the latter of whom has since died. He reveals his plans to become the first human being to enter a black hole, much to the jaw-dropping of his visitors. His entire crew have been replaced with robots, including a red hulking automaton named Maximilian who serves as--

Wait a minute. The robot's name is Maximilian and one of the actors is named Maximilian? This may cause confusion...

"Your mother is an iPhone 5 with iOS 6!"

"Kiss my output port, you little Amiga."

Not much happens from here to the climax--the Palomino crew give themselves a tour of the ship and debate the boundary between genius and insanity that Reinhardt--played by Maximilian the actor, not Maximilian the robot--is currently straddling until he invites them all to dinner. Meanwhile, V.I.N.CENT. wanders off to find some sentry bots playing a game where they...shoot lasers at dots or something and meets another new friend - Old B.O.B. (short for BiO-sanitation Battalion--not a very good acronym either), an earlier, more beat-up version of Vincent with the similarly uncredited voice of Slim Pickens.

Let's take a break here and give some character critique. V.I.N.CENT looks cool and everything, but he's also kind of...full of himself. He's very snooty and sarcastic, he's always making quotes of famous philosophers like he's all "oh, I'm so great because I'm a robot and I'm more intelligent than these bipedal meat sacks". He doesn't even enjoy the company of other robots, since he's SUCH a superior model to them.

"Dude, you guys are total racists...and that's coming from a guy who leads a robot gestapo."

Old B.O.B. reveals that the crew never really left the Cygnus--a mutiny broke out amongst the crew when Reinhardt--Maximilian the actor, not the robot--refused to obey orders to return to Earth, and their captain had them all lobotomized and "reprogrammed" to serve as the robot crew they see all around them. Worse still, Kate's father was killed for leading the mutiny in the first place.

Dr. Durant, who up until now was fascinated by Reinhardt's exploits and was willing to accompany him on his mission, suddenly wants to leave when Kate is told of this telepathically, and then is given the distinct honor of having the first on-camera death scene in a Disney film when Maximilian--the robot, not the actor--runs him through with his metal...arm...blade...spinning thing, while Dr. Reinhardt--Maximilian the actor, not the robot--has Kate sent off to join his crew of the living dead.

"I told you not to call me 'Hansie' while we're working!"

The rest of the crew is notified of this through Kate's telepathic link with V.I.N.CENT., and Charles and Holland head back to rescue Kate. From then we get a big rescue scene/laser battle sequence with some very nice special effects.

Booth is killed when he tries to make a run for it in the Palomino and is promptly shot down by Reinhardt and crashes into one of the Cygnus' anti-gravity generators.

And because they're just not in enough peril already...

BRING ON THE METEORS!!!!!!

As a hailstorm of giant glowing Corn Pops begins pelting the ship, Reinhardt gets ready for its final voyage and orders Maximilian to go kill the bad guys, making the robot, not the actor, deaf to the actor's, not the robot's, cries for help when the control room begins to fall apart and he is trapped under the debris. Maximilian--the robot, not the actor--reappears and voids Old B.O.B's warranty before V.I.N.CENT. disables him with his own...blade...spinning thing and sends him hurtling into space.

Our heroes manage to escape in a small probe ship before the Cygnus is completely destroyed, but they're not out of the woods yet! In fact, there IS no way out of the woods, because the ship's controls have been programmed to plunge straight into the black hole.

I smell another picture montage.

I can't help but think there's an underlying theme in all this.

So, I guess the black hole wins in the end. Bummer.

Fortunately, in Disney's long-standing tradition of letting most if not all of the good guys survive, the ship pops out the other side in a completely different part of the universe, if not a completely different universe altogether. The survivors smile at each other as they rocket off to a planet eclipsing a star in the distance posing as sort of a sunset out heroes ride off into.

Not unlike Tron, The Black Hole is more lauded for its groundbreaking special effects than its plot, and it's easy to see why. If I'm honest, the characters aren't all that interesting, except V.I.N.CENT. whose smugness came off as a tad annoying, the plot's not exactly rocket science, and it's the fourth of the last five movies I've done with an ending that's totally up in the air, but I'll tell you the truth, it is quite pretty to look at from its early CG opening credits to the final shot. One scene has the Palomino crew running across a gangplank leading across the path of a giant meteorite rolling towards them Indiana Jones-style. I think one of the reasons I dig these early sci-fi movies is because I'm always fascinated by how they pull off these visual effects before every movie started using CG and green screens.

Some credit should also go to John Barry's music score, which for the most part is pretty catchy, including the overture.

The Black Hole is a good movie to kill ninety minutes with. There's plenty to look at, and it's not too complex for the less discriminating sci-fi geek. As long as you don't get your Maximilians confused.

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears...

Return to Oz (1985)

I DO believe in spooks, I DO believe in spooks, I do I do I do I DO believe in spooks, I DO believe in spooks, I do I do I do I DO!!
--The Cowardly Lion

Oh, do we Kansans have a history with The Wizard of Oz.

We've heard all the jokes. "Hey, Dorothy, where's Toto?" "Say hi to the munchkins for me!"

We've seen the souvenirs in gift shops all over the state with these characters on them.

We've seen the original ruby slippers at the Smithsonian Museum.

It's been remade many times and parodied on dozens of TV shows and movies, putting it right up there with It's a Wonderful Life as one of the most commonly referenced movies EVER.

It is SO welded into the American psyche that it has become the number one thing that people think of when you bring up Kansas. Well, apart from wheat, flat land, college basketball and conservative Christian extremists.

So well known is it that some people just HAD to make a sequel to it. Some people from DISNEY, no less.

Return to Oz is an unofficial sequel to the Victor Fleming film, but to be fair it does borrow story elements from L. Frank Baum's follow-up books to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which the original was derived from--in particular, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, and Tik-Tok of Oz. Lucky for Disney, the books were all in the public domain and they already had the film rights anyway so they didn't have to pay anyone royalties, though they did have to pay MGM for use of the ruby slippers which weren't in the books.

Six months have passed since the events from the first film--funny, feels more like 46 years to us--and the Gale clan has hit hard times, in most part because winter is coming and they still haven't finished rebuilding the farmhouse from that tornado (How long did it take to build a house back then? It can't have been longer than six months. Didn't they have farmhands in the first film who could help them? How far out in the middle of nowhere ARE they?) Meanwhile, little Dorothy Gale, played by Fairuza Balk, who looks WAY younger here than Judy Garland did back in the day, is having trouble sleeping--she's still obsessed with her travels to Oz, now convinced that it is in danger and needs her help. A familiar looking key which falls from space in the middle of the night seems to confirm this.

Her Uncle Henry (Matt Walsh) and Auntie Em (Piper Laurie, who also played the more Kansas-appropriate religious fanatic mother from Carrie) naturally don't believe a word she says and decide to do the only thing you can do with a little girl whose imagination is too wild for her own good--take her to a mental hospital for some electroshock treatment to make all those dreams go away.

Incidentally, Toto will not be coming with Dorothy to Oz this time, as we see him chase the buggy as she and Auntie Em ride off. I'm guessing the Emerald City has leash laws now.

"Come play with me, Dorothy...forever...and ever...and ever."

At the clinic which is pretty much the biggest house in the state compared to the rest of the scenery, Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) explains the process to Em and Dorothy--they shoot an electrical current through the brain which will zap all those bad dreams right out of her head. No mention of any harmful side effects or what ELSE might be zapped out of her head by accident, however, so his methods are suspect.

Auntie Em leaves Dorothy in the capable hands of Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh), who takes away her lunch pail and locks her in a dreary-looking room.

Throughout all this Dorothy notices a blonde girl about her age appearing in the windows and mirrors of the clinic, and she even visits her in her room with the curious gift of a jack-o'-lantern.

Nurse Wilson returns rather nonchalantly with some men and a gurney, and Dorothy is strapped in and wheeled to the operating room where she is hooked up to the electroshock thingy. Dr. Worley is just about to pull the switch when a freak lightning strike cuts the power throughout the building. All the doctors leave Dorothy momentarily unattended while they see to getting the electricity back on.

So, to recap, Dorothy is in a cold dark room strapped to a gurney, moments away from having several hundred volts course through her brain, with a violent thunderstorm raging outside which does nothing to drown out the distant screaming coming from the patients locked in the good doctor's basement.

This is a kids' movie.

And to think in about a hundred years they'll have a pill for this.

While the doctors are gone, the blonde girl comes back, frees Dorothy, and the two of them escape the hospital with Nurse Wilson in pursuit. The chase ends at a river, where both girls fall in and are washed away while grabbing onto a crate for dear life. The blonde girl disappears, but Dorothy continues to float downstream into a vast ocean (yes, Kansas has an ocean now) and finally washes ashore in the Marvelous Land of Oz.

Oh yeah, and her favorite chicken Bellina is there, too. And she can talk now.

Here we get to see some areas of the Land of Oz that you never saw in the first movie, like the "Deadly Desert", where anything living who touches the sand turns INTO sand. Also there's the "Lunch Pail Tree", which is...a tree...with lunch pails growing on it. Oh, and if you follow this overgrown brick path, you'll come across the ruins of some ancient city with statues all around it, including ones of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.

Oh, hang on. That's the Emerald City.

Oz just hasn't been the same since the Lollipop Guild disbanded.

And it looks like 46 years six months of neglect have taken its toll--the place is ashambles and all of its inhabitants have turned to stone. As a further degradation, some of the lady statues have their heads missing.

While all this is going on, some Claymation® rock faces report to someone off-camera that Dorothy has returned to Oz, and she's brought a chicken with her. Whoever he is talking to seems more concerned about the chicken.

Some friendly graffiti written on one of the crumbling walls reads BEWARE THE WHEELERS. No sooner do Dorothy and Bellina question what a Wheeler is when some fancy-dressed psychos with wheels for hands and feet show up and start chasing them around, laughing maniacally and accusing her of grand theft lunch pail and illegal possession of a chicken.

This is a kids' movie.

Looks like the flying monkeys have evolved.

Using the aforementioned key in an otherwise random hole in the wall, the two of them escape into a secret room where they discover a mechanical man named Tik-Tok, who serves as the entire Royal Army of Oz, who was stowed away to wait for Dorothy and managed to avoid being turned to stone himself since he is, as constantly pointed out during the film, not alive. (Wait...technically, the Tin Man isn't alive either, but he was turned to stone? How is that possible?) Tik-Tok fights off the Wheelers and interrogates one of them, who between Jim Carrey impressions kindly fills us in on the plot: apparently someone called the Nome King kidnapped the Scarecrow, who became ruler of Oz in her absence, stole all the emeralds in the city and turned everyone into stone. He name-drops a Princess Mombi as the only one who knows where the Scarecrow is.

I have to admit at this stage that Tik-Tok for this scene alone would have to be my favorite character in this film. There are Wheelers all around him and he stands perfectly still as his midsection spins around and his arms swing freely and smack all of them down, and then he picks one of them up by his shoulder, and shakes him up until he talks, letting him know that his being a machine makes him impervious to his threats. That's bad-ass right there. Tik-Tok is bad-ass.

BAD. ASS.

A visit to Mombi reveals that she looks just like the nurse from the hospital in a fancy cape and has a chamber full of heads that she wears like a closet full of shoes. A question about the Scarecrow goes ignored as Mombi is more interested in Dorothy's young head--so interested that she plans to lock her in the tower until she's old enough for her head to join her collection.

While trapped in the tower, Dorothy recognizes the Nome King's mountain from the view in the window, even though she hadn't even heard of the Nome King before she came here, and then meets a new friend--Jack Pumpkinhead, a rickety man made of sticks with a jack-o'-lantern for a head whose voice is despite the rumors the only major contribution of Muppet man Jim Henson's son Brian to the entire film. In HIS moment of exposition, he mentions that Mombi has an powder of life, so Dorothy makes off with the key to one of her head cabinets and steals it while the others put together some kind of flying machine made of couches, palm fronds and a moose's head. A sprinkle of the powder, a recitation of some magic words, and Dorothy and company are flying off to the Nome King's lair.

Dorothy wakes up the next morning just in time for their flying machine to come apart and send them crash land right at their destination.

"I'll get you my pretty, and your little chi---okay, chicken? Seriously? Didn't you have a dog with you last time? What the hell?"

Upon arrival, the Nome King pleads his case for stealing the emeralds while dropping Dorothy through a very pretty crevice. Apparently the emeralds were mined from his mountain first, so the King believes himself justified to have taken them back because they belonged to him in the first place. Dorothy argues that he had no right to kidnap the Scarecrow, since they were there when he took power. The Nome King offers Dorothy and her friends a game - he has turned the Scarecrow into one of the ornaments in a very fancy room in his underground palace, and each contestant has three tries to guess which ornament is him.

Of course he leaves out the part where anyone who guesses wrong three times is turned into an ornament himself until AFTER the moose-head, who went in first, flunks the test.

Mombi and the Wheelers, meanwhile, race to the Nome King's mountain to warn him about...the chicken. Oh, yes, Dorothy is the main character in this story, and yet everyone in Oz is worried about the chicken.

While the game continues, the Nome King, who's looking more and more like Dr. Worley by the cut scene, reveals to Dorothy that he stole the ruby slippers Dorothy left behind which made it easy to take back the emeralds and rule Oz, which sort of negates his justification for stealing the emeralds since the slippers didn't belong to him in the first place so his actions in the Emerald City were based on a double standard and I'm thinking too hard again.

The only way to fly.

Tik-Tok pretends to have wound down during his turn so that the Nome King can send Dorothy in to wind him up and make her guesses in the process, in hopes to give Dorothy some clue should his last guess be wrong...which it is...but he doesn't. After two wrong guesses, Dorothy resorts to closing her eyes and wandering around until she finds something, but the rule of threes prevails as Dorothy gets it right on her third guess when she touches a green shiny thing and the Scarecrow comes to life, and the two of them set about restoring her friends. Meanwhile, the Nome King is talking to Mombi when he sense the Scarecrow's presence, gets pissed off, imprisons Mombi in a cage for allowing Dorothy to escape, and turns into a big, giant scary rock monster who decides to devour Dorothy and her friends. When he tries to eat Pumpkinhead, Bellina, who had been hiding in the jack-o'-lantern head the whole time, gets so scared that she...lays an egg down his throat. Eggs are apparently poisonous to Nomes as it turns out (OHHHHHHHHH, so THAT'S why they don't like chickens...'kaaaaay) and the Nome King politely sets Jack and Bellina down before slowly disintegrating from too much cholesterol, I imagine. Dorothy finds the ruby slippers in the rubble, and as the Nome King's underground lair caves in around them, does some heel-clicking and pulls a major deus ex machina that returns everyone to the Emerald City and turns its residents back to normal.

"Admit it, girl, they look WAY better on me."

A big party is thrown in the newly-restored Emerald City where all the main characters are paraded around to cheers and applause, including Mombi (she's still in the cage, and Dorothy has also removed her powers--don't ask how, they don't explain it). Everyone is hoping Dorothy will stay and become the queen of Oz, but she doesn't want to. She yearns to go back to her half-finished farmhouse in the middle of the cultivatable desert of the Kansas prairie (which, ironically, is why Bellina decides to stay), but luckily the blonde girl in the mirror is willing to take the job--turns out her name is Ozma and she's the rightful heir to the throne, or was before all this stuff happened according to the exposition provided by the formerly headless women standing around Mombi's cage. After some tearful goodbyes, Dorothy clicks her ruby heels and is returned home to Kansas where Toto and Uncle Henry greet her warmly.

Auntie Em wraps things up by saying that Dr. Worley's laboratory was hit by lightning during the storm, and Dr. Worley himself was the only casualty of the resulting fire when he went back to try to save his machines, and Nurse Wilson is conveniently wheeled past us in a horse-drawn paddy wagon. And in the final scene we have Dorothy in her bedroom when who should appear in her mirror but Ozma and Bellina, who smile at them in a way that tells you that everywhere she goes, they will follow her to the ends of the earth for all the rest of her days, with nobody else seeing them.

This is a kids' movie.

And a VERY WEIRD kids' movie at that. Not as deranged as Raggedy Ann and Andy or Mexican Santa Claus, but it's pretty high up the list. It is WORLDS apart from the original movie in look and atmosphere--it does a more accurate job of capturing its late 19th-century setting, but that only make it a darker and more bizarre movie, as if the Wheelers, Nomes and disembodied heads weren't doing a good enough job of it. Much of the story you kinda have to read the books to understand, barring a plot hole or two, but worry not, as there is a ton of expository dialogue that fills in the blanks. The only problem with this is that there is TOO MUCH of it...and every character has at least one scene where they make these long speeches, some of which have nothing to do with the story. Just about the only thing they DON'T tell us in advance is why Nomes hate chickens.

I'm not sure I can recommend this to children, especially those who scare easily. I first saw the original Wizard of Oz as a kid, as I'm sure millions of us have, and I'm pretty sure any young viewer seeing Return to Oz would probably prefer the first one--not because of the obvious discrepancies between the two films like the age difference between both Dorothys, the similar-looking sidekicks (Pumpkinhead = Scarecrow, Tik-Tok = Tin Man), and the lack of songs, but rather the presence of giant rock monsters and homicidal maniacs rolling around on all fours.

"See you when you're asleep...and while you're getting dressed...and when you have boys over!"

Tron (1982)

I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
--Isaac Asimov

Over the years, Disney and I have had sort of a...love-hate relationship.

I don't care for their whole "family values" image that comes out in every show and movie they put out. And yet, I cannot deny that I did grow up with a lot of Disney shows and movies back when I was too young to know better.

I, like others, have grown up with many of the animated films they've made over the last several decades, and I have particular soft spots for Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, The Sword in the Stone, their all-animal adaptation of Robin Hood, and the grossly underrated Great Mouse Detective. Despite this, I haven't seen one of their animated movies in theaters since Mulan was released. Not counting Pixar, of course.

Also, Fantasia? Boring. The Little Mermaid? Didn't like it. And don't get me started on the liberties they took with Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Disney Channel was one of a few channels I watched all the time as a kid. And this was back in the day when it was a premium channel that actually showed good movies, not just some clone factory for Hannah McGuires and Lizzie Montanas.

I have mixed feelings on the fact that they now own the Muppets. I'm glad to see they're coming out with another movie this fall, but I can't help but think they're part of the reason why THIS will never see the light of day again.

And lastly, I have NEVER LIKED Mickey Mouse. I always leaned more towards Goofy or Donald Duck, but otherwise I'm more of a Bugs Bunny kinda guy.

Tron came out during a time in the late 70s-early 80s when Disney were willing to be more experimental, about three years after the release of The Black Hole, their very first PG-rated film. Director Stephen Lisberger was so fascinated by the world of video games (this was during the era of Pong and Atari) that he was inspired to make a movie about them. After shopping the idea around at several studios, he finally approached Disney, and after making a test reel of a man throwing a prototype of one of the Frisbees in the movie that combined backlit animation and computer visuals with live action, they were persuaded to fund it. The studio's in-house animation department wouldn't touch it for fear that they were being replaced by computers--fears that came true briefly in 2004 with the boom of CG animation--so teams from four leading computer firms, including MAGI, whose work was a major influence on Lisberger, were brought in to do the animation and visual effects.

The movie managed to make back its production budget at the box office despite the fact that it was outgrossed by the tie-in video game. It was also disqualified for a nomination for the 1983 Best Visual Effects Oscar because according to Lisberger--get this--the Academy thought their use of computer imaging was "cheating." (I know, right?) Fifteen years later, though, Ken Perlin picked up a Technical Achievement Award for his invention of "Perlin noise", a computer texturing technique that was adapted for the movie.

"I am Spartacus for Windows 95!"

The movie stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a vengeful ex-programmer from the ENCOM Corporation who now runs a video arcade where many of his games, including the very popular Space Paranoids, are played. He has a personal vendetta against one Ed Dillinger (David Warner), ENCOM's senior executive who rose to the top of the board after he swiped the code to Flynn's money-making games, slapped his name on it and had Flynn fired to cover his tracks. Every night Flynn attempts to hack into ENCOM's mainframe to find evidence of this misdeed but is repeatedly stopped by Dillinger's Master Control Program, a megalomaniacal piece of artificial intelligence who has also been usurping software from other companies and even has eyes for the Pentagon and the Kremlin, feeling he can run the world much more efficiently than humans. When Flynn's friends and ex-coworkers Alan and Lora (Bruce Boxleitner and Candy Morgan) help him break into ENCOM headquarters to bypass tightened network security and access the file directly, Master Control gets its own back by hijacking an experimental teleportation laser and zapping Flynn into the digital realm.

I bet Dillinger stole THIS idea from Rick Moranis.

Welcome to the inside of your computer, circa 1982, where everyone is a Program in a neon-lit full-body jumpsuit bearing the face of their programmers to save the producers hiring any other actors in a world of similarly neon-lit geometric landscapes. Here we learn that Master Control is also a fanatical atheist, as it rules this realm of primitive cyberspace with an abject denial of philosophies regarding belief in these programmers, or "Users", as well as an iron fist. Any new Program it absorbs is ordered to renounce its original User and join the MCP's "Warrior Elite" or else be forced into a regime of basic training led by MCP's number two program Sark (Warner again) where they compete in several gladiatorial competitions until it is "de-rezzed", which I assume is a euphemism for death. Among these games are sudden-death Ultimate Frisbee, light particle jai alai, and in the film's most famous sequence, a game similar to that one where you snake around the grid while your body grows really long and you lose if you run into yourself...only played with motorcycles.


Flynn is forced to play these games at the MCP's leisure, but during the Light Cycle segment, he meets Alan's security program Tron (Boxleitner again) and the two of them escape the...arena and then get split up while the MCP's guards chase them around in neon-lit tanks. (Seriously though, what kind of prison gives the inmates motorcycles? That they could ride? Through the prison gates to escape? Or maybe crash through a wall as fragile as those of a Light Cycle arena? Wanna throw in some weapons and the keys to their cells while you're at it?)

Tron makes his way to an input/output tower where Programs communicate with their Users (or did before MCP took charge) and reunites with Lora's program and possible love interest Yori (Morgan again). With her help he slips past some guards and enlists the aid of the tower's guardian program Dumont (Barnard Hughes, who also appears as ENCOM founder Dr. Walter Gibbs, whom Dillinger insults in an earlier scene) to contact Alan and receive instructions on how to destroy the MCP. Meanwhile, Flynn discovers that, being a User, he can defy the physical laws of cyberspace by crafting a Space Paranoid out of rubble and piloting it to the I/O tower, where he reunites with Flynn and they all fly towards the MCP tower in an impressively animated flying machine until Sark flies his giant space cruiser into their path and captured Flynn and Yori, leaving Tron presumed de-rezzed.

Just because they're Paranoids doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

The final battle takes place at the MCP core, a giant amusement park ride where Sark has brought several programs to be assimilated into the MCP. He leaves Flynn and Yori on board his ship and sets it to self-destruct. As the two of them keep Sark's ship intact long enough to arrive at the core, Tron reappears to play a sudden death Ultimate Frisbee match with Sark, while the MCP attempts to cheat by turning Sark into a giant. Finally, Flynn leaps off the remnants of Sark's ship into the center of the MCP carousel and exposes a weak spot for Tron to throw his Frisbee into the core and destroy the MCP and Sark, which re-opens the I/O towers and freeing the denizens of the mainframe.

After that, the film kinda ends rather quickly. Flynn is teleported back into the real world, a nearby printer conveniently prints out a document proving that Dillinger stole Space Paranoids which reappears on Dillinger's sit-down arcade game screen the next morning, and in the final scene it is assumed that Flynn is now the new chairman of the board as we see him fly into ENCOM HQ by helicopter and greet his friends waiting for him at the helipad. Then the credits roll.

"Nobody gets in to see the Wizard! Not nobody, not no how!"

Tron is deservedly a cult classic for its groundbreaking use of computer animation during a time when we had only just gotten bored with two oblongs hitting a square back and forth. Obviously it also has a nerd following for the exact same reason. The story and characters are pretty basic, as they were written to take a back seat to the film's more technical aspects. And even though it could be seen as a glimpse in the future where every movie whether animated or not will be 85% CGI, the visuals in this film are very impressive to look at when taken in the context of the time it was made, and the bits with the live-action actors are meshed in almost seamlessly. Considering how much memory computers back then used to have, it's certainly an advancement in cinematic technology, even though by today's standards it's at least two or three tiers above the Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" video.

And anyway, at least it hasn't been whored out to death like most every other Disney property. Despite the number of video games that have been made since its release and that sequel that came out last year, Tron has settled for a more niche presence in the public consciousness. You don't see Johnny Depp or anyone else carrying this franchise into four movies or Robert Zemeckis threatening to make this all in mo-cap, and there wasn't even a Happy Meal or a spinoff Saturday morning cartoon for it. Plus the sequel was released in theaters instead of direct-to-DVD. This movie has become a Disney classic without tons of merchandise or an in-your-face marketing ploy. That's more than you can say of anything from the Mouse House.

Unlike a certain someone who just HAS to have his picture on everything.