I know what some of you are thinking, this is a gaming website not a comic book club. But, let’s face it, TRON was a world based off of video games and is a phenomena that crosses mediums and geekdoms. What caught me off guard was how far that bridge spanned. 20 Earth years (grid time goes faster and is measured in CPU cycles) since the first story? Wow! That alone could take up a movie and some might say should have. But, instead of going the route of a trilogy, the storytellers decided to dive into other ways to tell the story and TRON: Betrayal was born as two over-sized comic books. Soon it became obvious that though everyone knew the name ‘Tron’, a whole generation of people missed the experience of the first movie and really had no clue about its plot. So, TRON: Betrayal became a graphic novel with a prologue to help folks who were basically coming in at the end of a story.
Why Should You Bother?
To this question I like to point at the Star Wars saga. There was a whole generation of movie goers whose first experience with Star Wars was The Phantom Menace and ended with Revenge Of The Sith. They consider themselves Star Wars fans, though maybe they cared a little less for the third movie because it was a bit of a downer (editor’s note: As was TPM! :p). Now take the generation who sat as kids breathless in the theaters as the imposing figure of Darth Vader confidently strode through boarded enemy vessels and choked people from across the room. We wanted to know it all: How this land came to be like it was and what would happen next? And, they gave us… comics. Lots and lots of stories that a lot of people have never heard but are now an integral part of Star Wars lore. Eventually they gave us books and another set of movies, which we sat through despite Jar Jar because we knew in our hearts the dark days were coming and the boy would become a Sith Lord. Parents wondered if their children would have nightmares from this movie, an older generation – one that knows Han shot first, got goosebumps as the black-clad golem took it’s first breath, a breath that had haunted us since childhood, albeit in a good way.
That is kind of how TRON is. It could have been left alone, its own entity, but we needed to know more about the Grid. We weren’t satisfied with a happily ever after. We needed our tales of struggle leading up to that moment, and got it in the form of TRON video games, we needed to know what happened next and got hints of it from comics and yet more video games. For us, who were kids and watched the MCP, Flynn, and Tron come face to face (The Good, The Bad, and The User) in a final showdown, a new movie was made called TRON: Legacy. We are getting a chance to see how the Grid turned out… wait wait wait, 20 years later?? We missed the building of yet another empire and have come upon another corrupted ruler? How did this happen? And that is why TRON: Betrayal was made and why everyone who never got to experience the first movie with a child’s heart or who needs to know what happened to bring the Grid once more to a darkened place from that upbeat ending so many years ago should read it.
Graphics/Storyline:
Excellent graphics with a well written storyline. The artwork of old TRON is meshed nicely into the new TRON and an evolution is shown that takes the characters from that long ago tale to the story we see today. It is purposely not a complete bridge – in order to complete it, you need to play TRON: Evolution video game which continues the story of Betrayal and links it into Legacy (though, if you really, really need your lore you have to play all platforms of the game since each one got a slightly different piece of the story and you need to pick up the iPhone apps… they didn’t miss a trick) but at least it will satisfy most of your curiosity.
Price:
It is a well put together 128 page graphic novel for $9.99. Kind of hard to beat that with a stick.
Last Call:
I wanted to let people know there was a graphic novel that could serve as the bridge between the stories enough to satisfy most people or summarize the first movie enough for those who didn’t get to experience it in younger days when the world of computers were more magic than technology. Most who see it now with today’s knowledge have often found the movie boring, not getting it the way a kid would back then. So Programs, the time to catch TRON: Legacy is now before it is derezzed from theatres. The Grid is ours again, the light cycles await their riders and TRON: Betrayal will help get us from the land of users to the world of Kevin and Sam Flynn.
