Comic-Con: TRON Legacy Has An '80s Flashback Sequence

Here's the central irony of Comic Con: because of the absurd Hall H admittance policies and the vagaries of scheduling, I didn't get to see the new TRON Legacy footage. But I did interview the director, Joseph Kosinski. The full transcript of that interview will be posted shortly, but I did want to share a quick tidbit that fans of Steven Lisberger's original 1982 film might like.

The film will feature a sequence set in the '80s — not in the 1982 time period of the original film, but sometime later in the decade — with slightly retro stylings, and there will be a second 'new' light cycle design seen in that sequence, upping the new 'cylce designs in Legacy to two. We've seen both of these light cycles in concept art posted today, and the '80s sequence is what justifies (or introduces) the Flynn light cycle v2.

Asked if we'll see any direct callbacks to the design of the original film, Kosinski said:

There is a portion of our film where we go back to the 1980s. I think it'll be fun for the hardcore fans. We'll get to go back to the '80s and see some of the events that transpired in between that film and ours. Although it's not '82. It's 'the '80s'.

Then, after I asked about the crew shirt that shows the new light cycle:

That's our crew shirt, just issued last week, and that's the fifth generation light cycle. You'll see two [generations] in our film, the second and the fifth. The second is Kevin Flynn's own personal light cycle; he designed it for himself.