Tron Evolution Trailer - That's The Tie-In Videogame, Not Another Name Change

A trailer for a tie-in videogame is a lot more relevant when we're discussing a Tron picture than would normally be the case. The most obvious reason is that Tron was, of course, set within a virtual world and as such shares a lot of aesthetic and even generic qualities with videogames. Beyond that, there's been a lot of stylistical flow between the first Tron film and the graphic design of videogames over the last couple of decades and also, most specifically to Tron Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski had previously created some TV spots for Halo 3 and Gears of War.

After the break you can see a trailer for Tron Evolution, the tie-in game to next winter's Tron Legacy movie. There's a clear through line in the design, from film to game – clearer even than from original Tron to this sequel.

Here's the short trailer. I'm not sure what it tells us about the game. Not much, probably.

Will we see these very characters in the movie? Very possibly.

They used to have the original Tron arcade cabinet in my local chip shop. I enjoyed it a great deal but it didn't really plug into the things that made the film so much fun, having to pretty much stand alone in it's attempt to make players happy. Of course, the gap between motion picture and video game is forever narrowing and by now, the developers of Tron Evolution are in a position to use a lot of cinematic trickery, and not just during their in-game FMV clips.

Incidentally, if you haven't seen Kosinski's Tronathalon clip for Nike, you should check it out now. This is probably the earliest bit of Tron-inspired work he did (at least professionally) and, while being quite removed from the approach he's showing in the Tron Legacy material we've seen so far, can't help but fascinate.