After years in the making under an all encompassing shroud of mystery, Tron Legacy is at last upon us. In late September the Disney tech-epic opened its doors to worldwide media, inviting inthemix over to Los Angeles to immerse ourselves in the Tron universe. While there we met with producers, actors and the film’s director Joseph Kosinski to talk about the reviving the world of Tron after the original 1982 film, Tron.

As well as being an ambitious 3D blockbuster, Tron Legacy is also Kosinski’s first feature film behind the camera, having made his name helming eye-popping CGI commercials. Here’s our extended sit down conversation about his experience on the film and the minutia of Tron Legacy.

How technically difficult has it been to make this film and do it faithfully in 3D?

“Well when you do something in 3D you have to everything twice [laughs]. Once you finish rendering something you have to do it all over again for the other eye. So that itself just doubles your work on an already very difficult movie with a very difficult technology. Y’know, the most difficult technology you can do is to create a photo-realistic human being. It’s just a whole lot of work.”

Well, you don’t seem to be too exhausted by it all.

“I’ve been on it for three years now, so if I could crumble, if I was breakable I would’ve broken a long time ago. This is actually the home stretch which is actually kind of exciting…there’s that adrenalin of knowing that you’re only two months out and now there’s this extra excitement because we’re showing people portions of the film that we’ve finished. If you had watched the same scenes six months ago or a year ago it would’ve been completely different and unfinished.”

Because this is your first feature as a director, was there a lot of pressure on you when initially came on board Tron Legacy?

“Y’know, this thing has grown so much since we started it. It’s become this bigger thing in the past three years. It’s like all of a sudden people are Tron fans whereas three years ago there wasn’t that same feeling. We did that original test-short and showed it at Comic-Con and it created this little ripple and people started talking about it and people started wearing retro Tron t-shirts…I guess it was always there under the surface and now it’s really bubbling up. It’s interesting to be with this and watch it evolve the way it has.”

How involved in that sort of thing are you? Do you follow the online activities of the people tweeting about Tron and commenting on the YouTube version of the trailer?

“Well it’s hard to avoid that kind of stuff now. I mean, Disney sends me an email every single morning that has press hits and stuff. I try not take any of it to heart – both the good stuff and the bad stuff – if it’s good buzz I’m not going to pat myself on the back and if its bad I don’t take it personally because I know that people just have no context to review the film. When it’s finally out then it will be out there and it might hurt a little if people rip on it, but right now we’ve just got our heads down because we’re still so busy just trying to finish it. It’s easier to go about it that way.”

Tron Legacy Trailer