Tron: Legacy

Tron: Legacy theatrical release poster.

Now this film is a definite must. Well paced, amazing score, and beautiful visuals (and I'm not just talking about Olivia Wilde). It has all the great elements from the original 1982 Tron - the arcade, the laser, light cycle races, the recognizers, the solar sailor, the display including virtual keyboard in glass desks and the overarching themes like the fruitless search for logical and technological perfection and that there is more to human nature than the sum of its parts. Despite being visually one of the most innovative movies this year (a virtual, young Jeff Bridges - though not perfect - in stunning fidelity and realism), it does not stop there, but manages to immerse us with great relatable characters and a well thought through story rather than relying on computer effects.

Poster of the original 1982 film Tron.

The plot is similar to the 2003 first person shooter Tron 2.0. Both game and Tron: Legacy have Kevin Flynn, the programmer gone hacker gone gaming mogul from Tron 1982, who got not only fired, but had his game stolen from him. This game was a beautiful sequel to the original Tron. You would both fight and solve puzzles using your disc, programmes derezzed, they even introduce Byte as your companion who can speak unlike Bit from Tron 1982 and actually won't shut up. "A Bit? No, I'm a byte." And very much like Tron: Legacy you played Kevin Flynn's son and had to find a way to get your father and yourself out of the computer world again. And just like in the original movie a great deal of the game would involve communicating with the real world through emails, retrieving legacy code from abandoned parts of the system and even defeating villainous programmes by posing unsolvable equations to them. If you read all the emails (including the corrupted ones) you could find out an extremely detailed account of what happened to your fictional father between the movie and when the game takes place. And just like Tron: Legacy, Flynn's son in Tron 2.0 was kind of a rebel not wanting to follow in his fathers footsteps. The main villain of the game was a character called Kernel (a nice word play) who like the Master Control Program in Tron 1982 was communicating with the real world, but had gone rogue and like C.L.U. in Tron: Legacy would turn into a virus - but not like the MCP who assimilated programmes to grow, but like C.L.U. the Kernel abducted programmes and turned them into an army in an attempt to infect more and more systems until the entire world was controlled by him. The later levels of Tron 2.0 have you revisit places from earlier levels, but now corrupted by the virus - very cool.

Box cover of the 2003 video game Tron 2.0.

But Tron: Legacy introduces some interesting new ideas to the Tron universe: The isos, isomophic programmes, that is progammes that evolved on their own - the ghost in the machine - rather than being programmed. The idea that not only real people could be digitized by the laser, but that programmes could be turned into people in the real world - in Tron 2.0 the Kernel only sort to spread across all computers of the world, but still as software. Second, the idea that evolution involves coincidental emergence and that a true artificial life form cannot be constructed in a quest for (techno)logical perfection - humanity is not about being perfect, but being flawed in a uniquely human way. Quorra, the last surviving iso (because Kevin Flynn saved her from C.L.U.'s cleansing) is more human because she is not perfect like C.L.U. And C.LU., even though he is the main villain, being the perfectly logical programme - like the Asimov's supercomputer - can only come to the logical conclusion that in order to 'create the perfect system' the disrupting element, free will, the seed of disobedience, must be eliminated. And that is Quorra, the symbol of free will, in an artificial life form, but like in Asimov's stories if C.L.U. was to ever come into the real world the only logical conclusion of his programming can be to destroy all human beings. And Quorra is that symbol of free will when she shows Sam Flynn the books his father gave her to read and says that the one she likes the best is a collected works of Jules Verne. And Quorra dreams about the real world very much like Jules Verne dreamed about the depths of the sea and space travel. I think the thing I liked the most about how Olivia Wilde plays Quorra is that she portrays her not just as this one-dimensional hot chick slash love interest of Sam, but as being nerdy and looking at the world with wondrous eyes as well as driving stick and kicking ass. Quorra's humanness comes from her awareness that there are many things she does not understand (even if the sunset seems like a cheezy Hollywood metaphor) and that is why she dreams about the real world. C.L.U. may seek world domination, but that is not his dream, no, it is his function programmed into him by Kevin Flynn and unlike the isos he cannot outgrow his original function. At some point in the film, Sam talks about how C.L.U. destroyed the system when he killed all the isos, but his father interrupts "No, he didn't. He did what he was supposed to do. He created the perfect system. I couldn't have done it without him." I also liked that the face-off between C.L.U. and Sam, Kevin Flynn and Quorra is not a fight-to-the-death kind of confrontation, but a reconciliation between C.L.U. and his maker. C.L.U. says: "I only did what you asked me to do." and Kevin Flynn answers, "I know." Plus, there's a cataclysmic explosion when Kevin Flynn reintegrates C.L.U. and that looks pretty neat. Like in Asimov's stories or in Terminator the dramatic force of the story comes not from the fact that there is a computer programme or piece of technology, created by man, but faster and stronger which turns against its creator, no, its that what we are facing there is our own hybris of brutally logical reasoning. We are fighting a part of us. And similar to ancient Greek philosophy it is not in perfectly obeying rules that we find humanity, but in a balance between the extremes of perfect, but cold reasoning and instinctive anarchy.

Even though I've digressed quite a bit now, returning to the film, I think, Tron: Legacy tabs on all of these topics in a very light manner, leaving us with a fun story to enjoy. Understatement is king.