Director Steven Lisberger about his movie Tron [at 3:30 in the video]:
“We were worried about being taken over by this ’1984′ sensibility of computer data being gathered on all of us and not having access to it. The PC didn’t exist. You couldn’t really get a small computer unless you knew how to work in machine language. And we thought: Well, if everybody could just get their hands on their information and manipulate it and become part of the web, well, then the world would be perfect. Obviously, this is what happened. But the world isn’t perfect.
[In 1982,] I informed 10-year-olds that this might be the future. And they really dug it. But their parents just went to a Disney film with them that was [supposed to be] a family film that had a whole lot of things in it they had never heard of and didn’t understand. People are offended by change when it comes from a direction they didn’t expect. So they went next door and watched E.T. three times.
But their kids did not forget this film. And then, when the PC showed up, they said: Oh yeah, I know what this is about. And they became this digital generation.”
This isn’t true. Back then, the first cheap home computers were available to the general public and the PC as we know it today was introduced a year before Tron was released.
Then again, it is true. I was 10 years old when Tron was released and Steven Lisberger’s quote describes my mindset since then.
But honestly, Tron also was a wonderfully silly movie and we kids just enjoyed it for its visuals and popcorn appeal and laughed at the corny story. Come on, it featured a flying Bit!