Apple products and Tron: perceptions of success and goodnessTron (1982)
Enlightening:
Tron was a minor box office bust, not a success. The sequel was greenighted only because they thought the fan base had grown and there was room for a new film with a much larger audience, but it too underperformed.
I was amazed to learn, from this topic, that Tron could be classed as a 'box office bust'. With help from Google I found a few things. I think it's necessary to examine the likely historic reasons for those figures arising. In
DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom - James B. Stewart - Google Books (page unnumbered):
opened a few weeks after E.T.: the Extraterrestrial and Annie. The competing studios were spending a then astronomical $10 million each on advertising and marketing campaigns. Walker refused to raise the miniscule marketing budget
the only publicity worth the money was free.
still refused to increase advertising, insisting that word of mouth would come to the rescue.
In
Tron and on | TG Daily (2011-11-28), David Konow expresses feelings very similar to my own:
I didn't even realize Tron was a flop until years after the fact.
it was a perfect blend of video game fun, and blockbuster thrills. Other movies have tried to bring the thrill of video games to the big screen, and Tron was the only movie that actually succeeded at doing it.
state of the art for the time.
Harrison Ellenshaw was the visual effects artist of the film, and as he told me, "Tron was the first extensive use of computer graphics in a motion picture, almost fifteen minutes worth. Up until that time, it was maybe up to a minute at most in Westworld."
1982 was an insane summer for genre films with E.T., Star Trek II, The Road Warrior, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Blade Runner.
Tron creator Steve Lisberg felt, "Graphically and visually a lot of people can't handle that much art. It was like we put LSD in the punchbowl at the school prom, and it was just way more than they could handle. I thought Tron was gonna blow people's minds, but people don't want their minds blown by Disney, they want to be reassured by them. And the idea that Disney was gonna mess with your head was almost incomprehensible to the vast majority."
current following is strong enough that the film warranted a sequel last year. Back in the day, Tron was a major pioneer in digital effects
"It's had this life, and now I don't think it's ever going away."
For me, Tron was right up there with the others listed by Konow. Critically:
- I don't recall having any Disney-related preconception, in 1982, of how the movie should or should not mess with my head.
As things turned out, I found the mess extremely pleasing.
For more than enough filmgoers in 1982, Tron was unquestionably a good film; a success.
After the event I can be shown any number of facts that have the potential to detract from that success. To me, the happy customer, those facts do not devalue the product; the film was "bloody fantastic".
More
In
The Top 10 Tech Movies of the Millennium TIME (2014-04-03), Ben Taylor precedes his list with an apology for the timeframe not including "
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and
Tron (1982)".
Box office: 'How Do You Know' flops; 'Tron' doesn't; and like the bear himself, 'Yogi' is soft [Updated] | Company Town | Los Angeles Times (2010-12-19)
Tron reboots Disney history, too | Variety (2010-12-04)
In the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, from 2003:
Tron Sector 'Creating the Memories' is Bill Kroyer's adaptation of his 1995 keynote (http://www.tron-sector.com/articles/article.aspx?id=218 referred from
page 208 of 'Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs' (Scott Kirsner, 2008).
Also from 'DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom', on the same page that discusses Tron:
Walt had felt constrained by the Disney brand. As he put it in one outburst, "I've worked my whole life to create the image of what 'Walt Disney' is. It's not me. I smoke, and I drink, and all the things that we don't want the public to think about."
Cultures
If I could have a MacRumors top ten, CFreymarc's post would be there. It's equally enlightening.
These parts are most interesting:
The lack of success that "Pete's Dragon" had was the last nail in the old guard of animators personally hired by Walt himself.
Tron did great -- over the top great. Lots of money made.
The old guard working at Disney hated it.
finally -- the old guard retired. Iger and outsiders not "grown Walt's way" came in. This is how "Tron Legacy" and "Saving Mr. Banks" got the green light. The idea of an actor portraying Walt Disney himself was sacrilege to the Old Guard animators and production managers now living in retirement homes.
Iger did a transformation to Disney the way that Philip Caldwell did to Ford in the 70's. He got the "family" the hell out of the place and looked at modern market needs.
Good job Bob!
The names
Philip Caldwell and
Bob Iger were unknown to me before this topic. Were their jobs well done? I have no idea, neither do I have any special interest in the organisations.
CFreymarc's post is in my top ten for provoking thought about
old and new cultures within Apple. (Should I say, old
guard? I don't know. It's for each individual, within the old and the new, to know whether their self-perceptions include
shared guardianship of a way of doing something. And I don't expect those individuals to publicise their perceptions, not in MacRumors. But for now, I'll go with 'guard'.)
There were historic approaches to animation, traditional media (reels of film, various technologies) traditionally presented on the big screen. The bigger the better.
In 2014 things are very different. Yes, it's convenient to watch something at a moment's notice on a relatively tiny screen
but will a majority of film fans ever agree that smaller is better? I doubt it. An obscenely expensive colossal screen at home can't come close to, say, the IMAX experience (I have never been but from what everyone tells me, nothing beats the IMAX experience so for now, I'll go with that as 'the best').
An old guard and 'the best'
With those two things in mind, I'll should continue this thread in a topic with a different focus. Maybe
Apples Software Quality Decline
