So, I've listened to the Tron audio commentary for the first time now. It's incredible just how much work they put into this movie back then (all the frames had to be edited INDIVIDUALLY!).
Considering the enormous amount of effort, it's quite unfair that the movie was disqualified from the Oscars because using a computer for special effects was viewed as "cheating" - meanwhile, special effects are almost synonymous with CGI nowadays. xD
I also like how they gave so much room to the programmers as characters (for example, Alan's first name is a reference to Alan Kay, the spiritual father of the laptop), how they incorporated the theme of "large companies vs individuals" (which somehow feels more relevant now than ever), and that they designed the electronic world as a kind of "mirror" of the real one (like the employees' cubicles being a parallel to the cells the programs are held in).
However, my absolute highlight is this quote by Harrison Ellenshaw about CGI and computer animation:
"Ironically, one of the things that was our creative philosophy we enjoyed and were proud of was that we were taking computer animation and letting it stand on its own. We weren't trying to make computer animation mimic reality, and the job was then to make reality - the actors and the sets - look like computer animation. We used to say, "well, if you got lemons, make lemonade", everybody else - and certainly since this point - has been going nuts trying to make computer animation mimic reality perfectly. And I found that the limitations of computer graphics at the time were the most exciting thing. If computer graphics - if computer animation - is no longer different from reality, maybe we've lost something in that."
I love this quote for so many reasons - on one hand, it feels almost prophetic considering that modern movies are showing us that there are limits to the realism of CGI (the resolution of today's movies is higher, but that of the CGI is not, which just ends up making everything look cheap and fake.) On the other hand, I love how they just defied the trend that everything always has to look "realistic", and instead embraced the different look of the CGI as something positive.
The creators of Tron didn't view the CGI's weaknesses as a bug, but as a feature, and the result was one of the most unique, visually distinct movies even to date.
Making art doesn't consist of simply copying what others did - what really defines creativity is walking paths that no one dared to walk before, and doing things that nobody was able to imagine before.