Post-cinema has introduced a new way to make films. No longer is it necessary for actions to occur thanks to CGI and Hyperrealism, not there is new technology that creates the commodification of real movement. 

Tron: Legacy (2010), discusses the protagonist, Sam, falling into a virtual reality, a video game his father, a video game world designer, created. While in the finds his long lost father and have to find a way to escape the now violent and uncontrolled world of Tron. The film plays on hyperrealism, CGI and is non-indexical. This can be seen within the hybrid forms of the film. The use of green screen and live action in the fight scene (“disk wars”) when Sam first comes into Tron. Within the film there is also the heavy use of digital CGI as seen with the mutation and dissolution (when characters are killed by the ‘disks’ they fall apart like video game characters) of objects and people demonstrating the questioning and challenging of the conventional consistency of metaphysical expectations. 

The film has proven to be post-cinematic not only by making its distinction from profilmic media when separating itself from its indexical connection to reality through the digital but also through the impressionistic within its “blurred confusion” and glitch-like images that introduce ontological perplexity. This term, introduced by David Rodowick, indicates that the move from ontological to digital has created a post-cinematic ideal, creating a different and more challenging digital ontology. 

(0:20) – glitch-like image when Sam ‘enters the grid’

Tron: Legacy continues to follow post-cinematic and ontological perplexities when looking at the film’s liquified hyperreality. The pursuit of realism within the film is established through the construction of a digital world that feels somewhat real. It has similar structures but it lacks its stability. The liquefaction comes when looking at the fluidity and malleability of the techniques. Observing CGI and the fluidity of camera shots when characters are in pursuit the film shows many qualities of post-cinema.

‘disk war’ scene liquidification of movements, upside-down

Bibliography:

Doane, M. A. “The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity.” Differences, vol. 18, no. 1, Jan. 2007, pp. 128–52, https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2006-025. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.

Kosinski, J. (2010). TRON: Legacy. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Rodowick, David Norman. The Virtual Life of Film. E-book, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007, https://hdl-handle-net.gold.idm.oclc.org/2027/heb08243.0001.001. Accessed 19 Oct. 2024.

By: Costanza Maria Santacroce