Disney in Space (and Cyberspace)

 

 

 

 

 

This is my entry in the 100 Years of Disney blogathon hosted by Silver Screnes.

 

Like just about every kid (or every American kid, at least), I grew up in an age where my first experiences with movies was Disney movies.  Movies like Bedknobs and Broomsticks for live action films, and 101 Dalmatians for cartoons were the bread and butter of my movie going experiences. I still recall seeing both of those in the theater (101 Dalmatians must have been a re-release, however since it's original premiere predates my being old enough to experience it).

For years, that was all I was allowed to go see.  There is a story somewhere else on this blog that my parents took my sister and me to see Patton and my father took such an offense to the foul language in it that he refused to allow us to go to anything rated above G afterwards, which pretty much eliminated anything BUT Disney movies. It took a huge amount of pleading to get my father to let my sister and I go see Star Wars. But we did get to that.

So I got to see a LOT of Disney movies, but by the time I was 15 I started to rebel against the strictures of limitations. It took another 10 years or so before I would even consider those cheesy happy-go-lucky movies.  But beginning in the late 70's Disney started  delving into more adult focused themes.  Not sure if The Black Hole was the first, but it was pretty close.

I was still at that age where I didn't have the autonomy to choose my own path when The Black Hole came out (it was rated PG, so it was still off limits by my father's standards, despite it being a Disney movie), but by the time Disney released Tron I had the power to choose my own entertainment.  It was years before I finally got to see The Black Hole, but Tron was one of the first in my new independent life. Nowadays Disney is not just limited to cartoons and animal movies, because some of its subsidiaries are releasing some various adult movies. (Witness what you can see under the Touchstone umbrella...)

 

 

 

 Tron: (1982): 

Tron was state-of-the-art back in 1982.  Although the movie still holds up well these days, 40 years down the road the graphics come off as a little dated,  But one of the memories I have is playing the Tron video game at the arcade.  

 

 

 

The movie (and video game) featured some astounding special effects, such as the lightcycle.  Those of you who are younger probably don't even know what an arcade is. These were prevalent across the United States and elsewhere until the rise of really good home entertainment systems.  You used to have to go to a central location where you invested quarters (sometimes, at least in my case, 10s of dollars in quarters) to play stand-up consoles featuring games like Pac-Man (which I KNOW you've heard of) and other games.  The malls (another dying place from those days) always had one place like that.  In my case it was called The Gold Mine.

The movie itself involved a man named Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a former employee of a computer company called ENCOM. 

 

 

 Flynn spends his days running a video game arcade and in his spare time trying to hack into the ENCOM computer system to find information that will help him prove that the head of ENCOM, Dillinger (David Warner) stole his ideas for several video games and used them to maneuver himself to the top of ENCOM's ladder.

 

As such, when Dillinger shuts down high-level access to the mainframe computer, Flynn's friends still working at ENCOM, Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora (Cindy Morgan) go to Flynn to warn him that Dillinger is on to him.  And so is the Master Control Program in the computer system.

The real villain in the piece is the Master Control Program (hereafter called MCP).  The MCP started out as just a glorified chess program, but somehow has been able to garner more and more power until it is essentially able to manipulate the system (and his subordinate, Dillinger, in the process).

When Flynn tries to access the information that proves that Dillinger is guilty the MCP uses some technology developed by Lora and her partner, Dumont (Barnard Hughes) to digitize Flynn and convert him to a computer program in the system. (Yeah, OK, there is a tremendous amount of suspension of disbelief required for this film).

Inside the system, Sark (who is Dillinger's representative in the computer world) is commanded by the MCP to put Flynn in the games.  The games are a way of destroying computer programs who refuse to renounce their belief in the Users. Side note: there is an underlying religious theme here.  Consider the Users to be representatives of the gods, or God, if you will. What the MCP, who represents the Devil, is trying to do is to get the computer world society to renounce their belief in the gods (God).  Any who do not are sentenced to play in the games. And defeat in the games results in de-resolution. Elimination from existence, in other words.

 

 

 

In the computer world Flynn teams up with Tron, a computer program written by Alan in order to defeat the MCP and free the world from it's influence.  Every character in the real world has it's representative as a computer program in the computer world, so we even get Lora and Dumont in the system.

One of the distracting parts of this film is the occasionally blooper that was left in (probably because the budget wouldn't allow re-shoots). That is when the occasional character refers to the MCP as the "MPC" And I consider it a blooper because on other occasions the same character calls it the MCP correctly, so it's not like it's a character mistake.

Anyway, the movie virtually steals many things from Star Wars. I won't go into detail of these, but if you watch you will catch them. The major one is when Sark's ship overtakes the smaller ship being piloted by Flynn and Tron and Lora.  It looks so much like the opening of Star Wars it's unavoidable.

Ultimately Tron and Flynn end up in a battle with the Emperor (I mean the MCP) and get to free the computer world from its influence.

The plot still holds up, as I said before, but the graphics seem dated.  If you can get over that, you will enjoy the story at any rate.

The Black Hole (1979):

 The movie begins with a spaceship already investigating the black hole (why waste time with a prologue of how we got to this point, when you can do it with dialogue between characters?  Kudos, Disney).

Anyway, the ship, the Palomino, which is commanded by Capt. Holland (Robert Forster), has discovered a ship that appears to be unaffected by the black hole. (It should be being drawn into the immense gravitational forces of the hole, yet is in a stationary form.)

 

 

 

A side note to explain exactly what a black hole is:  It is a region of space that is the product of a collapsed star that creates a hole in space and draws all objects in it's vicinity into it because of the immense gravity it generates.  In theory it can draw entire solar systems into it.  What is on the other side of the black hole can only be conjectured since nothing apparently can withstand it's force.  Therefore, the black hole of the film SHOULD draw the spaceship into its vortex. (yet it does not.).

The crew decide to take their own ship closer to investigate.  It turns out that the ship stationary near the black hole is the Cygnus I, a ship that had been sent out 20 years earlier.  The ship was supposedly recalled but never returned.  There is a connection between the crew of the Palomino and Cygnus.  It seems that one of the crew members, Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), is the daughter of a member of the crew that manned the Cygnus.

When the crew gets closer, some of their ship is damaged by the force of the black hole and they land on the Cygnus.  It seems the Cygnus is able to generate some null gravity force field which is how it is able to stay stationary despite the gravity pull of the hole.

On board, the crew encounter what appears to be the sole survivor of the crew of the Cygnus, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell). Along with a crew of robots that he created to help him man the ship. He informs them that Kate's father stayed behind with him, but has since died.  The rest of the crew were sent home and Reinhardt expresses surprise that the crew never made it back home.

 

 

 

Reinhardt agrees to help the crew get their ship repaired and get them back on their way home, but intimates there is no way he is going back with them.  What is goal for staying is a mystery.  But while the crew gathers up the tolls and supplies several of them go off to investigate on their own.  Capt. Holland, ostensibly heading back to the ship to initiate the procedures, departs the shuttle and finds, among other things, uniforms and personal effects of the supposedly departed Cygnus crew. Another crew member, Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) also secretly goes off on his own.  Booth sees one of the robots limping which arouses his suspicions.

Meanwhile in another part of the ship, the Palomino's resident robot. Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowell) meets B.O.B. (voiced by Slim Pickens), an early prototype of his own model who reveals interesting information as to what EXACTLY happened with the crew of the Cygnus. (And no, they didn't disappear trying to return to Earth...)

Dr, Reinhardt, as the mad genius of the piece, has a notion to try to find out what is on the other side of the black hole.  As Dr. McCrae suggests, "he walking a tightrope between genius and insanity".  Or to put it more bluntly as Booth says "I think the guy is nuts."  The only person who thinks that Reinhardt is playing with a full bag of marbles, it appears, is Dr. Durant (Anthony Perkins).

But Vincent and Kate share a connection via ESP (don't even ask what I think of that...).  Vincent shares with Kate that the Capt should return to the Palomino, where Vicent relates what he learned from B.O.B.  The crew did indeed not get away from the Cygnus.  There was a revolt over control of the ship and the crew members who didn't die were turned into, you guessed it, Reinhardt's robots.

At this point the final reel comes up and I don't want to give the final away, but it is Disney so you have to have a pretty good idea how it will all turn out.  Fortunately for me and some other people, it doesn't involve a cocker spaniel/schnauzer mutt showing up to save the day.  (That would have been ridiculous, of course, but prior to 1979, entirely something I might have expected.)

I whole heartedly recommend both of these movies to anyone out there whose intersts segue into the science-fiction realm.  There are some points that are unbelievable (like ESP) but the primitive graphics and special effects hold up rather well, even is this day of CGI.

Well, that brings us to the time to warp home. (I converted the Plymouth to hyperdrive...) Drive safely folks.

Quiggy