TRON was a little-seen Disney movie from 1982 that starred Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner. Both were computer programmers who at one time worked for a big company called ENCOM. Bridge’s Flynn character had been forced out by greedy corporate baddies and now runs a video arcade.

As the company becomes more moustache-twirlingly evil, Boxleitner writes an infiltration program called Tron that he sends into ENCOM’s mainframe to discover the baddies’ nasty little secrets (no, it’s not gigs of porn — this was when porn was still printed in magazines!).

While attempting to hack the ENCOM mainframe, Bridges is digitized by a scanning laser and reconstituted into a virtual world where he has to find TRON and defeat the sinister Master Control Program.

Yeah, it sounds pretty hokey on the page, and it played sort of hokey as well, but there was something undeniably cool about TRON that elevated the whole above the sum of the parts. Bridges was great with what little material he had, and the whole idea that the programs have avatars that look like their human creators was a damned interesting concept (especially in 1982).

Oh, and the lightcycles that went fast as hell and could make 90 degree angle turns on a massive grid kicked all kinds of ass.

Anyway, there’s been talk about a sequel for years, and now it’s finally happening. TRON LEGACY arrives this December, and I for one cannot freaking wait.

The new improved lightcycle is pictured in the poster above.

Click here to check out the new teaser in all it’s kickin’ coolness.