A lot of readers have expressed concern that, with modern CG effects, the new Tron movie is going to suck because it has abandoned its abstract, hazy background in favor of highly-rendered precision environments. I think we have something much more profound to worry about: what metaphor the writers choose to describe their alternative reality.
In the original Tron, the computer world was a metaphor for what an operating system does. Hence Tron, Yuri, and so forth were limited in what they could do-- what they could even conceive of-- because they were ordinary programs as we understand them. Only under Flynn's influence, as something with extraordinary free will, did other programs begin to experience something unique, that touch of the divine.
In The Matrix, the Matrix wasn't a metaphor for anything: it was a setting with its own set of rules determined by the operating system. Those rules had exceptions and backdoors that allowed cheaters (Morpheus, Neo and the other free people) to shim special powers onto themselves or otherwise throw off limitations imposed if you went through the standard pod interface. Other programs, like Smith, the Twins, the Oracle, and so forth, were programs of such enormous complexity that had begun to emulate their human models so well they had started to demonstrate free will.
In The Matrix Revolutions, at the very beginning in the train station, the nervous businesmann gives Neo a speech about the trainman, and the entire premise of The Matrix Series falls apart: the trainman is not a free program within the Matrix, he is a metaphor for how the Matrix works. The Wachowski Brothers didn't understand the difference between the Matrix as a setting running within a computer and the Matrix as a metaphor for the computer.
My biggest concern is that the filmmakers of Tron: Legacy will make this same confusion: they'll mistake the whole point of the original and go for the explanation in the original Matrix series: that Flynn has dropped into what is merely a setting, and will not get any of the underlying metaphor correct at all. Tron as setting deprives the main characters of their two most important qualities: a capability for influencing the real world, and an almost Promethean message of free will.
Although the Tron 2.0 video game touched on these concepts only briefly, they did a pretty good job of staying within the lines of the original. Sam and Flynn don't exploit exceptions within the operating system as Neo did to save the world, they are exceptions. That's what the divine is. Sam and Flynn are angels, demons, or gods: they're spheres intersecting Flatland. If the script for Tron: Legacy doesn't understand that, it's doomed.
(A particular irony: in the original, many of the sets were hand-built and the glow effects were achieved through stage lighting: in effect, the real world was manipulated to make the computer world seem convincing. In the trailer, you can tell that the scene where Sam is approaching the arcade was green-screened; today, the computer world is manipulated to make the real world seem convincing.)
In the original Tron, the computer world was a metaphor for what an operating system does. Hence Tron, Yuri, and so forth were limited in what they could do-- what they could even conceive of-- because they were ordinary programs as we understand them. Only under Flynn's influence, as something with extraordinary free will, did other programs begin to experience something unique, that touch of the divine.
In The Matrix, the Matrix wasn't a metaphor for anything: it was a setting with its own set of rules determined by the operating system. Those rules had exceptions and backdoors that allowed cheaters (Morpheus, Neo and the other free people) to shim special powers onto themselves or otherwise throw off limitations imposed if you went through the standard pod interface. Other programs, like Smith, the Twins, the Oracle, and so forth, were programs of such enormous complexity that had begun to emulate their human models so well they had started to demonstrate free will.
In The Matrix Revolutions, at the very beginning in the train station, the nervous businesmann gives Neo a speech about the trainman, and the entire premise of The Matrix Series falls apart: the trainman is not a free program within the Matrix, he is a metaphor for how the Matrix works. The Wachowski Brothers didn't understand the difference between the Matrix as a setting running within a computer and the Matrix as a metaphor for the computer.
My biggest concern is that the filmmakers of Tron: Legacy will make this same confusion: they'll mistake the whole point of the original and go for the explanation in the original Matrix series: that Flynn has dropped into what is merely a setting, and will not get any of the underlying metaphor correct at all. Tron as setting deprives the main characters of their two most important qualities: a capability for influencing the real world, and an almost Promethean message of free will.
Although the Tron 2.0 video game touched on these concepts only briefly, they did a pretty good job of staying within the lines of the original. Sam and Flynn don't exploit exceptions within the operating system as Neo did to save the world, they are exceptions. That's what the divine is. Sam and Flynn are angels, demons, or gods: they're spheres intersecting Flatland. If the script for Tron: Legacy doesn't understand that, it's doomed.
(A particular irony: in the original, many of the sets were hand-built and the glow effects were achieved through stage lighting: in effect, the real world was manipulated to make the computer world seem convincing. In the trailer, you can tell that the scene where Sam is approaching the arcade was green-screened; today, the computer world is manipulated to make the real world seem convincing.)
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