Tron Legacy: Betting on the Future

As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, Tron Legacy: Clu’s Blues, I mentioned that in two weeks I’d do another Tron Legacy blog post. It’s been two weeks, so here it is!

And like last time, please do not read this blog post if you have not seen Tron Legacy, as it spoils a lot of the film and will probably confuse you.

As I ranted before, Tron Legacy was not received too well by the critics, and one of their complaints was the story. Granted, there are some script problems, specifically dialogue (“I really think you should consider your father’s wisdom.” “I have.” UGH!), but I thought that there were some awesome themes in Tron Legacy, such as the comparisons between Kevin Flynn and God, Clu and Lucifer, and the ISOs and humankind. But the theme that stood out, to me, was that of betting on the future.

Kevin Flynn is the star of the Tron franchise. Based on the ending of Tron Legacy, it seems that Garret Hedlund will be the poster boy for the future films, with Kevin Flynn becoming the Obi-Wan of the Tron universe (at best), but really, both of the films center on Kevin. Obviously the first one did, but if you watched the second film carefully, you’ll notice that Clu, Sam, and Quorra represent parts of Kevin, showing what his future self could be.

Clu represents the future Kevin if he was able to completely control it. Let’s look back to when Clu was created: Kevin Flynn, several years earlier, created a handful of computer games which Edward Dillinger steals, claims them to be his creations, and becomes the new CEO of Encom, firing Kevin, who has had his fortune and power he deserved taken from him. But eventually, Kevin Flynn, a single programmer, defeats Encom, a giant corporation, becomes the new CEO and kicks Dillinger out. Kevin is feeling undefeatable, that the world is his oyster. And he learns that if he wants justice in this world, he must have control. After his adventure inside the computer, he decides to create his own virtual world, the Grid. As Kevin explains to his young son years later, “I created a program in my own image…and I called him Clu.”

Clu is a digital copy of young Kevin Flynn, from his haircut to their speech writing. Speaking to Encom, Kevin says “In there is a new world. In there is our future. In there is our destiny.” Clu, speaking to his army, says nearly the exact same speech: “Out there is a new world! Out there is our victory! Out there is our destiny.”

Both are cocky, brilliant, and controlling. Kevin constantly worked on the Grid, making sure every detail was according to his vision. He was so controlling, he could not just build the Grid on his computer, he had to digitize himself to personally oversee what Tron and Clu were doing to his baby. Kevin needs to control every little element of his world, and Clu inherits and amplifies that trait. Clu is a young Kevin Flynn, physically, forever. Programs can become obsolete and they can become corrupted, but they do not age. Clu also carries Kevin’s mentality to ignore others. Unlike Kevin, Clu never has *that* life changing event that forces him to understand that he has to lose control eventually.

What takes Kevin’s confidence and turns it into arrogance is Clu’s programming. One of his tasks he must complete is creating the perfect system, which, to Kevin’s philosophy at the time, means controlling it. When the ISOs appear, he realizes that they cannot be controlled. That means, to him, if something exists that cannot be controlled, he cannot create the perfect system, so Clu has to destroy them. Kevin explains to Sam, “Clu saw the ISOs as an imperfection. So he destroyed them…it was genocide.” If it could not be controlled, it had to be destroyed. To both a young Kevin Flynn, and Clu, as version of himself he personally created, control means perfection.

Sam Flynn represents the future Kevin if he simply allowed the future to happen to him. In the first 30 minutes or so, the film parallels Sam to his father, Kevin, several times. Both Sam and Kevin:

-Hack into Encom.

-While being lectured to by Alan Bradley, both change into a black t-shirt

-Enter through the giant back door and say the exact same line: “Now that is a big door.”

These similarities are intentional, but these two fellows aren’t exactly the same; Kevin hacks into Encom to find proof he made several games, including Space Paranoids, whereas Sam hacks into Encom just to prank them. One is an act of justice, the other is a childish joke. As the film continues, more differences begin to appear. When Alan and Lora are looking for Kevin, they find him surrounded by people, whereas when Alan looks for Sam, he finds him alone in his house (except for his dog, Marv). Kevin is a man who worked his way to the top, whereas Sam was given the power of being Encom’s largest shareholder.

Sam is a bit of a slouch, really. Having dinner which his father and Quorra in the Grid, 27 year-old Sam reveals that he dropped out of college, has no job, and no girlfriend/spouse. By comparison, around his age, Kevin had graduated from Caltech, became a programmer for Encom, created several massively successful games, and owned an arcade. Kevin Flynn is disappointed in his son. If the uncomfortable awkward silences and shameful looks did not make what Kevin thought of his son clear, Clu just says it out loud; when Clu captured Sam earlier in the film, holding Sam’s Identity Disk, he learns all about Sam’s life, and once he finishes reading all that information, he comments to him, “Hm. I expected more.”

To Clu, and a less obsessive sense, Kevin too, Sam is a failure. He is an individual who does not control anything in his life and merely goes with whatever pushes him. Kevin losing his fortune teaches him that he must control the world, whereas to 12 year-old Sam, the disappearance of his father taught him that nothing can be controlled.

But wait, if Sam is a pathetic failure and Clu is a zealot, why does Sam escape and Clu lose? How does a Kevin Flynn who knows what he wants lose to a Kevin Flynn who doesn’t? Enter Quorra and the ISOs.

Quorra and the ISOs represent the unexpected events in life. They are things that cannot be predicted or controlled. Upon discovering them, Kevin realizes that, “everything I’d hoped to find in the system, control, order, perfection, none of it meant a thing. I’d been living in a hall of mirrors. The ISOs shattered it.” It was the ISOs that would be his gift to the world, his Magnum Opus, his “miracle”, not only in the sense that they are intelligent life that, given the proper conditions, came into being on their own, but also that they represent the unknown in life. Kevin adopts Quorra after the genocide and makes her his pupil, even though she rarely listens to him and does what she thinks is best, such as finding and rescuing Sam from the Game Grid, and sending Sam to Zuse. Clu, however, views them as ticking time bombs, threats to his utopia. The reason why Clu, Kevin’s digital clone, cannot accept the ISOs, but Kevin can is because several life changing events happened to Kevin since he created Clu.

Kevin Flynn had a child and lost his wife.

I personally haven’t experienced either, but (from what I gather) having a child teaches parents that they cannot ultimately control their child; what hair color their child will have, or what shows they will like, or what they will ultimately do in their lives. All they can do is guide them and offer advice. Losing someone is always hard, but for Kevin Flynn, a man who believes he controls his life, losing his wife, his partner, must be some sort of anomaly, an accident; something that he should’ve prevented, something that he could have stopped if he really had control. And on top of these two events, Clu takes the Grid from Kevin. Having lost everything, Kevin begins to practice Zen, which teaches that one must let go of our attachments.

It’s only with through Quorra’s help that Kevin and Sam are able to succeed. Kevin accepts that no one, not even Clu, can control everything and accepts his son, trusting him with his “miracle”, Quorra, and Sam becomes assertive, telling Alan after returning to reality that he plans on taking Encom back under their control. After the crippling vanishing of his father, Sam needed something unexpected in life to get him back on track.

Having escaped the Grid, Sam tells Quorra “I guess we’re supposed to change the world.” Only Sam, the heir of Kevin, and Quorra together, which represents accepting the unexpected things in life and working with it, can change the world. Clu cannot change the world because he only views his plan as the solution, ignoring everything else, especially the unknown, mysterious and unexpected. By doing so, he cannot adapt to the evolving world and becomes an artifact of a passed time. Only Sam, can, because he accepts the world as it happens and works with those events.

Kevin Flynn ultimately bets on the future he cannot control or understand over the present he can control because he knows that there are bigger things than him in this universe.

Like a chinaman peeing on one’s rug.