The original Tron (1982) was not a great movie. But it articulated some ideas that were big at the time, and thus came to be widely remembered as better than it actually was. The central conceit – that a man can be transported inside of a computer, and interact with programs as if they were people – was a ready-made fantasy for a generation of children who came to believe that global technological advances were directly tied to their own journey into adulthood.
The original Tron was the story of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a professional programmer, hacker, championship video gamer, video game arcade owner, lady’s man and general wise-ass. In short, he was exactly the type of adult that every geekboy wanted to grow up to be. Flynn lived in an apartment above his arcade, with windows around the perimeter, through which he could look down on the gamers. It was the sort of thing that makes sense to those who have many years to speculate about what their own future dwelling-place is going to be like. Read the rest of this entry »
The trailer’s voiceover says: “I used to be just like you. Until I met her.” The implication is that you, the viewer, would be a much more interesting person if only Angelina Jolie would recognize that you and she are meant to be together, and Morgan Freeman took you under his wing and identified the hidden skills that will make you a superhuman.
The deeper implication, the one you’re not meant to examine, is that this will never happen to you, and if there was any chance that it would, then you wouldn’t need to see this movie as a substitute.
This is a “meant for greater things” story, with the attendant fantasy of discovering that your real parents were actually much more interesting than the ones who raised you.
It’s likely that the protagonist ends up doing battle with his new mentors. That’s how this kind of story works. The protagonist doesn’t really come into his own until he takes the gifts he’s given and makes his own decisions about how to use them. Morgan and Angelina probably killed his father. The guy who is ostensibly after him in the drugstore at the beginning is probably an ally.
