TRON: LEGACY

The Evolution Of The Story
In 1982, when Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) made it out of the Grid alive and back in control of Encom, the company he founded with his longtime friend and associate, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), everyone assumed Kevin would be content with developing and producing popular games.

On the surface of things, that appeared so: Kevin married, had a son, Sam, and settled into fatherhood while he and Alan grew Encom into a video game powerhouse. But unbeknownst to outsiders, Kevin was still experimenting with teleportation, making frequent visits back to the Grid from the privacy of his secret lab hidden beneath Flynn's Arcade. Then one day Kevin simply vanished, and Sam was left alone with no father and no answers.

And twenty years later, "TRON: Legacy” begins.

When a pager signal draws the now-adult Sam (Garrett Hedlund) to Flynn's Arcade and he is transported to the Grid where his father has been trapped for 20 years, he begins a journey that will change his life—and the life of his long-absent father.

"It was very important to us, amidst all this visual spectacle, to focus on a father/son story; this is about a boy who's lost his dad, who's now grown up and, as a man, he has scarring from that. Then, he learns that his father's disappearance may not have been all that he thought, and there's a chance for them to rebuild their relationship,” says producer Sean Bailey. "Our goal is to make sure we're serving our story the best way we can. And the visuals, the effects, the music, the performances and the style all support that,” he adds.

The estrangement and rediscovery between father and son is the story's emotional entry point. "You're coming into this spectacular domain and you need someone to experience it through. That's how we approached developing Sam's character. You're discovering the Grid through Sam's eyes, and you'll also discover Flynn through Sam,” says Adam Horowitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with Edward Kitsis (story by Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz and Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal, based on characters by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird). Steven Lisberger feels that it is important to have a story that is as significant as all the technical aspects that go into the film. "I care about story and characters as much as I do the visuals. The story aspect of Flynn still being alive and the father-son story is really compelling in ‘TRON: Legacy.' It will resonate with the fan base, but if someone hasn't seen the first film, it doesn't matter—the story will work for him or her too,” he says.

Jeff Bridges, who reprises his role of Kevin Flynn from the original "TRON,” comments, "One of the underlying elements of the story is technology. It's so exciting to realize all the things that you can do. But what's happening with technology is that it is developing so fast that we haven't really developed any ethics to go along with it, or knowledge of what some of the ramifications of this technology will be. So that's also a theme that ‘TRON: Legacy' deals with.”

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