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Thursday, January 13, 2005

Disney REMAKING Tron?! Zap down Eisner's butt onto the Gaming Grid NOW!!

From a ransom note that will soon be delivered to Walt Disney execs:

dEar DiSNeY dOPEs,
wE ARe hoLdInG tIMoN aNd PUMbaA hoSTAge. dO NOt rEMAKe troN Or yoU WiLL nevER SEe tHEm aLIVE AGaIn iN fACt wE mAy BARbEcuE puMBAa FOr DiNNer hAHAhaHahAHAHahAHaHAhA.


If this is true... grrrrrrr...

So help me, I'll hire a squad of kamikaze Muppets to walk into Magic Kingdom with suitcase nukes if they screw this up.

Tron is one of those movies that, yeah it didn't make all that much money at the box office and it's not quite a cultural classic but you don't want anyone to mess with it either, because to enough of us it is a classic. Why that is, I can't explain but I think part of it has to do with the children of the first Star Wars generation, in the years after Episode IV: A New Hope and kids used to stare up into the night sky at the stars and wonder if fierce battles really were going on up there. Tron was like that but in a way more intimate: instead of far-out space it make you look at your desktop PC and wonder what really went on inside it: for all we knew, there WAS a teeny-tiny world behind the monitor where good and evil programs hashed it out. It was a neat thing to imagine, anyway. Personally though, Tron was the very first time I saw a movie on a VCR, over at my best friend Chad's house, and that's the kind of "techy first" that stays with a guy for life.

And let's face it, Tron was DECADES ahead of its time in a jillion ways: computer-generated effects, virtual reality (NOT the first in fiction though: that honor probably goes to "The Deadly Assassin" story on BBC's "Doctor Who")... and it was hella fun eye candy to look at. Yeah maybe not a classic, but in every way it's still perfect to a lot of people. And recently it was thought that Steven Lisberger was going to make a sequel that tied-in both the original movie and the Tron 2.0 game (more on that later).

That is not going to happen, if Disney has its way (can't Michael Eisner just go away now or at least NOT mess anything else up before he does leave in another year or so? Nope, instead of letting Lisberger make a REAL sequel, Disney is going to FUBAR-it all to shreds. From ComingSoon.net:

Tron Remake in the Works at Disney
Source: Variety
January 13, 2005

Disney has hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to write a remake of Tron, the 1982 Steven Lisberger film about a computer programmer who gets sucked into the parallel world of a computer program, reports Variety.

Klugman and Sternthal, who just wrote the historical epic Warrior for Gavin O'Connor to direct and Icon to produce, feel that the world has caught up with Lisberger's original concept, making it ripe for redo.

"We are contemporizing it, taking these ideas that were ahead of the curve and applying them to the present, and we feel the film now has a chance to resonate with a young audience," said Klugman.

Sternthal said the new conceit is that the computer programmer gets trapped in a cyberworld, so that the film can utilize the Internet...

Awright stop right there: folks, it's now patently obvious that the executives at Walt Disney Inc. do not even watch their own movies!! Because the Internet was in the original Tron: it wasn't called the Internet by name but... GEEZ how ELSE do they think that Master Control Program had managed to infiltrate EVERY major computer system on the planet?! Through a 300-baud modem and a CompuServe account?!

And if they really want to get particular about it, they don't have to re-invent the wheel at all because the world of Tron has already been brought into the 21st century from the dark ages of 1982: the Tron 2.0 computer game from Monolith. It's a FAITHFUL follow-up in every possible way: it "upgrades" the computer realm from 1982's technology to reflect the existence of things like PDAs and network firewalls without losing consistency with the designs of the movie, it's a thoughtful continuation of the original story, now 20-some years after the MCP was destroyed, and it's a heckuva lotta fun to play. Oh yeah, and Bruce Boxleitner returns as the voice of Alan (the creator of the Tron program) from the film. As far as I'm concerned (and many others if sales and good word from fans are any indication), Tron 2.0 is the sequel to the original... which does not merit a "remake" the least bit.

Sigh...

This just reeks.

I mean, this blows. It REALLY blows.

I can't begin to say how bad a thing this is for Disney to be even THINKING about.

Well, actually yeah I can say how bad a thing it is.

This pegs the needle on "Chris Knight's Bad-O-Meter".

There's only one thing that can be said about Mad Michael Eisner raping another great movie like this.

Children and those with weak hearts, leave the keyboard now. I'm gonna say it.

I'm going to say something that I keep in reserve, and bring out ONLY to describe the absolute worst of bad things.

I mean it. This is happening, now. No backsies.

Okay, everyone gone that doesn't need to bleed from the eyes?

Okay, here it comes...

Walt Disney Pictures' remaking of Tron SUCKS DONKEYS BALLS TO NO END!!!

There, I feel better now.

Okay, need to go: Timon is downstairs in his cage screaming for a cigarette. Don't ask where we've got Pumbaa.

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