Way back in Starburst 23 I interviewed Stephen Lisberger while he was in England promoting Animalympics, a full-length feature pasted together from several shorts which Lisberger had made to be shown during the American televising of the Olympic Games. Despite its fragmentation Animalympics displayed Lisbergs talents as an animation director of I considerable imagination. When I asked the young American about his next project he told me, "it's called Tron and is about a man who falls into, and becomes part of a computer."
At that stage Tron was to be a relatively low-budget, full-length animation feature, employing a certain amount of computer technology (Lisberger had made some experimental films with the famed pioneer of the technique John Whitney Jnr) as well as back-lit animation a process which gives a more glowing, less flat result than standard overhead animation stand lighting.
But somewhere along the way Tron became something else. Picked up in preproduction by Walt Disney the movie is now a multi-million dollar live-action adventure and would appear to be yet another attempt by the Disney organisation to break into the adult fantasy film market. The Black Hole proved to be a stinker of monumental proportions and the co-production with Paramount, Dragonslayer, despite an "adult ad campaign failed to click at the American box office.
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