Tron and Honda, banking on geek factor

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The Honda Civic has traditionally been classified as a young person's car, which I suppose is why I find it so puzzling that they're using a movie from 24 years ago to advertise this car -- most of their market audience wasn't even born when this movie came out.


Tron (1982) was one of the first movies to use computer generated graphics -- the use of them was so controversial, that the the Academy Awards refused to nominate the film for the category of Special Effects, saying the use of computers was 'cheating'. Tron was also one of the first movies to prominently feature video games as a plot device. There are three other notable video game films from this era:


  • WarGames (1983)

    Videogame as a villain. A teenager playing what he thinks is a game starts the countdown to World War III.
  • Cloak and Dagger (1984)

    Videogame as information storage media. Top-secret information is smuggled in a video game cartridge which is delivered into an 11-year old boy's hands.

  • The Last Starfighter (1984)

    Videogame as a war recruitment device. A young man is recruited via arcade machine to take part as a pilot in the Star Legion in their war against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.


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