When did TRON become cool?

There were two things I thought I would never see in my lifetime, let alone in the same year:

1) Pee Wee Herman on Broadway
2) A sequel to Tron

While Paul Reubens must rely on make-up to reduce his age by 30 years, Jeff Bridges gets some pretty high-tech CGI to erase his wrinkles and enter the grid in the upcoming Tron: Legacy. Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t be giddier about the whole thing, but I’m wondering one thing.

Where the hell did all these Tron fans come from?

If you were a pre-teen in 1981, Tron was the litmus test of Nerdville. Years before Matthew Broderick hacked into the WOPR, here was a script that had characters named “Ram” and “Clu,” dialog referring to master control programs and users. A world where being derezzed was the worst thing that could happen to you, and being called scuzzy data was the lowest form of insult. This was an experience beyond after-school BASIC lessons. A cinematic nerdgasm of epic proportions.

Now, I must have seen Tron in its original theatrical release at least four times, I’ve seen it in 70mm during my days at NYU, I bought the special edition Laserdisc and the DVD, and I’ve been to a few midnight screenings in recent years. Still to this day, I can’t pass buy any arcade with a Coin-Op TRON in it without playing a few games. But, I have never felt there was a large sect of fans out there, and certainly not a large enough one to warrant production on a sequel.

Then suddenly there was buzz of a sequel called Tron 2.0, but we got it in the form of a pretty lame first-person shooter game and even lamer action figures (although the DS and X-Box versions of the game contain the original arcade editions of TRON and DISCS OF TRON, which is freakin’ awesome). Nevertheless, the toe in the water approach to continuing the franchise didn’t really seem to go anywhere.

Then Disney moved their Modus Operandi to exploit and build as many already owned franchises they felt were sure-thing hits, and they dusted off the discs for a big-time reboot.

I’m not disregarding the fact that geek has never before been more chic, and that Science Fiction and Fantasy pull in big box-office these days to extents never before seen, I just think it’s a little odd how Tron went so quickly from being one of the biggest flops for the Disney studios to their showcase Q4 event in Imax 3D. Is the audience going to be as large as the hype being fed into the release? Are Box Office analysts are under-estimating its weekend gross at $50 Million?

Disney has certainly marketed the film brilliantly, from early footage surprised upon Comic Con years ago to the Daft Punk soundtrack. Yet, I have to remain a little skeptical. The cinema I watched the “Tron Night” preview in last Thursday was pretty empty for a free screening of this magnitude, and from what I could overhear, a lot of audience members had not seen the original film.

I don’t expect Tron Guy on the red carpet in December. Disney has done a pretty good job of also treating the original film like the ugly stepmother uninvited to the party. Rumor has it Blu-ray and theatrical releases of the 1981 original were scrapped due to some disastrous responses at repertory test screenings. The geek-speak dialogue from the original script has been switched out in Tron: Legacy in favor of a hipper, sexier reboot. But, if the preview footage shown is any indication, the new movie seems to be the best of all possible cyber-worlds. It’s both remake and sequel, continuing plot elements from the first film, throwing in a few in-jokes for us fans (“Separate Ways” by Journey anyone?), but also expanding the universe it came from. So far, I have faith.

End of Line.