Working at a Mom and Pop video store taught me plenty.
Any VHS movie cover with a man holding a gun would fly off the shelves – even if the man holding said gun wasn’t named Seagal, Stallone, Willis or even Speakman.
Customers didn’t care about the quality of a new movie – the word “new” was all they needed to hear for them to want it.
Cheech and Chong comedies would be rented out and never returned – even “The Corsican Brothers.”
And, whenever a film’s sequel was about to hit theaters, you couldn’t keep the original in stock.
We live in different times today, so getting a refresher course on 1982’s “Tron” to prep for “Tron: Legacy” should be as easy as visiting Netflix, right?
Not so fast.
Seems the fine folks at Disney, who own the property, have yanked “Tron” from circulation. That means you can’t rent it at Netflix, or iTunes or Amazon.com. And good luck finding it at your local store. The last edition of the film came out in 2002, and the Blu-ray version appears months away.
WWTW’s new feature at The Washington Times explores the situation. It may not be fair, but if the new film flops at the box office some may point a finger at the original film’s MIA status.
(Photo: “Tron: Legacy” continues the saga of Kevin Flynn – played by Jeff Bridges – that began in 1982 with “Tron.”)
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
That Disney spent $170 million on the sequel is inexplicable. Imagine the pitch:
“So, today I’m proposing a sequel to the flop “Tron,” which did poorly in theaters in 1982 and is now regarded as a vaguely entertaining cult treasure. For just a shade under $200 million we can make a new installment, even though the most profitable segment of today’s audience won’t even have heard of the original, much less seen it. So, do we have a deal? Can we make a picture?”
My wife’s away for a few days, so Tron party at my place. I promise it will be just as good (if not booze-enhanced better) as the similarly themed party I had for my 14th birthday. Deluxe Edition double-disc, fellow geeks, and can even play the same Activision classics afterward …
Here’s my theory, Christian: Because Tron: Legacy has a revisionist history of the Tron story (most notably Kevin’s son Sam, who then is the main character in Legacy) I think Disney pulled Tron to avoid people realizing it after watching the original.
I watched Tron the day after I saw the Tron: Legacy screening (with you!) and it was terrific fun to see what was similar (Flynn’s video arcade) and disconcerting to see what was different (much less of a mature story arc in the original).
Kinda like my double feature of 1969’s “True Grit” and the new Coen Bros version. But that’s another story.
After my brother went out to make his search, only to find ridiculous priced DVDs at Amazon.com, he did what every other person half his age would go out and do: got a bootleg.
I still relish knowing that I had the highest score on Tron at the arcade in my hometown. That stood for almost a year.
I think this will actually hurt the movie. I want to see the new one, but I want to re-watch the original first. I was surprised to find that Netflix didn’t have it. It means that I won’t be watching the new one until they’re both available on disc.
Damn Disney and their slick advertising, they are going to sucker me twice on the same neon promise. At least this time I won’t be spending $$ in some arcade on the game from the movie (which sucked too). Thank heaven for small favors.
I’m late to the table on this one, but I had a lot of affection for the original Tron. People forget this was, I believe, the first PG Disney flick. It also opened itself up to a non-traditional audience that was just then discovering video games in the early days of the 1980s. The movie was ahead of its time in too many regards and right there in others.
As a kid, I didn’t notice the flaws as much, so it made for an enjoyable afternoon whenever this popped on HBO. Besides, what kid didn’t like a lightcycle or a killer frisbee. I’m sure there are stil roofs in the Midwest littered with frisbees from 7-year-olds having their own Tron battles in the backyard.