Tron: Legacy: Fake Identity Disc

Electronic Dictator Fooled By Counterfeit Identification

Tron: Legacy was truly badass.   Many fine, fine, wonderful movie critics have panned it, but I have to say that I will probably see it several times in the theatres.  Full disclosure: I own the DVD of the orginal 1982 movie and watch it at least every few years or so.  As I’m sure you already know, it details the cyberseach of Sam Flynn for his lost father Kevin, star of the original movie.  Disney really delivered on this one, from the opening Castle in the credits, lit up cyberstyle, to its Blade Runner-esque ending (so sayeth Nigel, since Sam runs away with a fake woman).  Critics are pointing out that the acting is wooden and the dialog is horrible.  Even if those things are true, that’s missing the point by a mile.  Tron is about neon against black, living like leather on the edge of a jukebox.  Because the computer world depicted is so beautifully, you could watch it with the sound off, not something you can say about many Disney flicks.   You don’t analyze Tron: Legacy you just sort of float in it.

Sure there were moments of irksomeness, like when they have all these dead video games covered in plastic in Flynn’s Arcade come to like, and they crank out the freakin’ Journey music–“Separate Ways” of all things.  Yeah, I know, Journey had their own video game, and they were the first people to be pixelized and scanned in to a game, so it’s appropriate and all dat, yada yada.  And I actually like some of their music, as long as it’s Steve Perry singing (or maybe Greg Rollie, see I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.  And it ain’t Styx without Dennis DeYoung, either.) But the video game was atrocious.  Anyway, all of us GenXers were supposed to cry for our lost youth in arcades, life in mothballs like the nice example of a Spy Hunter cabinet visible under the plastic, goaded on by the incessant groove of the hit single from Frontiers.  How apropo, how apropo.  The arcade generation had the rug pulled out from under them.  Who weeps for Space Port?  Aye, aye. 

Nigel liked that the programs got to hang out and you could see them in their “native environment” if you will, kinda like the Cylons on Gamoray.   The light jets were awesome, and it was nice to see the Solar Sailer in action.  You really do get a sense of a living place in the “Grid” a lot more than in the first movie.  Programs have nightclubs they go to (and that explains a lot of buggy output, if they have to wake up all bleary eyed).  Yeah, it’s all dark, like a two-color version of Blade Runner, but you get this feeling that there’s depth, which you didn’t in the first movie.  It was nice to see Bruce Boxleitner, he’s kind of aged to resemble Michael Douglas.  All in all, it was everything I’d hoped to see in a Tron  sequel, but after 28 years, I’m glad we got something at all.  Even if it has a plasty looking un-aged Jeff Bridges at the helm of his own cyberworld.  (“Clu’s!  “Army!”)  A bit of the plot hangs on the notion of Fake Ids, though, so I went home and immediately watched Superbad.  I thought Sam should have traded his Identity Disc in for McLovin’s.

Tron: USB Flash Drive Thingie

Virtual Cyber Warriors Finally Embrace Modern Storage Media

All kidding aside, I am really stoked for the new Tron movie.   Yet it does leave me wondering–why are they still using discs after all this time?  Wouldn’t a USB Flash drive be more with the times?  Yeah, I know that Kevin Flynn (Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski) build his little cyberworld in the 1980s, got scanned in, and got stuck there.  Just like the rest of us with our day-glow polos, Members Only jackets, and Survivor records.  Heck, even Microsoft Office still uses a Floppy Disc icon.  Most of the people using Office now have probably never seen a Floppy Disc in their entire life.  They only know it as “that square thingie that means Save”.   Speaking of that, what are you actually supposed to call a USB drive anyway?  They have more names than any other computer accessory.  Thumb drive, flash drive, stick drive, USB drive, etc.  If someone could just clarify this, I could know what to tell the Programs being sent for execution on the Game Grid.

Bet you could fit Kevin Flynn’s entire virual world on one with ease.  Four gigabytes was unheard of in 1982, when the original Tron movie came out.  The whole dang computer didn’t have that much memory.  Programs were given a disc to store themselves on, which couldn’t have been more than a few megabytes.  Now, when rogue programs enter the Game Grid, they can store their information in a much larger format, and fill it up with videos of their pets that they are editing to upload to YouTube.  USB Drives are not very good for throwing at your enemies, however.  If you see Sark, aim for his neck.

–Raven