15 Fascinating Premises That Were Bigger Than The Movies Themselves

8. Tron

The Premise: A computer hacker finds a universe within a computer program. His only chance of escape is through a set of gladiatorial games. From strangers on the internet, to full robot invasions, cinema has always told us to be wary of computers. But before The Matrix delivered a defining cautionary tale in 1999, Tron set itself in a robot world in 1982. It might not look all that impressive to the young whippersnappers of 2010 who saw Tron: Legacy, but Tron was released in the '80s, when setting a film in a computerised world was groundbreaking. It's still not done all that much these days - we prefer to heap special effects on our current landscapes, and call them dystopias or foreign worlds - and Tron still stands up today as one of the most original ideas that a blockbuster ever conceived. Just the idea of a civilisation existing within a computer program could spawn another three movies, if rumours are to be believed; and this is without the main character of Tron, Kevin Flynn, who sacrificed himself in Tron: Legacy to destroy the main villain CLU. You just can't keep a good idea down, it would seem.