jaysc0ve

is that what sark's lieutenant did. is that why he got called "bit brain"

he was trying to make himself the perfect yes-man... didn't work, he ended up as a sometimes-yes-sometimes-no man

I don’t think that the Tron movies, in general, are outspokenly anti-capitalist. Yes, in the original film, Ed Dillinger, the CEO of ENCOM, with his sharp suit and private helicopter and ruthless behavior, is a villain. But at the end of the film, Kevin Flynn’s “reward” for beating him is to become the new CEO, with his own suit and private helicopter. Dillinger wears a dark suit and flies around in his helicopter at night, Kevin wears a white suit and flies around during the day. And while there is some visual storytelling that might be read as a critique of corporate culture (I’m thinking specifically of the long rows of uniform-looking office cubicles, and how it reflects the prison cells in the digital world), in the end it seems to me that the message is that capitalism and corporations can be good or bad, depending on who’s in charge. Dillinger was the bad capitalist, who had corrupted ENCOM, but now he’s been replaced with Flynn, the good capitalist, so all’s right in the world.

Tron Legacy is, in my opinion, the film in the series that comes closest to being a critique of corporations and capitalism. The ENCOM that is depicted at the start of the film is run by greedy board members, and Sam Flynn wants nothing to do with it, even doing some hacking stunts to sabotage it when he can. And then we get the story of Kevin Flynn paving the road to hell with his good intentions, his techbro utopia turning into a dystopia, the genocidal fascist villain Clu being a reflection of Flynn and his ideas and, perhaps of capitalism in general? In the end, Kevin decides that the only way to set things right is to sacrifice himself, removing both himself and Clu in order to save the things they have created. But also, Sam decides to take control of ENCOM in order to “change the world”. Maybe he’s becoming the good capitalist?

And then there’s Tron Ares, which I feel is the Tron movie that most obviously is about the battle between Good Capitalism and Bad Capitalism. Dillinger Systems is the red bad corporation, creating weapons, while ENCOM is the blue good corporation, saving the world with solar panels and making all your favorite video games, yay! Eve Kim is the good CEO, Julian Dillinger is the evil CEO, and the question is which one of them will control the world-changing digital technology, and what they will use it for.

You know what I want? I want a Tron movie where the villain is a corporation, and the heroes are hackers, modders, indie developers, pirates. A cyberpunk story, with focus on the “punk”. But maybe that’s too much to ask of a Disney franchise. I have a hard time imagining a Disney film even acknowledging that media pirates exist, let alone making them the good guys. Which is a shame, because Tron is a story about computers, about cyberspace, about the digital world, and hacking and piracy are very important, foundational parts of that.

I miss my wives, I miss them a lot. I'll be back

There's "bury your gays," of course. And the movies where the Black characters die first. Or the wife who exists only in happy memories of laughing together under a blanket or something. Or the guy who's planning to retire to the countryside right after this and buy a farm. Or the sweet naive young newbie who shouldn't be in a war in the first place. Or, in pretty much any Disney movie, your mom.

The TRON franchise is... hit-and-miss on this.

Legacy and 2.0 both jumped right onto that dead-mom thing. And Legacy didn't surprise me even once in terms of which characters were clearly destined to buy the farm. The original 1982 movie did an impressive job at avoiding cliched plot elements on many fronts... but as far as "who dies," it's a mixed bag.

It avoids killing any Black characters by pretty much not having any. Same with moms. Same with openly gay characters-- although Flynn himself comes awful close to fitting that description, giving his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend what's basically a striptease and some extreme bedroom eyes (in his actual bedroom, which also just happens to be chock full of rainbow decorations). He's not exclusively gay, but he's got pansexual polyamory written all over him as clear as a 1982 Disney movie could get away with. And not only does he survive, he's the actual main character!

On the other hand, poor Ram does double duty as both "sweet young newbie who shouldn't be in the war," and a seductive little twink who reads as very queer-coded to me. You win some, you lose some.

But one win especially stands out to me.

And that's Dumont.

Of all the character archetypes that are likely to end up as Movie Deaths, one of the really common ones is the Old Person. Older characters, often, are basically just there to teach the young characters stuff, inspire and encourage them, and then die.

Which I guess I can sorta see the reasoning for. After all, none of us in the real world live all that long past the threshold we call Old Age. If a child of Disney-movie-age has already experienced someone in their life dying, it was likely an older relative. So, for characters beyond that threshold to be the ones sacrificed to the Narrative? It probably just feels... natural.

But it does get sadly predictable after a while.

Which is why Dumont's storyline was such a breath of fresh air.

His role in the plot is being a helper and perhaps a mentor to Yori and Tron. By profession he's a sort of temple priest, already very in tune with spirituality and the mysterious World Beyond. In short... he's exactly the sort of old guy who would be killed off.

And the narrative even seems to be going that way, for a while! Yori and Tron know they're putting Dumont in danger by asking him to let them into the Tower. They seem to think it's worth the possible sacrifice, and once the situation becomes clear to him, Dumont also seems to resign himself to that risk.

And he does get caught. And taken prisoner by the secondary villain (Sark). And tied up, and tortured, and mocked, and handed over to the main villain (MCP). And put inside a big spinny death-machine with a bunch of other elderly temple priests, and tortured some more. And threatened with getting Absorbed into the MCP to make it even bigger and eviler and more powerful.

But it doesn't happen. He gets rescued.

They ALL get rescued.

The only old (or old-ish) characters that die are the two villains. Dumont lives. Dumont is there in the very last scene inside the Computer World, standing beside Tron and Yori, happily pointing out all the Towers lighting up again.

I say it all the time, but I love that movie largely because it's weird. Because it does unexpected things. Because the people are as chaotic and unpredictable and sometimes downright stupid as real people, and the plot is as messy and weird-paced and all-over-the-place as events in the real world.

Forget foreshadowing. In the Computer World people don't have shadows.

And that's beautiful.

Just imagine Alan Bradley in the grid, saving tron/rinzler. Managing to finally meet Tron and tron's friends.

I imagine Alan has managed to have hidden talents - like disc skills of anything you can think. Also as an user in the grid he could utilize things he can do in the grid he normally can't do outside in the physical world.

Also him helping and slowly learning about the grid and sneaking around while hiding his identity until the big dramatic reveal about him being torn until it's actually revealed to be Alan, trons user.

Okay, basically if Tron is this cool then what about his user when he is in the grid (also outside the grid but different type of cool) and saving the grid.

I keep meaning to post this, I really want people to see this

(And apparently this operating system is popular for use in schools? Based on Alan’s comment? Like imagine if instead of using Windows we were all using Nintendo?)