TRON

With the power of computers reaching to homes everywhere in the early 1980's, the new frontier of computer generated imagery is introduced to the film industry in full feature form. The movie may lack in story, but their message of the computer world becoming more a part of our lives (like the last shot of the LA skyline) is evident.

The ability to make organic shapes created from MAGI (one of four computer companies used in making the CGI) and interacting with a human being had never been done before. Only sparingly was CGI used in earlier films. Steven Lisberger was certainly inspired by the visual effects done with breakthrough films Star Wars and Jaws. Lisberger then created the idea to bring humans from the real world into the electrical world where he knew CGI would do its job. The electronic world was certainly a very simple place, where every landscape was flat and jagged, and the heroes and villains were simply displayed in blue (hero) and red (villain) outlines. The back light animation and the technical effort to make a landscape look more real with distant shadowing was certainly a trying effort. It was the bareness yet vastness of the electronic world that makes the movie more memorable in time.

With how CGI has been throughout the years since TRON, there has always been a chance to expand on the ability to make CGI more astounding. And it is quite interesting that years after TRON, George Lucas actually started a CGI company he later sold, named PIXAR. Guess what happened after that.