Words are inadequate

Hoo boy. The plot of TRON, such as it is: Seven years ago, Ed "Evil" Dillinger ripped off the design for several video games from Kevin "The Dude" Flynn. Flynn got fired; Dillinger got made a VP. Flynn's been trying to hack into Encom's system and find the evidence that Dillinger ripped him off.

Meanwhile, Dillinger's created a program for Encom, the Master Control Program, that oversees all of Encom's operations. The MCP is sentient (in TRON, all programs are sentient) and is in fact trying to take over the world. (WITH THE INFORMATION I CAN ACCESS, I CAN RUN THINGS 900 TO 1200 TIMES BETTER THAN ANY HUMAN.) Alan "Captain Sheridan" Bradley, a programmer at Encom, has created TRON, a security program designed to keep an eye on any unauthorized processes and disable them. The MCP wants TRON deleted, so Dillinger is preparing to shut down Alan's whole project.

Lora, Alan's girlfriend and Flynn's ex, is working on a laser that digitizes things, effectively sucking them into the computer. (Don't think too hard about this.)

Late one night Alan and Lora and Flynn decide to sneak Flynn and Alan into Encom so Flynn can hack into the system from Lora's terminal using Alan's security credentials, find the TRON program, send it to Alan to get it up and running, shut down the MCP, and find the evidence. The MCP zaps Flynn with the laser and sucks him into the computer world.

There he meets up with TRON, who, like Flynn, has been condemned to fight in a gladiatorial arena for the MCP's amusement. In a move that still impresses me, Flynn uses his knowledge of the system to exploit a bug and break them out. And hijinks, as they say, ensue.

(I swear to gord it seems a lot less stupid when you watch it. Except for the laser, that part's pretty indefensible.)