General Information:

Media Type: Book
Type: Other
Release Date: 2010-11-23

Geek's Thoughts: Released in November 2010, a few weeks before Tron: Legacy opened in theaters in December, this book showcases some of the concept art as well as images from the sequel to the 1980s TRON.

I have to admit I am not a huge TRON fan. I was a little too young for Sci Fi when the original came out and now not that big of a Sci-Fi fan, but I did find it really interesting all the effort that was taken to hold true to the original film but extend it forward to the modern era. The analogy they used in the books was if you looked at a 1980s Porsche and a 2010 one you would know they are a Porsche but you could see the refinement/evolution. They used the same base concept for the film. So everything from the costumes to the Light Cycles were updated. Also thanks to modern computers and film making processes they were able to do things they could not with the original. There were several instances throughout the book where they showed an image from the original and then from the new film to show the evolution.

 

Overall I found this to be an easy read, since this is intended to be an art book it is fairly light on content but there are brief descriptions of the pieces that do help to explain the character/set/etc that is being shown. There is an introduction that tells some of the story of how the film made its was from concept to reality. I thought the story of how the test film was created then they managed pull off the surprise screening at Comic-Con was fun to read.

Also for those, like myself, that are not huge Tron fans this did help to introduce/reintroduce the characters since they were all laid out. I did enjoy seeing the concept sketches and then the final film shots to see how it evolved. I would have liked to have seen an intermediate step that showed the creation/use/backstage angle of things. I guess that is the geek in me that always wants to see and learn more about how it came to be.