This Is Tron

What's the big deal? The year was 1982, you simply didn't see anything like these effects in movies at that time. Tron was the first theatrically released film to incorporate fully rendered computer generated images as backdrops, vehicles and characters. The biggest special effects anyone had seen by that point were in the Star Wars movies, so when Tron was released people had a hard time wrapping their brains around the concept of the film.

Today the general audience will look at these outdated special effects and scoff, citing "AVATAR" as having such amazing computer generated imagery that it is difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is an effect. But when I look back at the effects in Tron I see something with more character and meaning, something that was hand-crafted and the work put into the film meant more than just the click of a mouse button on an editing program.