Welcome back to Blame Lundon. Hope your Holiday was enjoyable and, like me, you watched a crap load of movies. So where to start? If no one has any objections I pick Tron: Legacy. My blog, my choice : P Beware - this entire article is a spoiler. If you haven't seen either Tron film, then stop reading now and go watch them. Seriously. They rule. First one is totally awesome cheesy, and second one is a psychedelic techno opera.
So…Tron. Why on earth would Disney make a sequel to a movie made in 1982 that almost no one remembers? If you haven't seen the original Tron you should check it out. Netflix it or find a copy at your local....fuck, do video stores even exist anymore? Anyway, the first Tron was about a guy named Kevin Flynn. A man child with an obsession for technology and bringing to light the quite merciless intellectual property rape he suffered at the hands of Edward Dillinger, referred to from now on as “The Boring Bad Guy”. So before the movie started the boring bad guy stole Kevin Flynn's video games and claimed them as his own. Imagine that Grandma's boy had a sad ending but in 1980 and you get the picture. Kevin Flynn gets a heaping helping of pink slip (old people speak for fired) and The Boring Bad Guy (T.B.B.G) (pointless acronyms rule!) gets promoted to second assistant corporate Jesus. We know he's second assistant corporate Jesus ‘cause everyone keeps talking about it like the power structure of an American Company is fucking demon magic.
Now there is a hugely important part of the film I haven't talked about yet, and no, it’s not why the movie is called Tron even though the main character is named Kevin Flynn, the game he made is called Space Paranoids, and the company he used to work for is Encom. The explanation of the title comes later. The hugely important part of the film I am referring to is this: Programs that run in computers maintain autonomous sentience; and some people are aware of this. T.B.B.G knows this from the beginning of the film. So how does this idea of living, self aware programs come into play? Well, see T.B.B.G built this program called The Master Control Program (for extra fun imagine it being said by Don Lafontain). The M.C.P has been eating other systems like M&M's and has reached douche bag levels of super intelligence. So The M.C.P knows that Kevin Flynn has been trying to hack the Encom system looking for evidence of T.B.B.G's illegal behavior. This “hacking” comes in the form of a program Flynn wrote called C.L.U., or Codified Likeness Utility. Or more accurately: Cool Looking Uniform. So M.C.P catches CLU cruising around the system in his hyper-color tank and being a general bad ass in his hyper-color unitard and bike helmet, and The M.C.P (spoiler) is a giant spinning Technicolor head. And he figures “fuck it, I'm a giant spinning technological head I can do what ever I want and I wanna kill this fucker.” So CLU gets pixelized to death and Kevin Flynn is out like 200 lines of code. Now, the girl that Kevin Flynn used to interface with (lol, computer sex jokes) still works at Encom and this is important for two reasons. The first is that she is working on a program where a laser can teleport a fruit salad from one vegan restaurant to another, and the other reason is that she is dating a man named Alan Bradley. Alan Bradley is working on a program he calls Tron, that is designed to be digital Robocop (REDUNDANT) it's so awesomely awesome at its job it can even police the M.C.P (OH NOES!) T.B.B.G under the direction of the M.C.P shuts down access to the main plot line locking all the main characters out of the story. So Flynn, Alan, and Lori, get together and create a subplot access to get back into the story. They break into the Encom building and Alan goes back to his cubicle to get his popcorn and wait for Flynn to open the system so he can launch Tron. Flynn and Lori go to the Fruit Salad laser room and Lori sits Flynn at a computer terminal in the path of the laser (POOR DESIGN WIN!!!) The M.C.P and Kevin Flynn have a conversation which can be taken one of two ways: either Flynn has an overactive imagination (smokes weed), or he too knows that the M.C.P is sentient. (This possibility also allows Flynn the opportunity to smoke lots of weed.) The M.C.P has had enough of Flynn's shit and has decided to get his due, so he turns on the conveniently placed fruit salad laser and puts Flynn into the computer, where he becomes a prisoner with the other programs and is forced to play video games. Now this is where the movie gets really quite awesome. There is a religious element to the computer world as the programs that are prisoners of the M.C.P and his guards were once free programs that believe in the users. Yes, the idea of a being that created the system, and all the “programs” in it, is “heresy”. Now don't jump a head but feel free to start contemplating on how the system will accept a “user” actually being IN the system he's partially responsible for creating. (spoiler, this isn't addressed directly, mostly the programs that Flynn meets just kinda go with the idea that one of their “gods” is just chillin' out in hyper color grayscale Disneyland.)
So now we should talk a little bit about the fact that all programs look exactly like the user that made them. This is explained away by the super duper zombie scientist that built the fruit salad laser with an awesomely simple sentence: “A piece of our soul remains in every part of the system we build.” Hence programs look like their writers, don't get confused. So Flynn is put in the cell next to Tron's cell and they kinda hang out and talk about which lines of code to snort and other randomness. While the M.C.P's second in command, a program named Sark (who also looks like T.B.B.G. walks around and speechifies about being a slave and doing what you’re told and obeying your data disk (Frisbee), lest the guards kill you. (ALL HAIL THE FRISBEE!) So Flynn and Tron team up and make their way to the place where Tron has to put his data disk (Frisbee) in the Input/Output (I/O) tower data stream. A crap load of stuff happens but you should watch the movie. Long story short, Flynn kills Sark straight cold thuggin' and then takes out the M.C.P; which somehow gets Flynn teleported back to the outside normal world where he finds a print out that says “Gratz! User Flynn is number one sexy time champion and wins the happy ending!” We are left to assume that Edward Dillenger is stripped of his title, and clothing and run through the streets by orphan children who laugh at him and throw feces at his thoughtless meat sack of a body. From now on Flynn calls everyone “programs” (that's what weed does to you kids, it makes you stupid).
For a bonus point try and figure out why the hell this movie is called Tron and not Flynn or any one of the other titles than the name of the secondary character who has the killer Frisbee.
So why the incredibly drawn out explanation? Because it matters. 28 years later we get Tron: Legacy. Now the first Tron has very minor references to religion and all kinds of other things that stoners and geeks have been hypothesizing about for years. So why wait 28 years to continue the story? Well there are games, and comic books that tell other parts of the story, but I honestly think that the first Tron was made by accident. Pretty much the same way guys “accidently” cheat on their girl friends. “I tripped and fell and my film slipped into her camera honey HONEST!” and when everyone saw the movie the general reaction was “WOW this is something...We're not really sure what it is or what to do with it, but we know it’s awesome and that some day it will inspire a movie about a guy who is in a computer but doesn't know it and then gets out of the computer and then fights other computers to save other humans, and other movies roughly similar to that general plot line. But for now, y'all go stand in the corner ‘cause you’re weird and creep out the ladies, kthksbye.” So 28 years later Tron is old hat and there's two generations of folks who grew up on that kinda shit and smell what the Tron is cooking yadda yadda. And now we have the kind of effects that make the movie look a gabillion times awesomer than the first one. So it's obviously time to make Tron 2.
What do we get? A movie with the same basic story structure that is as odd and strange as the first film; slow, visually stunning, with deep ideas and shallow dialogue. Critics are disappointed. They wanted a golden head to come out of the screen and suck them off while assuring them they were the awesomest persons ever born. Things that set the films apart aside from almost 30 years of technology growth? THE MUSIC. Daft Punk and Hans Zimmer will never get the credit they deserve for creating a 21st century Opera. More overt religious themes and a gentle reintroduction to the idea of a living digital universe by way of a closed off system about 20 years old. We are seeing Tron the way the original designers wet dreamed it would be back in 82'. There is no “modern” computing references in this digital world, as crazy as Tron was back in the day I think the writers and director knew audiences wouldn't be ready to see the digital evolution of our online presence. If Disney makes the second and third films we will no doubt see open systems as Cyllian Murphy plays Edward Dillinger’s son (for all of three minutes), so expect to see him as a villain in later films/ TV shows.
Things to look for:
Kevin Flynn splitting himself in two, unnaturally separating the yin and yang of human nature to let them develop on their own. Fully aware that what used to fit together to create a singular consciousness now upon recombination creates something that cannot be contained either by physical body or coded likeness. (this is my interpretation of the end of the film, it’s nothing more than an interpretation.) I assume we will see Flynn again much the same way Obi-wan returned in the Star Wars films.
The deliberate elements of natural reality in the digital world. The food and books and pretty much all of Flynn's digital apartment. These are not purely for show, these things are a way of reminding not only Flynn but Cora what exists beyond the digital space. That this prison, while fantastic and strangely beautiful, is a prison. This is as close as he could come to some semblance of sanity-saving “reality” in a digital space.
The way pixelization is still prevalent in our updated idea of such an old system. Scars on people are pixelized holes in their bodies. The “ice” in drinks, the way programs fall apart when they die.
The fact that many of the programs seem to be straining the limits of sanity. This system has been closed of for about 20 years and it’s obvious these programs are well on their way to loosing their “minds”. CLU helped this along but if we learned anything from Castor it’s that 20 years in the same small town can drive almost anyone nuts. Cora had books and Flynn to help her mind expand. Everyone else is in various stages of stagnating crazy.
The fact that the entire system fits onto an interesting looking SD card that Sam wears as a necklace at the end of the film. Just to keep the time frame of the systems age in perspective.
The only thing I really wished they had done differently was actually use Kevin Flynn's wife in the story. His reasons for staying in the system are “eh” and fit the plot fine, but they had a chance to build a really strong emotional storyline if they hadn't thrown away the idea of Sam's mom. To see Flynn have to choose between saving his wife and escaping the system and then getting neither would create a much more interesting situation for his development in the digital space.
All in all, I think it was brave of Disney to make a film this expensive, which is clearly the first chapter of a multi-part story, that is an updated retelling/sequel to a cult classic 28 years old. I wish it would make more money, and while I think it’s definitely not for everyone, if you are looking for something new and different it’s worth a shot.
