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OK I’m gonna post some TRON 1982 storyboard art that was on the LaserDisc, because …. well BECAUSE
from what the LaserDisc extras show, it seems like this was a whole storyboard done before a LOT of things were finalized
…not much context was given… but…
here goes!
so: it starts out with what seems to be a similar opening scene– cutting back and forth between the Player and Program sides of an Arcade game…
which at first seems unsure as to whether it’s the Disc Game or the Ring Game, but then switches to Lightcycles or maybe…. tanks?
oh wait, this game also involves some kind of… shark planes
I like the shark planes
at this point they have apparently decided the colors are gonna be red vs blue, but they have not decided yet on Light Bikes vs Light Scooters
I like their neat little vacuum-tube public transit system
evidently there were originally gonna be robot locker-room scenes
Clu has a locker
right between… Hlu and Ben
(already we’re seeing a rather fascinating difference in the character design)
(Programs are much more… robotic)
(with quite a bit more variation in appearance– some of them tending toward furry or lizardlike!)
…I am not sure if this character is supposed to be Clu or Tron or someone else
but he’s not happy about something
here it seems he gets an unwanted pep talk from some little levitating gremlin creature
who is so unhappy about the rejection, it goes and complains to his… dragonoid furry coworker
no no NO NONO NO
nononono he deserved BETTER
not WORSE
…let’s be honest
…this combat is most likely NOT gonna go the way we would LIKE it to go
Additional context I’m gonna add here, now that I’ve seen further character-design odds and ends on these LaserDiscs:
(if you can get past the horrible image quality of my attempt to capture this part from the screen)
this dragonoid creature was an early design for Sark
Now:
I don’t know if this was the SAME dragon-bot who’s shown up there with the angry gremlin-thingy.
but…
my internal storyboarder is making up an interpretation where
- Tron, or Clu, or whoever that first character is, says something that floaty-gremlin-dude doesn’t like
- floaty-gremlin-dude retaliates by tattling to Sark
- Sark retaliates by pitting himself against Ram
- …who… even in this storyboard… already appears to be a good friend of Tron or whoever
- at least, these are the next series of pictures
whatever happened, someone’s sad as hell about it
hey
at LEAST he didn’t have to get slain in combat by Tron
and at least I don’t care who Gork is
(Gork Klaatu Barada Nikto?)
(also: kinda loving this suggestion that some of the programs in cells were watching televised matches?)
Now we cut to Flynn at the laser console! ooh things about to get interesting
KEVIN FLYNN
Lora SPECIFICALLY asked you NOT to SPILL ANYTHING
…did Flynn get digitized right into the same space as some other guy and knock him out?
…geez Kevin, watch where you’re going
anyway apparently that guy was the Wicked Witch of the Grid
‘cause instead of everyone being mad at Kevin for this, the next scenes are all about him making new friends
OR maybe he’s a conscript getting trained for the death-games like in the actual movie.
But if so, he looks much too satisfied in that first pic
(is that Sark he’s standing next to?)
now we see a series of weird landscapes, leading up to what may be an early draft of the I/O Tower
(if so, it’s interesting that this uses a similar Aztec-pyramid look, like what eventually ended up being used for the “pod” that the MCP’s human form was in)
looks like someone meets the (rough-draft) Tower Guardian but then I’m not sure what happens
next scene features a conversation with a sassy Bit
(further context from the early-character-design section:)
(this was an early draft of the Bit)
an Alpha-Bit, if you will
(which eventually evolved into the Beta-Bit)
a.k.a. Clu’s Balls (a couple of negative no-no-bits, it seems)
and finally the Bit 1.0 we all know and love
who refused any further upgrades, because “1.0” has its favorite two numbers in it
Then we get another image of Dragonbot (Sark?)
and then it goes straight to the (early-draft) MCP
…who I really like better than the red Master Cylinder Program that they settled on for the final draft.
why’d they give up on this guy? did he look too Darth Vader or something? who knows
