It becomes a bad idea when it harms or betrays others. I'd like to think he withdrew to try and guard Quorra, the last remnant of the Iso "miracle." However, he didn't seem to have any plans for what would happen in case of his death, or any plans for her aside from hiding her as long as he could. He wasn't going to keep her locked up in the Outlands forever, was he? And while, yes, she represented something incredible, aren't the Programs also miracles in their own right, worthy of care and respect? Didn't Flynn have a responsibility to those who were trying to resist Clu?

Y'see, and this is one more reason Legacy frustrates me. So many unanswered questions, and I came away with the feeling that Flynn had spent 20+ years holding an Idiot Ball and everyone else in range pays for it. In some way, going down with his creation was both getting off easy (he's dead and not having to live with the fallout), and something he should have done a long time ago.

Meanwhile? The Programs were abandoned by their User giving them more incentive to side with the Dark Side-aligned AI, or get slaughtered. All but one Iso were hunted down and destroyed. Tron himself was left to hang and get hit with every fate worse than de-rez. In the analog world, Roy loses everything. Alan loses the better part of his life trying to hold what little he can together, and Sam's condemned to clean up the mess. (Frankly wouldn't have blamed the kid if he yanked the hard drive, tossed it in a degausser, ran over it with the Ducati a few times, and tossed what was left over the Warren Desmond Bridge - no sequels, but would not have blamed Sam a bit)

So we have a guy who pretty much used his friends, carelessly treated an entire world full of sentient beings like a personal playground, left them to the "mercy" of his twisted creation, left no contingency plans in case he was incapacitated or killed, and pretty much planned to get his son trapped in there with him...

I mean. what the hell, hero?! Seriously, if there's a capacity for him to come back as a virtual ghost, someone has to tear him a new one over all this crap!

J Wrote:So we have a guy who pretty much used his friends, carelessly treated an entire world full of sentient beings like a personal playground, left them to the "mercy" of his twisted creation, left no contingency plans in case he was incapacitated or killed, and pretty much planned to get his son trapped in there with him... I mean. what the hell, hero?! Seriously, if there's a capacity for him to come back as a virtual ghost, someone has to tear him a new one over all this crap!

This is why when anyone asks, and they usually don't, I say that Tron/T:L are a Greek Tragedy. Flynn's flaw is hubris, in spades.

In T82, was Flynn heroically trying to take down the MCP and free the system? No. He was trying to recover intellectual property with, at best, dubious provenance. The MCP business is just a subplot in the Flynn arc.

Now, consider: the teleportation system is Lora's life's work, with the potential to change the whole world. Where is Lora in T:L? Nowhere. How does that happen? (AFAICT the canon is sketchy on this, but any explanation where the world at large is unaware of the laser's potential seems shady.) Where is the laser? Hidden for decades in the basement of a video arcade. Has the world been changed by it? No. Flynn's response to discovering a portal to another universe? Hide it, keep it for himself, and play god with it.

Three acts of creation continue Flynn's tragic arc, contributing to his downfall, but ultimately leading to his redemption:

• He creates an imperfect copy of himself, because he's convinced this universe, which existed before he "discovered" it, needs his constant attention.
• He creates the conditions under which the Isos can manifest.
• He has a son with his (disposable for narrative purposes) wife.

Clu, though jealous and capricious, seems to have a pretty good handle on Flynn. He knows Flynn is selfish and immature, because Clu, by and large, is Flynn. I think Clu wants to be the heroic leader of his universe, but he is hampered by having Flynn's own flaws hard-coded into him, so the best he can manage is to be a tyrannical despot, but a despot who knows that his realm has been enslaved by a callous deity with little regard for its inhabitants. (A deity of whom the despot is an avatar. Ow, my head.)

Realizing too late the danger posed by Clu, Flynn barely manages to preserve a small fragment of his Iso creation, finds he is trapped in the universe where he deified himself, and is forced into hiding.

After centuries pondering his failings, Flynn is only spurred to action when Clu again threatens Flynn's own creation, this time Sam, and in the mode of Tragedy can only achieve redemption finally through self-annihilation.

Pilgrim1099 Wrote:Emdeecee has a point that Flynn took the easy way out by reintegration and not dealing with the consequences. They should'nt have gone that route if there was intention to create a sense of redemption for him. If the latter is intended, then they have no choice but to ressurrect Flynn in order for him to face the consequences and deal with the fallout.

I think Flynn had no other choice. If he hadn't moved on Clu, Clu would have reached Sam and Quorra and the portal, and who can say what would have happened next.

Flynn's hand was forced; there was nothing else he could do. In order for Sam and Quorra to survive, he had to make the choice to destroy himself. In that sense, he was taking himself out of the equation.

Now Sam and Quorra (and Alan and maybe Tron) are left to pick up the pieces.

Kat Wrote: emdeesee Wrote:In T82, was Flynn heroically trying to take down the MCP and free the system? No. He was trying to recover intellectual property with, at best, dubious provenance. The MCP business is just a subplot in the Flynn arc. After centuries pondering his failings, Flynn is only spurred to action when Clu again threatens Flynn's own creation, this time Sam, and in the mode of Tragedy can only achieve redemption finally through self-annihilation. Pretty much. I've argued before-- though I can't remember if it was here-- that there really are no heroic users in either film. In the first one, Flynn just wants to get the hell out of there and get his stuff. In the second, Sam just wants to get the hell out of there with his dad in tow, and Flynn... well, Flynn only wants to get the hell out of there because Sam forced his hand-- otherwise HIS way is that they *both* are stuck. (I can just imagine: Flynn: "see son, we're together again! Forever! Uh... in here." Sam: "Uh, yeah, Dad, this wasn't exactly how I always imagined it...") But otherwise? Neither of them act really selflessly or for the actual cause of the system/programs-- though I've also argued that depending on how you value program vs. human lives, that may be the correct attitude. Pilgrim1099 Wrote:This is a good thread relating to Flynn's situation and Clu's. The more I think about Legacy, the more I realized some scenes were 'inspired' or lifted from by the Legacy writers. I swear I have seen soooo many Star Wars parallels. But maybe that's just me.

Well, the Star Wars parallels are'nt lost on me so I know what you're talking about. It's definitely in there as a template. It's probably one of the most templated films, if not the only. Although, I wanted to bring up Little Buddha and the scene where Siddhartha meets Mara (the demon). It was very interesting because that part reminded me greatly of Flynn (Siddhartha) and CLU (Mara) were reflections of each other and that the former practiced Buddhism, however the difference is that CLU was'nt behaving as a demon trying to tempt him but rather rebel quietly behind his back. So CLU became 'enlightened' about the fallacies of Flynn and caught on, figuring out a way to trap him.

It was a pretty good clip of Little Buddha, though. I saw it many years ago on cable tv which Bertolucci directed. Beautifully shot film.

Oh, hell. Let's just throw out the BIGGEST Star Wars shoutout:

Former Big Hero? Check
Fallen to the Dark Side and spent more time as a bad guy than he did on light side? Uh, check.
Black suit? Check
MASSIVE damage under that suit? Check.
Faceless helmet? Check.
Strange noise coming from the helmet? Check
Dragon/Enforcer for the jerk in charge? Check
Essentially a slave, despite the apparently privileged position? CHECK!
Betrays the "Emperor" in the end out of love? Check.
Animated prequel series centers on his padawan? Check.

(Anyone want to do some Fan Art along this line?)

And yeah. I know Disney was trying to play Flynn as one of the good guys, but the evidence just points to a charismatic jerk who treated the Programs like toys, threw them under the bus when things got bad, abdicated to his psychotic double...And his analog-world friends were treated no better as he steals Walter and Lora's laser and Alan's security software (Uh, hey, wasn't the fact your intellectual property got ripped off what started this in the first place, el duderino?), does not bother telling even his own wife what he's doing, doesn't leave behind any contingency plans in case of his death/disappearance, and leaves this wide swath of destruction through his friends' lives as a result.

I'd REALLY like to think better of the guy, but there's something missing on the numbers here.

"Analog world"...! Nice. The programs thank you for not relegating their universe to second class status.

Well, with the universe setup, what the hell makes the digital world any less real? They complain about their jobs, fear for their lives, have loved ones, and a society with its own taboos, rituals, and order. An anthropologist could get positively giddy over the prospect.

And aren't the Programs (I use capitals because...well, see Greg Maguire's Wicked for "animals" versus "Animals") miracles as well? Every one of them a sentient being worth respect? Even the simplest piece of banking software blows the Turing Test to atomic particles. They are also life from nothing. Given that, the term "Basics" is vaguely insulting, and calling the human world "the real world" is REALLY insulting. (Clu even calls Flynn out on that in Betrayal, one of the few times I agreed with the jerk)

This adds to another disturbing note on Flynn: after all he saw, after Ram dying in his arms, befriending Tron and Yori, seeing Dumont, sacrificing himself to aid the battle against the MCP (he didn't know it would spit him back in analog), creating the Grid, putting a part of his spirit into Clu...Did he really think the Programs were lesser than the Isos? That the Programs' potential was a dead end and that the shiny new toys that emerged from the Sea were more worthy of his attention? Again, would really, REALLY like to think better of the guy, but he made NO mention to Sam about Program life after the little exposition dump with the action figures. Was he just embittered by all the betrayal and became (perhaps rightly) soured on it?

One of the big selling points for the first movie was that the Programs didn't conform to most of the Artificial Life tropes. They seem fully sentient by anyone's definition, have emotions and opinions, they're implied to have souls (Gibbs's rant), they do not wish to be human, etc. There's also the not-so-subtle nod in the final scene where the Los Angeles cityscape slowly fades in the sunset to a city of neon and light explicitly not so different from the digital world. Of course, Legacy reverses the message; Sam finds no allies or friends among the Programs, the world inside the machine has had all the joy and beauty brutalized out of it, and he escapes with what seems to be held up as the only thing worth saving. The last scenes are about him turning off the computer, accepting "real world" responsibility, and riding off with Quorra into a sunrise - pretty much giving a middle finger to the first movie's "not so different."

BanditTron Wrote:haha, I had seen that image of Vader before....Now its PERFECT!

I think you mean, "The circle is now complete..."

Kat Wrote: Y'know, I think I said something about that once here (wish I knew what to search to find it; we need that feature where you can get a list of someone's posts from their profile)-- I can't remember exactly what the topic was. It was probably something like "will Sam go back to the Grid" maybe. And I was saying that they really don't show anything FOR him there-- they don't show much to paint it as an appealing place. You even sort of get the impression by the end that Sam's got a bit of a disgusted "let's get the hell out of here" attitude.

Contrast with first film where we were given reason to sympathize with the Programs and find wonder in their world among the danger. We see the Programs on their own. Ram's an idealist; his belief in Users doesn't seem as hard-coded as Tron's is, but his treatment of Crom is a character establishing moment and infodump. Ram seems to want to treat everyone like they have a chance of surviving, even when it's clear that he doesn't think Crom's got much of a chance. So, we have a friendly, optimistic, idealistic guy in circumstances that really ought to have killed it. His good nature is an act of defiance in and of itself. And the gut punch with his death? Even as he's de-rezzing, and realizes Flynn's a User, the last thing he begs is not for himself, but "help Tron."

We later see Clu 1.0; Egad, Funny Aneurysm Moment! But we get that he fears for his life, he's got just enough of his User in him for the smartass traits and foolhardy bravery to carry over, that Master Control is a dick, and that these artificial life forms feel pain and fear (if the earlier scene with Crom and Ram wasn't explicit enough) .

Tron in the first film? Biggest badass in cyberspace, sure, but a VERY sweet guy otherwise. The bits with him and Ram points to our big badass losing hope until Flynn exploits a programming glitch to get them out. He's visibly upset when the thinks Flynn and Ram were killed. And with an urgent call from Alan on the line, what does he do? Goes to find and free his wife/bundled software (and go back to her place for a little "welcome home").

And the whole I/O Tower? Where to even start? Dumont's role as a de facto priest, the ritualistic nature of contacting a User, the moment of hope on Yori and Dumont when it begins, the awe and joy on Tron's face when he finally makes contact with Alan.

Given this, we can totally see why Flynn would not only shift his goals from "sticking it to Dillinger" to "I'm willing to sacrifice myself for this world if I have to." (after all, Flynn was not privy to the MCP trying to pull an Ozymandias). We can see why he wanted to go back and build a Utopia for the Programs.

Okay, discredited sequel, but another reason I really like Tron 2.0 is the inversion of the themes from the movies. Instead of rogue AIs who want to take over the User world, it's bad Users threatening the Program world. And as Alan's virtual son was a Program that fought for the Users? Well, Alan's biological son turned out to be a User fighting for the Programs!

Jet's goal is to find his dad and go home. Ma3a, though, uploaded him to fight off the viral attack to save her and, by extension, the other Programs. The issue it traced back to a User corrupted by not just a digitization gone wrong, but his own greed. Later, the whole DataWraith problem hits, and the Programs are being bullied by them as F-Con is trying to get them to betray the Users' private information for their financial and political gain. The ICP units are not evil, merely mistaken and led by a Kernel who shoots first and isn't fond of questions. Along the way, he's aided by Programs - Ma3a, Byte, Mercury, I-No. Even the civilian Programs are usually friendly, and often helpful. It's also telling that destroying a Program that isn't actively shooting at you is instant Game Over. It's a first person shooter and it manages to be more optimistic and kinder in tone than Legacy.

Back to Legacy and canon - Sam's experience was just running from one hostile situation to the next. No Program will help him. they all seems to view him as a target to be killed or pawn to exploit. Quorra and his dad, the only ones who weren't trying to get him killed, were fugitives. There were no friendly Programs - no one like Ram, Yori, I-No, or Byte willing to help him.

This world cost him his dad. His dad's absence caused massive fallout on everyone else - Alan, Lora, Roy, his grandparents, Encom. He heard stories of a digital wonderland, and walks into a totalitarian nightmare full of mind rape, brutality, genocide, and betrayal. Even its greatest hero was twisted into what seems to be a barely sentient killing machine. It gave Sam years of pain before he even stepped into that basement.

It's endangered the human world twice. Master Control had a pair of nuclear arsenals in his grasp. Clu was (maybe talking out his rear) amassing an army. Both were stopped by a lot of sacrifice and a dose of blind luck.

He'd escaped with the last shard of a miracle. There's nothing to go back for, save revisiting any notes his dad left behind. But those are pretty incidental compared to the danger it would take to get them.

It ruined his life, and that of a lot of other people he cares about.
It threatened his life.
It enacted genocide against something it didn't understand.
It's openly hostile to humans.
It cost him his father - twice.
It's threatened the human world twice over.
It betrayed the one human who had gone inside of it with good intentions.

Given this, why isn't the proverbial pair of nukes and destroying the Program world and declaring The World Will Never be Ready regarding the laser tech the correct, sane response? (Also asking for fanfic purposes; one of the folks in the cast will seriously propose this and take steps to make it happen)