I was scanning through the movies available on Showtime this weekend, which by the way are slim pickings! Showtime has the same movies for months and months and they are all low budget films no one has ever heard of. I finally saw some new listings and decided to watch Tron. With the updated sequel in theaters, I thought I should review the first one.
I was also looking forward to a little reminiscing. In middle school, they showed Tron at lunch during the winter when going outside after eating was not possible. I remember watching it a few times, but now that I am watching it, I don't remember any of it.
I have to say this is a terrible movie by today's standards. The special effects are so bad they look like an 8th grade project. The costumes were essentially thin white spandex with weak special effects. The basic background looks animated and the characters are green screened in.
And the technology they portray using all sorts of specialized lingo cracks me up. When this movie was new, these terms probably sounded foreign and added to the movie. Many of the terms don't mean much and our current understanding of computers has come so far that it sounds a bit ridiculous in 2011.
I am just amazed at how far from this "cutting edge" movie we have come. We can create creatures digitally that look so close to the real thing that you're almost hard pressed to tell the difference. My friend who came over for dinner, Christen, was commenting on my touch screen video camera that Allyson would grow up into a world where she may never know what an actual button was, everything would be touch screens. While I am not sure we will move that far by the time she starts creating lasting memories, I do believe we will get there within the next few decades.
We watch TV and movies that show flipping images across a room, computer screens that are essentially in the air and move closer to that reality every day. My phone now does more than my dad's first computer. If the screen and typing wasn't phone sized, it probably would replace my laptop for more functions than it does now. I use it all the time to search the web, which didn't even really exist until my late high school, early college days.
I remember my dad using the phone in the cradle jack to link to the internet before it was called that. I remember him trying to explain it to me once. I remember email before most people even knew it existed. My students today have no idea what it would be like to grow up in an era where if someone needed information, it had to come from memory or the library.
The world has changed so much in my lifetime. I can't imagine what it will look like by the time Lil Bit is thinking these thoughts. Two final thoughts - why did anyone decide to remake this awful movie and where is my flying car that was supposed to be functional by 2000?
I was also looking forward to a little reminiscing. In middle school, they showed Tron at lunch during the winter when going outside after eating was not possible. I remember watching it a few times, but now that I am watching it, I don't remember any of it.
I have to say this is a terrible movie by today's standards. The special effects are so bad they look like an 8th grade project. The costumes were essentially thin white spandex with weak special effects. The basic background looks animated and the characters are green screened in.
And the technology they portray using all sorts of specialized lingo cracks me up. When this movie was new, these terms probably sounded foreign and added to the movie. Many of the terms don't mean much and our current understanding of computers has come so far that it sounds a bit ridiculous in 2011.
I am just amazed at how far from this "cutting edge" movie we have come. We can create creatures digitally that look so close to the real thing that you're almost hard pressed to tell the difference. My friend who came over for dinner, Christen, was commenting on my touch screen video camera that Allyson would grow up into a world where she may never know what an actual button was, everything would be touch screens. While I am not sure we will move that far by the time she starts creating lasting memories, I do believe we will get there within the next few decades.
We watch TV and movies that show flipping images across a room, computer screens that are essentially in the air and move closer to that reality every day. My phone now does more than my dad's first computer. If the screen and typing wasn't phone sized, it probably would replace my laptop for more functions than it does now. I use it all the time to search the web, which didn't even really exist until my late high school, early college days.
I remember my dad using the phone in the cradle jack to link to the internet before it was called that. I remember him trying to explain it to me once. I remember email before most people even knew it existed. My students today have no idea what it would be like to grow up in an era where if someone needed information, it had to come from memory or the library.
The world has changed so much in my lifetime. I can't imagine what it will look like by the time Lil Bit is thinking these thoughts. Two final thoughts - why did anyone decide to remake this awful movie and where is my flying car that was supposed to be functional by 2000?
