After this talk of Tron Evolution has dominated film and nerd sites for the past couple of months, I thought it would be more than prudent to share a story of Tron fandom- well before the madness over Tron Evolution came around and the overall revival of the Tron franchise as it stands today. I was attending the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl (the very same one I attended with my friend Taylor)- a nerdy enough event within itself- people dressed up as random video game characters wandering about the Bowl before the event started (I remember seeing a giant Pac Man guy walking around quite happily in the seats behind me). We had good seats, too- a booth pretty close to the stage. Nothing prepared me, however, for the sheer madness that I shared with the neighboring booth. The booth was filled with a family of asian males, perhaps Korean or Japanese in descent (to recall the specifics is quite hard at this point)- all completely decked out in Tron merchandising. Head to toe. Sports jackets all very worn down, twenty or so years old perhaps as they talked amongst themselves. I pointed them out to those in my booth, and we all had little individual scoffs as we took turns glancing at the men and their ridiculous attire. But they were pretty nice- we would share a nod and a glance after every song or so. But it finally came to the moment they were waiting for at the concert- a piece from Tron . All four men in the booth rose to their feet cheering quite madly, even a bit more than I had expected. My entire party looked over at them, bewildered to the energy that seemed to have exploded once they heard the music. Once I turned my head, the lunacy escalated- they held up Tron shoes among them- two pairs, each shoe cradled in the hands of each one of the men as they screamed and hollered for the music to continue. Everyone in my booth was… well speechless. We didn’t know fandom could go so far, even for a movie that was about twenty or so years old at this point. Once the song ended, the men clapped louder than anyone else there, congratulating one another as they finally took their seats. I quite remember just staring at them and thinking “Christ, like anyone else would ever think about Tron after this.” Oh how wrong I was. I thought about those crazy fans again recently, every time a ad or some news article on the movie pops up, thinking how happy they must be to see their beloved franchise returning to the big screen. And how foolish i felt misjudging what I had thought was a dead franchise to come back to life. I was totally wrong about Tron. Oh well.
