Tron
Normally, I “just say no” to two-disc DVD re-releases. If the movie comes out the first time on two discs - i.e. Star Wars Episode I, The Abyss, Independence Day, Star Trek: The Motion Picture - I don’t object. But I’m not planning on replacing my copy of The Fifth Element with the upcoming deluxe edition.
And typically, I’d react this way with any title - except, of course, for Tron, one of my all-time favorites, truly a seminal influence in my pop-culture consciousness. And this is really a case where the new material helps out a great deal.
The movie itself is, of course, unchanged, but the second DVD features all of the material that has long been featured on the much-sought-after deluxe laserdisc edition of the movie, as well as plenty of newer items that go a long way toward answering fans’ questions about how the film was made in the first place.
The highlight of that disc is “The Making of Tron,” a documentary with a running time equal to the movie itself, which details the genesis of the character (in, of all things, a TV advertising campaign for radio stations), the ambitions of the animators at Lisberger Studios, the pitch and eventual approval of the concept at Disney, and the making of the movie itself. I was stunned to see almost the 
entire cast interviewed for this documentary, the only conspicuous absence being that of David Warner. Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner certainly seem to look back at the movie very fondly (with retrospect and with regard to his work on Babylon 5, I found Boxleitner’s comments on the difficulty of acting in an empty space with computer animation to be added later quite funny), and Dan Shor (who played Ram) talks about how the mere mention of the movie to members of a certain age group fills them with reverence.
Also abundant are hints aplenty of the upcoming sequel, Tron 2.0: Killer App, including a fairly impressive animated sequence which precedes the movie itself on disc one. Concept sketches are also on display as part of disc two’s documentary.
The menus are sheer genius, demonstrating how simple it must’ve been to at least approach the look of the original film with today’s technology. Disc one includes an entirely computer-animated Tron flinging his disc around the screen shortly before raising it above his head to become part of the main menu, while the second disc’s features take one swooping down through the electronic world’s cityscape for a few seconds before the feature actually begins.
The movie has, as I’ve always maintained, aged well. The thought of a rogue computer program wreaking havoc on other computers worldwide was pure science fiction in 1982. Now we have the Love Bug and the Melissa virus and Code Red. Granted, we’re not accessing them on Kevin Flynn’s Apple III computer, but it raises the bar even more for the sequel.
And finally - and I’m sure someone will take me to task for this - I hope that this DVD’s highly publicized reissue will remind everyone of precisely how much The Matrix ripped off this movie. It really, really did.