According to Scott Kirsner, today is the 25th anniversary of the release of Tron, the groundbreaking Disney film that served, as Kirsner puts it "as the "shot heard 'round the world" for computer-generated visual effects." Kirsner recently interviewed Tron director Steven Lisberger, who notes that in spite of the innovation Tron represented, at the time Disney compared his film unfavorably to another 1982 release:
Tron was nominated for two Academy Awards, in sound and costume design. But it wasn't nominated for Best Visual Effects.
"We found out that the statement that was made was that we had cheated when we used computers," [Lisberger] said.
[...] Lisberger said that when ET came out a few weeks before Tron, Disney executives told him they wished 'Tron' had turned out more warm and fuzzy... like ET. (ET won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for 1982.)
In honor of Tron, feast your eyes on this infamous deleted scene from the film, in which Yori takes Tron back to her "very illegal" private quarters, where they can "talk."
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