Greetings Program! 27 years since the debut of the original Tron movie – today for the first time, the world was given its most detailed look yet at some of the designs from the new movie, now officially called Tron Legacy which is currently in production in Canada. The style has no doubt evolved since the original and if this is any indication of what’s to come in 2010, then it will be worth the wait because these initial images just look amazing.

I was around 12 years old when the initial Tron first came out and despite how much of the original film may be perceived today, its influence is lasting through to modern film making and CGI techniques, many of which were initially pioneered for this film. (See Tron Then and Now – 25 years of influence and counting for more specifics). Keep in mind, back then computers were all but a foreign entity to the vast majority of people and with the exception of those of us with an early Apple II, TRS-80, VIC-20, a Commodore 64 or possibly even an early Atari computer. To keep it in perspective, the original Tron came out a full two years before the arrival of the original Macintosh 128k computer.

So between 1982 and 1983 (my formative and very influential years), I was fortunate to get to see two movies whose impact on the direction of my future was amazing. Those two movies were of course: Tron and War Games. Since then much has changed and these days I’ve got a small computer in my pocket with more power than the original WOPR. Ironically, as I write this post on my iPhone 3GS to be submitted wirelessly all while I’m out walking on the golf course at night – it’s staggering just how far things have come and the rate at which everything is evolving these days.

At the time the original Tron movie came out, I was using one of the greatest computers of the time, the mighty Apple //e and thankfully today I’m still using a beautiful Apple Macintosh and doing what I love. It isn’t lost on me that the first two designs below for the new Light Cycles look entirely like something straight from Apple right out of the mind of Jonathan Ive. This is one movie that I really hoped that they’d never get around to either remaking or doing a sequel for, if only because it was inevitable that Hollywood would screw it up but all indicators so far, Tron Legacy is looking like it might indeed be something special. A person can at least hope.

Official plot synopsis: TRON is a 3D high-tech adventure set in a digital world that’s unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Sam Flynn (GARRETT HEDLUND), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (JEFF BRIDGES), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant (OLIVIA WILDE), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

All of these pictures came out today during an official panel at Comic-Con on Tron 2 – Retitled TRON Legacy. You can read the full wrap-up here.