Tron (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

A masterpiece of breakthrough CGI ingenuity, Disney celebrates the 20th anniversary of TRON, a dazzling film at the flashpoint of a continuing revolution in its genre. When Flynn (Jeff Bridges) hacks the mainframe of his ex-employer to prove his work was stolen by another executive, he finds himself on a much bigger adventure. Together, they fight the ultimate battle with the MCP to decide the fate of both the electronic world and the real world! This special collector's edition showcases an epic adventure inside a brave new world where the action is measureed in microseconds. Beamed inside by a power-hungry master control program, he joins computer gladiators on a deadly game grid, complete with high-velocity "light cycles" and Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a specialized security program.

Disney's wizards used a variety of cinematic techniques and early-'80s state-of-the-art computer-generated graphics to accomplish their dynamic visual goals, and the result was a milestone in cyberentertainment, catering to technogeeks while providing a dazzling adventure for hackers and nonhackers alike. Appearing just in time to celebrate the nascent cyberpunk movement in science fiction, Tron received a decidedly mixed reaction when originally released, but has since become a high-tech favorite and a landmark in special effects, with a loyal following of fans. It's about a computer wizard named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate (David Warner) and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) to outmaneuver the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game. --Jeff Shannon DVD is a perfect format for the movie's neon-glow color scheme, and the musical score by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos is faithfully preserved on the digitally remastered soundtrack. The surprising truth about Disney's 1982 computer-game fantasy is that it's still visually impressive (though technologically quaint by later high-definition standards) and a lot of fun.