There's a funny assumption that goes along with this assertion: that the Cap'n has not or would not be able to watch Tron again, without the "haze of nostalgia" to obfuscate an objective reading of the film. Why funny? Not only had I seen Tron before watching Tron Legacy, but I watched Steven Lisberger's "virtual world" excursion again last night. It turns out that while it's easy to dismiss Tron as being as inconsequential as its sequel, the original film actually addresses almost every nitpick raised against it, if you're willing to pay attention.
For anyone new to the world of Tron (and Tron Legacy), here's a quick synopsis: Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) was a software developer at Encom, until Ed Dillinger (David Warner) stole his game concepts and rocketed to the top of the company. Flynn now runs an arcade, able to do nothing but watch his creations increase in popularity and revenue. Every attempt to hack into Encom's database is met with rejection by the system's Master Control Program. Dillinger, alerted by the MCP that Flynn is attempting to hack in and retrieve the original files, shuts down access to level 7 employees, including Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), a programmer developing Tron. If Tron were successfully implemented, the MCP's ability to enter other servers and appropriate their files and programs would be severely limited, so Dillinger makes no effort to put Alan back online. Alan, Flynn, and Lora (Cindy Morgan) - Flynn's ex and Alan's current love interest - break into Encom in order to hack into the system from within, recovering the incriminating evidence and activating Tron.That's the first thirty minutes of the film, before Kevin Flynn enters the "Grid," thanks to the intervention of the MCP - using an experimental laser that breaks down matter and stores it inside of a computer for possible transport later. That's also excluding the world inside of the Grid, where the Master Control Program (Warner) and its enforcer Sark (also Warner) capture programs, appropriate them, or force the useless ones to compete in "games," many of which resemble Flynn's original designs. The above synopsis leaves out Ram (Dan Shor), Crom (Peter Jurasik), and the "program" alter egos for Flynn (Clu), Alan (Tron), Lora (Yori), and her mentor, Dr. Walter Gibbs (Barnard Hughes) (Dumont). Once inside the machine, the User (Flynn) must interact with Programs in order to overthrow the MCP.
At this point, I can understand why people find it easier just to tune out and pretend Tron is just a "dumb" movie. The plot is actually pretty simple - protagonist finds himself in a strange situation and has to help the hero fight a seemingly insurmountable enemy - so I suppose the logical step is to approach the film as though "it doesn't matter why these things happen." The catch is that Lisberger (who also wrote the film) does provide good reasons for things like "Users" and "Programs" and provides logical parallels between the "real" and "virtual" world in Tron. Unlike its sequel, which relies heavily on monologues and flashbacks, Tron integrates details about the why's and what's of its world into conversations between characters, often in seemingly insignificant moments.
Take, for example, the concept that Programs believe in Users with a religious fervor that isn't tolerated inside of the Master Control Program's Grid. Early in the film, Crom is captured and taken to the Game Grid, and during a conversation with Ram, the audience quickly learns that the MCP takes programs it needs and dumps other programs into a holding pattern of games. Programs with a "religious" devotion to Users are considered to be "nuts" that lack the individual essence of the MCP (who evolved beyond its original purpose as a chess simulation), and their presence is marginalized by Sark.
Later in the film, Gibbs sits down with Dillinger to protest Alan's lockout and the shifting direction of Encom. After Dillinger suggests that Gibbs is no longer useful to the company, he replies "you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it. And our spirit remains in every program we design for this computer." Dillinger replies "Walter, it's getting late, I've got better things to do than to have religious discussions with you."
And that, my friends, is the genesis of the number one complaint about Tron: that the whole "Programs as avatars of Users" conceit doesn't make sense. There it is, in two sentences. Tron opens with a random player beginning Light Cycles at Flynn's arcade, and if you look carefully, the words "Player 1 vs Computer" are visible before the scene cuts to the Game Grid, where Sark is the opposing racer to "Player 1."
The "religious" aspect echoed inside and outside of the machine connects the worlds beyond actors playing representations of themselves on the Grid, and Flynn's off-handed joke "I shouldn't have written so many tank programs" explains the presence of Recognizers, Light Cycles, and other games. A Program with a specific purpose (and note that with the exception of one Program listed below, every one identifies what they do on the Grid) reflects their User, but is differentiated by character traits - CLU is necessarily different from Flynn if for no other reason than Bridges needs to distinguish one version of himself from the other in the Grid.
Every character, inside and out of the Grid, has motivation to do what they do: we've established Flynn and Alan's, and to some degree Gibbs', but let's look at the other main characters - CLU is designed to access Flynn's information, Sark exists to enforce the MCP's edicts, Dillinger is interested in protecting the truth about how he rose to prominence in Encom, Lora is concerned that the lock down will effect her research and is also tied into the standard "love triangle" story aspect (Yori is even less clear, other than her ability to access Dumont where Tron could not), Tron is trying to connect with Alan, the MCP is consolidating power, Ram wants out of the Game Grid and to be free of the MCP. Everything the characters do is in accordance with these motivating factors - unlike several things that happen in Tron Legacy, particularly centering around CLU and Kevin Flynn.
Let's move on to plot points that initially seem "convenient," but it turns out there's some degree of logic behind them. For example, "why is Kevin Flynn near the laser in the first place?" When Lora is sneaking Flynn through Encom, she explains he'll be unnoticed accessing the MCP from her terminal, which is in the proximity of the laser, a point brought up earlier in the film when they test its functionality. Gibbs indicates that its placement is unfortunate, but there isn't much space for a terminal elsewhere, and when the laser isn't in use (which would be most of the period leading up to testing), there's no reason not to use the space. The Master Control Program uses the laser out of desperation, telling Sark that when Flynn pushed, it "pushed back" and brought a User into the Grid.
If the problem is with the logic of the laser, again I must point out that it's given a rudimentary explanation - the laser catalogs, then disintegrates matter, saving the molecules in the beam, and transfers them into the computer. Alan jokingly asks Lora if he can use it to "send me to Hawaii," suggesting the purpose is not dissimilar to the transporter in Star Trek, so if you're going to attack Tron for introducing "bad science" into its world, the standard had better apply for other films using similar conceits. It's no sillier than the idea of water being a "power source" (I mistakenly used the pun "data stream" in last week's Four Reasons Why Tron Legacy is Silly), or why there are "Grid Bugs" (never explained, but it looks cool).
Despite others insisting that the "biodigital jazz, man!" Kevin Flynn in Tron Legacy is tonally consistent with the Kevin Flynn in Tron - an argument that the Cap'n considered in the Legacy review - revisiting the first film makes it clearer that Flynn is nowhere near as space-y. There are flashes of quirk, particularly in the way a befuddled Flynn adapts to being inside of the Grid, but it's largely manifested in physical comedy rather than behaving like "the Dude," which is more the case in Tron Legacy. Flynn is a bit of a practical joker in the real world, but he's perfectly serious upstairs in the arcade when explaining why he needs to hack into the MCP's database. The film hints strongly that Flynn is interested in splitting up both Alan / Lora and Tron / Yori, so one might argue he's a bit more "immature" than "spaced out."
David Warner's Dillinger actually has a more interesting character parallel from Tron to Tron Legacy, as Flynn essentially finds himself in the same position during the sequel. Dillinger wrote the Master Control Program, but finds himself at the mercy of a program that functioned more efficiently than he could possibly imagine. While Dillinger is clearly the "human" villain of Tron, he, like Flynn, is at the mercy of his own creation when it "goes bad" - in Tron, the MCP begins invading military and government servers to remove human influence from their operations, and in Tron Legacy CLU turns on Flynn and rejects the human imperfections on the Grid.
It's also interesting to note that Tron sets up the notion that a User can't "de-rezz" - the Grid version of dying - in two, tiny throwaway lines by Tron and Yori. The first is immediately after Flynn connects an energy stream to divert their solar sailor with his User "powers," and the second is after he disrupts the MCP's beam, both of which should have de-rezzed a Program. Tron Legacy develops the idea slightly by suggesting that a User can bleed while Programs pixellate, although with a similarly vague logic behind the action.
To be fair, Tron does have a few problems, and while comparatively nit-picky, I include them in the interest of full disclosure.
The biggest question I had was if Dillinger wrote the MCP, who is SARK? From earlier viewings, I'd simply forgotten that Dillinger claims proprietary status over his "creation," in part because when the MCP de-rezzes, the old man inside bears no resemblance to David Warner. One might argue that Dillinger is simply lying and that, like Space Paranoids, he stole the Master Control Program from someone else - hence the avatar doesn't match - but that raises a secondary question: what exactly is the program SARK designed to do?
For narrative purposes, I understand that SARK is the "henchman" and a necessary one because the MCP is mostly a voice, or periodically an early CGI attempt at a face. That does not, however, explain what purpose SARK would serve in the "world" of Tron. The MCP doesn't need anyone to enforce, and SARK is kind-of a "training" program for the Game Grid, but unlike almost every other Program, it's never clear what he was "designed" to do, or why Dillinger made SARK to assist the MCP, which is a potentially troubling flaw in the film's logic.
Additionally, and this is a perfectly valid point people have raised - if the film is operating on a proto-internet concept for 1982 computers, I'll let it slide that the MCP can hack into the Pentagon and the Kremlin, but there's no explanation how SARK could be in the Light Cycles arcade box (e.g. the Game Grid) but also be connected to the MCP's main server. There's no reason why games that couldn't connect in any way to other games or operating systems would fall under the MCP's control other than it's an easy way to open the film and convenient for story purposes.
Finally, and in keeping with the Tron Legacy critique: CLU is silly. As mentioned above, by necessity Lisberger needed to distinguish Jeff Bridges as Flynn in the Grid from Jeff Bridges as CLU earlier in the film, so a "dialogue" is created between User and Program during a scene that transitions back and forth between Flynn in "the real world" and CLU entering the Grid. CLU is stilted, high pitched, and emotionless at first, but then begins screaming when his tank crashes into a Recognizer and he is captured. When interrogated by the MCP, CLU begins behaving like Flynn, which further confuses the distinction: if CLU is supposed to resemble his maker, than why is he so devoid of personality initially? Why should audiences buy the transition from "Now Flynn is saying to look over in here" to "Forget it, mister high-and-mighty Master Control! You aren't making me talk*"? (On a separate note, it's curious how audiences are supposed to reconcile the fact that Flynn and Clu are "talking" at all).
Despite those somewhat problematic issues, I stand by my critique of Tron Legacy, and moreover hope that the Cap'n has sufficiently made my case that Tron is not a comparably "stupid" film, one that "wasn't that good in the first place." The point raised to me supposes that Tron simply does not exist, and therefore one would not be able to test the assertion by re-visiting the film. Upon further inspection, I found myself rather surprised by the ways that Steven Lisberger integrates the "ground rules" about the world of Tron into the film, often in imperceptible ways that don't hinder the story's progression. The fact that they don't appear as plot-stalling monologues (as is the case with Tron Legacy) does not, however, mean that Tron is a movie that arbitrarily or illogically introduces conceptual elements. Tron is a reasonably well thought out concept with some plot holes, a simple narrative, and dated special effects, but that doesn't automatically qualify it as a "cheesy" movie because you remembered the film differently. Whereas its sequel introduces concepts without rhyme or reason - or worse, to be explained only in a later sequel - Tron does make an effort to provide a universe with some ground rules.
Next week's Retro Review will hopefully be a less "reactionary" review - it's not that I don't like re-presenting films like Dazed and Confused or Tron, it's just that I don't want the concept of this ongoing column to simply be defending films from pervasive criticism.
*It is interesting to note that Flynn describes CLU as "I wrote you, I taught you everything I know about the system... you're the best program that's ever been written, you're dogged and relentless" foreshadowing their antagonistic relationship in Tron Legacy.
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