Actually, I couldn't tell if that one was male or female. S/he actually came up in a topic I was discussing elsewhere, where it almost seems some of the club programs may be transgendered (or simply gender-ambiguous) or transvestite, just judging from a couple of them. Only I couldn't believe Disney would probably be that progressive, so it's probably not intentional.

Kat Wrote:Actually, I couldn't tell if that one was male or female. S/he actually came up in a topic I was discussing elsewhere, where it almost seems some of the club programs may be transgendered (or simply gender-ambiguous) or transvestite, just judging from a couple of them. Only I couldn't believe Disney would probably be that progressive, so it's probably not intentional.

You know, one of the things that struck me during the End Of Line Club sequence was how this is Kevin Flynn's world, and Flynn was a product of the 80's. The look of the programs at the EOL, particularly some of the more androgynous ones, and the almost punk-inflected fashion accents and hairstyles on some of them, really seemed to drive that home for me. (Not to mention the Bowie-esque Castor...)

Kat Wrote:I thought they were all quite cyberpunk, really. But I haven't a clue what the 80s cyberpunk scene looked like... that never would've seemed like Flynn's scene to me, but I guess you never know.

I didn't necessarily feel it was his scene per se so much as, 'If a child of the 80's were given the power to give the products of his imagination concrete form, and he set out to imagine a techno-futuristic bar and club, what would it look like, both architecturally and in terms of the crowd hanging out there?' It just felt like a product of Flynn's era without being selfconsciously retro - for me, it was sort of like looking at an artist's work and noticing some of the things that influenced him reflected in his style.

Kat Wrote:I guess it depends. I mean, I wonder how much he had to do with the design of the club*, the programs' style, etc., and how much just.... happened to be that way on the system. There are so many themes you could go with for a club, that goth/cyberpunk is only one of many possibilities (and Zustor seems to me to lean slightly more steampunk anyway). And, of course, when it comes to 80s fashion, I could imagine plenty as well. *Considering the white glowing-ness of both the club and his house, perhaps at least a little.

I guess I didn't phrase that as clearly as I meant to. : /

What I was trying to get at wasn't so much that the EOL and its occupants look the way they did through some deliberate act of aesthetic design on Flynn's part. It's more... hmm... Looking at that space, I got a strong sense of, 'I am looking at a universe that sprang into existence from the mind of a child of the 80's'. The Grid, and specifically that little corner of it we were focused on in that scene - both the club itself and its occupants - felt like Flynn's creations. I mean, we knew this from the outset, but that drove it home for me in a very visceral way. We were seeing a big gathering of 'typical' Grid denizens up close for the first time, and the makeup, the fashion and hair... it was the sleek, high-tech future viewed through an 80's lens - all black chrome and neon, androgynous club-goers in evidence, punkish makeup and hairstyles.

And while it's true that the aesthetic of the Grid might be some sort of 'found' thing, at this point I'm inclined to think that a given system's creator and/or Users shape its look to an extent, just as individual programs take the appearance of their Users. The act of creating the Grid imprinted it with a particular aesthetic, reflected in the way both people and objects manifest there, which marks them as of Flynn's making. If the Grid had instead been the sole creation of, say, Dillinger, I wouldn't be surprised if everything from architecture to costume design would have been visually different and in some way reflective of his character - it would be his creation, and like individual programs, would mirror some facet of his nature at a fundamental level, which would subsequently color the look and feel of everything else that came after.

Yes, I know I'm rambling horribly here, and this is rapidly turning into some sort of stream-of-consciousness thing, but hopefully that gets across what I was trying to get at at least a little better than I managed earlier.

Kat Wrote:No, I got what you meant, I think. I would've just imagined that Flynn's influence might lean more toward the Day-Glo and crimped hair look than the goth/punk/cyberpunk side of the spectrum (Sam, on the other hand... although he doesn't strike me as an especially dark character either, but of the two he'd lean more that way I think). But it also could be that things darkened considerably after Clu's takeover... Flynn almost seems to imply as much, at least in some peoples' interpretation (I'm not sure it's necessarily my interpretation of what he meant by that, but I could see where one could possibly get that from).

I see it as the look and feel of things in a given system taking on a particular tone based on the perceptions and associations of its creator(s) vis a vis computers and technology. You had guys like William Gibson writing about cyberspace back in the early '80's, cyberpunk was establishing itself as a genre, and I imagine that these are things he would've followed with interest (and no small amusement - I can just imagine Flynn reading some of this stuff and chuckling to himself. 'If you could only see what's already possible now, man!') And it seems (to me, at least) like he internalized some of that visual language, and that it found subconscious expression in the appearance code and data took there.

As a product of the late 70's-early 80's, the visual style 'inside' of the Encom corporate network was shaped by the subconscious attitudes and imagery associated with computers and science by its creators. Objects are represented as gouraud-shaded solids outlined in neon, evoking the wireframe graphics of CAD systems - fitting for a scientific/corporate environment. The light traces covering the bodies of programs take a form resembling printed circuitry, again a 'futuristic' and 'high-tech' visual cue from the era.

And then we have Flynn's Grid. Flynn is its lone creator and maintainer, so the visual style of the universe is derived solely from him, from the imagery he subconsciously associates with themes like computers, technology, and the like. He's both a coder and a creative type, a gamer and a game developer, and the shapes of programs and data on his Grid are colored by that. So you have sleek forms, black chrome/Apple-esque white minimalism and neon trim, more 'edgy' or 'underground' programs (like some of the background programs at the EOL) that echo 80's cyberpunk visions of 'the future' (badass longcoats, androgynous partygoers, punk hair), etc., because those were all part of Flynn's internal visual lexicon for those themes. If he had consciously set out to create a club and populate it with program partygoers designed specifically for that purpose, they might well have taken on the sort of appearance you described, crimps and all.

I don't know, I just find myself leaning toward the idea that (at least in programs written by a single person) if the essence of a program's creator finds expression in its appearance and personality on the Grid, the same effect would hold true for the system as a whole - its 'fundamental physics', the overall appearance and physical properties of all the programs and data built on top of that OS layer, particularly if you have only one person providing any sort of input or direction at that level. If nothing else, it goes a long way toward explaining the visual disparity between the old Encom mainframe and Flynn's Grid - I don't think that a difference in hardware is enough to explain that.

As far as things being visually brighter under Flynn than they were under Clu's regime, I think we've seen some confirmation of that in Uprising. Argon City seems less sparsely illuminated, with a lot of glowing signage and such (which I imagine is the in-Grid representation of free exchange of data). Even the programs themselves sport little touches of a personal color here and there, accenting the main color of their circuit traces. These things probably went out of fashion as Clu consolidated his hold on the Grid at large - I imagine him instituting austerity measures to eliminate 'unnecessary' use of system resources and restrict the exchange of data as part of his drive for greater efficiency.

Kat Wrote:Interesting, too, that many of the T:L club characters may have looked right at home in The Matrix. I've wondered if that may have been part inspiration for the style-- most everybody's in some form of skintight-ish black, with just a couple characters in white (I was messing around a bit with a crossover--actually relatively easy to tie in, really-- and it was sort of fun to figure out what all of the real-world characters would wear in the Matrix, actually). The EOL club-goers definitely had a different style than the Matrix characters, but there were still some similarities.

From a production design standpoint? Almost definitely. The imagery of the Matrix films has become a big part of the visual language of cyberpunk, and I imagine that had an influence on the art staff. Similarly, I suspect the little stylistic touches that evoked the 80's for me in that scene were deliberately meant to do so - creating this sleek futuristic universe that in some subtle ways hearkens back to the era it was created. I was really impressed by that.

I'm not normally a huge crossover fan, but that sounds like fun. I'd be interested in hearing where you'd take it. order abortion pill abortion pill buy online where to buy abortion pill

OKAAAAAY! Back to the subject of that girl.......... Yes, she is a girl, and she is in no way androgynous looking. She has breasts after all, and she is sitting on the lap of what I feel quite safe in assuming is a male Black Guard-or at least they all seem to be male from what I can see. She is not listed in the cast on IMDB, though seemingly everyone else whose shadow even crossed over the cameraman's feet seems to be. I'll look in the actual credits as they appear in the movie. I am willing to bet she's a model hired for the part or she knew someone who was somehow involved in the movie or it's casting and she came to the attention of whoever was responsible for the extras in that way. So someone out there has to know her name.

Maybe I need to say this for the young 'uns out there, but while I still assert that she's indeed a girl, androgyny was none the less a BIG thing in the eighties, which would soundly explain why many of the EOL club's patrons dress in a way which offers a nod towards that sexually ambiguous mode. I have to admit I saw very few people during the eighties who were heterosexual and sporting the andro look in real life, but it was none the less an aesthetic adopted by many clothing designers and performers. Being openly gay in the eighties was still a bit taboo. If you were gay and in high school, for instance, I don't care where you lived, you wouldn't DARE come out of the closet. Rob Halford of Judas Priest had to basically quit the band back then because it came out he was gay and his heavy metal fan base would have burned and never again listened to a single one of the band's (then vinyl) albums if they had a "fag" lead singer. Of course now, it's no big deal at all. In fact last I heard, he's back with them and his sexuality isn't even an issue now. But back then, gays were still "fags", and people understood little about AIDS-which was something new and which was scaring the living SH*T out of people. All anyone really knew about it is that A: Gays got it, and B: It killed you no matter what. Society hadn't quite warmed up to the idea of homosexuality being mainstream, but you need to understand that the trend towards androgyny cannot be underestimated in what it did to help pave the way for homosexuality being accepted by the mainstream. Remember the Eurythmics? When Annie Lennox, their singer, performed their #1 hit Sweet Dreams at the grammys in 1983,she was deemed OUTRAGEOUS- even genuinely scandalous- for performing the song not in a merely androgynous dress, but all-out, ba*ls-to-the-wall drag. Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/6ml2f57. The original studio video for the song in which she all but single handedly defines 80's androgyny can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/ybn34tb. So shy did everyone loose it when she performed at the Grammys? Because no one had done anything like it before. The End. Because in 1983, MTV was so new, few people had really even seen the video for the song. So her and her androgynous "thing" was an extremely in-your-face thing for anyone to do. I was the only Eurythmics fan at my entire school at the time out of a class of at least 200. Call me ahead of my time, as usual. I caught holy hell for being into a "fag" band that week, though Annie and Dave Stewart are both straight and the song has nothing to do with homosexuality.

I may posit that in listening to the Eurythmics, you'll again hear the same 80's synth-pop sounds that are undoubtedly the DNA of the T:L soundtrack. Same general sounds, same tonality, etc. I've said before that if you heard the T:L soundtrack in the eighties, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows as far as sounding ahead of it's time at all.

For me, this is one of the BEAUTIES of these films-each one is a product of it’s time.

The visual effects of the first movie (where everything is made from bright, simple geometric shapes) was, has we all know, cutting edge at the time, and was a good reflection of how computors (including the gaming industry-why else would they include an arcade in the story?) was still in it's infancy compared to the vast, multi-BILLION dollar industry we have in today's society.
This isn’t just because of the limits of computer technology then, but the actual DESIGN of them has well (the Recognisers are a perfect example of this-they come straight out of an arcade game, both in how they look and how they move/sound too. Just look at Flynn playing Space Paranoids to see what I mean).

Come forward to the present day, and has we all know the video games industry has changed A LOT since then-now days the visual effects in games has evolved to such an extent that they’ve now become almost photo-realistic, and have now got many elements that, 30 years ago, would have been almost impossible to do (3D landscapes, weather patterns, facial expressions & body movements of the characters, to name but a few).
Legacy also reflects this in my opinion, and has they noted in the making-of features, we’ve now got Tron weather (rain, thunderstorms, wind) and even physics (like when the Lightcycles jump the ramps in the Arena and you hear them THUMP on the ground, or the screeching of the Lightrunners tyres on the smooth floor during the get away). When you look at some of the games you get these days (Such has the Halo games) there’s now SO MUCH emphasis on the ambience, lighting, the texture/rendering of the environment, etc in order to make that game’s world has immersive & believe has possible.

And I think that’s what they’ve tried to do with Legacy, by making nearly all the sets, costumes, props, etc has REAL props rather then just CGI or animated.
This, I think, gives the sequel something of a massive advantage over the original-for me it’s the idea that you could walk onto the sets (between shooting) and see the landscapes, the furniture, the clothes & weapons and various items and TOUCH THEM, and PICK THEM UP and hold them in your hands.
Where has, when you look at the production stills from the first film you mostly see just the actors in their black & white costumes standing infront of a blank screen most of the time.
(There’s a story that they originally got a different actor to play Sark-I think it was PETER O’TOOLE-but when he turned up to do his first scenes he was pretty much like “Where’s the sets? Where’s the props ?”. He just couldn’t understand how they were doing it that way, and after a few days he walked away from the project. That’s when they got DAVID WARNER in instead, who DID understand how they wanted to do things the way they did).

Having said that, however, I did notice the 80’s vibe in other parts of the movie especially in the music. Some of the incidental music (such has Son of Flynn, when Sam’s riding his bike through the streets) was SUPERB the first time I heard it watching it at the cinema.
Another example is when Flynn & Sam board the Solar Sailer has it was taking off after the elevator fall. Again, we got this simply BRILLIANT 80’s electro-synthesiser sound which I LOVED!
(In fact, I've just selected just that scene on it's own from the menu, just so that I can listen to the music).

I must say I got a REAL KICK hearing that synthesiser music has I was watching it. : D

The way I see it, the Original Tron was for the Pac-Man generation, whilst Legacy is pretty much Tron for the Halo 3 generation of gamer. order abortion pill abortion pill buy online where to buy abortion pillwhere to buy abortion pill http://blog.bitimpulse.com/template/default.aspx?abortion-types buy abortion pill onlineabortion pills online http://www.kvicksundscupen.se/template/default.aspx?abortion-questions cytotec abortion

I dunno, who says Nick Nolte wouldn't been a bad choice? Or Sean Connery if he could loose that stupid Scottish accent which he can't even shed for a part. where to buy abortion pill ordering abortion pills to be shipped to house buy abortion pill online

Kat Wrote:HIJACK. But I'd heard from someone that they'd wanted O'Toole to play Tron. This is the first I've heard of Sark, though I guess that makes sense too. At any rate, I couldn't cite sources either way; it's all hearsay to me.

This was actually mentioned on the 'Making Of'' Documentry on the 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition DVD (that's where I got it from).