Director Joseph Kosinski on Tron: Legacy and the Limitations of CGI-Created Actors

[Spoilers ahead]

There's a specific scene that I want to ask about concerning the character of Tron. Not the flashback scene where we see Bruce Boxleitner's young face, but the scene in the present where Tron is wearing a helmet the entire time. Was it a budget issue? Would you have rather he not have a helmet on the entire time? Characters had to keep pointing at him saying, "Hey, there's Tron."

Right, right. Well, certainly there's some limitations even on a movie like this. People think that in a big movie you can do whatever you want. Creating that young Bruce head [for the flashback scene], which, amazingly, people don't seem to have a problem with: That's a young Bruce Boxleitner. But those shots are enormously expensive. And when you're limited to showing Bruce for however many I could afford -- six shots of him in the film -- you have to make choices. I think watching the film now, there's certainly an argument to be made, if I could have, to have that helmet come off in that final scene when he's sinking into the sea of simulation in order to drive that point home -- That Tron is Rinzler. I think there are two or three times where we have Flynn say, "It's Tron!" But I can see for a person who's not paying 100 percent attention, which is understandable the first time that you watch the movie and all of this stuff is going on, that story point can be lost. I've had a couple people tell me that they got so much more the second time though, which, at this point, I'm going to accept as a feature as opposed to a bug.

Well, for me it wasn't losing track of who Tron was, it was more the nostalgia of seeing the face of the title character from the original.

I totally get that. I totally get it.

[End spoilers]

The original title was TR2N, was the change your idea?

Yeah, I came up with TR2N at the beginning because the project had no name and that's how I had it at Comic-Con. But I wanted it to be clear that this was a stand alone film and not a sequel. So it was Christmas break two years ago I came up with ten titles and Legacy was the one that felt like it had the most layered meaning to it.

Of those ten titles, which one of them are you the most happy that you didn't use?

Oh, God. [Pauses] Well, certainly the one that I hate that I've seen people throw around was Tron 2.0. I think that's the worst version. That would be my least favorite title for this film.

It does seem dated. It sounds like a Compuserve disc that you would get in the mail in 1997.

Yeah, it's like The Lawnmower Man or something. It's the horrible version of this movie.

Speaking of the Comic-Con trailer, I re-watched it yesterday. None of those scenes are in the final film. So that was made specifically for Comic Con to get some buzz going?

No, that was made for me to show the studio. That was my pitch to the studio for the film. But that sequence of events is meant to happen prior to the events of our film.

So it's a prequel, that's fun.

Yeah, it's a tiny prequel.

Is The Black Hole officially your next project?

It's not official at all. And I don't think it will be next. We're working on two scripts: The Black Hole being written by Travis Beacham and this script called Oblivion [set after an apocalypse] that William Monahan is writing -- who won the Oscar for The Departed a couple of years back -- which is based on a short story that I wrote. So that seems to be getting some momentum.

Was The Black Hole a childhood favorite, too? Is that why you're interested in remaking it?

I definitely remember seeing it as a kid. I mean... talk about a strange film.

I know, I was going to ask you if you could explain the ending to me.

I don't know. I think everyone can take what they want from that ending, but, I think it's fantastic that it's at the end of a Disney movie. It's one of the most trippy endings any movie that I know; it's up there with 2001. What I'm fascinated about is the fundamental concept of what it would be like knowing what we know about black holes today; how incredible it would be to go on a deep space journey to see one of these things. And how you could set a movie, a dramatic film, against the phenomena that surrounds a black hole in terms of the warping of space and time. These are concepts of science fiction that are actually happening in reality. To me, that's a fascinating idea.

And we know so much more than we did about black holes than we did in 1979.

The reality of black holes is more amazing than any science fiction story than you could dream up.

I do have an affection toward them, would V.I.N.CENT and B.O.B. be back?

Yeah, the fundamental concept and then there's the robots. There's Maximilian, there's the ship itself which is an incredible design -- that kind of lantern type structure.

One of the ships was called the Palomino.

Or the Cygnus, I get them confused. There's iconic elements that I would want to preserve, but, otherwise, it's basically a complete re-imagining.

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