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 1918: Recognizers On The Western Front

Imperial German Forces Confronted By Technological Progress

We tend to romanticize old weapons.  That’s why swords and armor end up in museums, and we make museums out of warships.  Heck, let’s dig up the Yamato from the bottom of the ocean, put a wave motion engine (ha dooooooo) in it, send it into outer space and use it to fight the Gamilons?  Oh, yeah, that’s right, Dr. Robert Ballard–Super Underwater Wreckage Finder Dude–found the thing, basically ripped in to two pieces, so ya can’t tunnel up innit and put in the engine.  Or the Gun.  Darn.  I have to thank my friend Vince for pointing this out and wrecking all my childhood dreams of fighting blue-skinned aliens with massive bursts of stored tachyons while wearing my space sunglasses.  And white bell bottoms.  With red stripes. 

Anyway, Star Blazers is not unusual, a lot of sci-fi is about war.  Among the stars.  Star…Wars.  Get it?  Wars are about weapons.  Death… Star.   Light…Saber.   It’s only logical to wonder what would happen if new weapons were taken back to old wars.   In fact, that’s the whole premise of a movie called The Final Countdown (not to be confused with the sci-fi hair metal epic by Europe), in which the (then-1980) modern supercarrier USS Nimitz in sent back in time to 1941, right before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It’s a moral dillema, change history, or not?  Bah.  The real question is: what if the Triple Entente had recognizers and light cycles from Tron during World War I?  Sark would clean up the Kaiser.  No doubt.