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SignsDirected By: Steve Lisberger Starring |
I don't like movies. Sure, I go watch them, but it's rare that I actually enjoy them enough to say, "Yeah. That was great." Most of my friends will no longer accompany me to the theatre because they get sick of my sarcastic sniggering every time a corny line escapes an actor's mouth, or yet another plot is wrapped up "neatly" thanks to another utterly contrived deus ex machina. The fact is, I'm only an anime fan because the fact that it's animated makes it seem less stupid than watching real people do the same dumb things onscreen. And most of the films I like are basically live-action cartoons, or have sufficient special effects to serve as a balm for the stinging stupidity within, or else have sheer nostalgic value. Or, when it comes to my favorite movies, all the above. Case in point: Tron.
Not that saying a movie is "one of my favorites" means it's great or anything. It just means that, unlike the overwhelming majority of everything ever committed to celluloid, it doesn't make me laugh aloud at its sheer stupidity. And the more ridiculous parts are actually charming, thanks to the fact that I've been familiar with the movie for almost as long as I can remember. Who knows, maybe if I had played Xenogears when I was eight, I'd have a warm fuzzy spot for it in my heart, rather than a deeply embittered sense of hatred. Then again, maybe not - I liked the movie Condorman as a little kid, too, but when I watched it a few years later, I realized it was complete crap. I'm surprisingly savvy for a navel-gazing twenty-something.
The hero of the film is the inimitable Kevin Flynn. He's cocky, brusque, and apparently a genius despite living in the upstairs apartment of a video arcade. Throughout the movie, we're reminded that Flynn had a romantic fling with Lora (the obligatory female character) in the past, which causes tension with both Alan and Tron (who, despite the title, isn't the main man; he's not even human). Yep, even the best-designed programs ultimately revert to Alpha Males when their main filly is hit upon by a smirking geek. Actually, I think smirking geeks in general provoke anger in the rest of the population by merit of their mere existence. That's undoubtedly why Judge Jackson decided to cleave Microsoft into two pieces - to wipe that smug grin off of Bill Gates' face. That MS had commited a crime of some sort really had very little to do with it.
Flynn acts smug in front of the Master Control Program and (according to the plot set-up from the opening scenes of the movie where Walter and Lora are working on their ludicrous laser experiment) is shot with a laser that suspends his molecules in the beam. Somehow this causes Flynn's brainwaves to be magically converted into computer data, allowing him to do the whole "cyberspace" thing way before Al Gore ever considered taking the initiative of creating the Internet.
Because Tron came out at the peak of Star Wars mania, the writers decided the best way to cash in on the success of Lucas' not-yet-evil juggernaut was to try to recreate the Luke-Han-Leia personality/romance triangle. The difference here is that the smug, reckless guy didn't end up with the chick. If Star Wars had worked out the same way a Tron, Luke and Leia would have had kids with extra fingers and Hapsburg chins - but hey, this is Tron, not Star Wars. Just try to remember that during the battle scenes, because sometimes it's hard to remember that this is just a Star Wars-inspired flick, not the actual movie itself.
Of course, Flynn and Lora/Yori and Alan/Tron aren't the only important characters in the movie. There's also a wacky cast of secondary people who help drive the plot so Flynn can crack jokes and Tron can look as serious and constipated as his human counterpart.
There's a guy named RAM. He's a program. Even when I was a little kid, and the top-of-the-line for computing was the Apple ][, I still thought his name was stupid. I mean, everyone knows that RAM means Random Access Memory, which is an important part of a computer's hardware - not software. Duh. But no, not the geniuses at Disney. In their bizarre computer world, RAM is an actuarial program. Yeah, that's right - when you covet someone's system that's loaded for bear with 512 MB of RAM, you're lusting after their accounting program.
According to the Top Secret Tron Sourcebook, there were many other programs who never made it into the movie - among them are "CPU," a Minesweeper-type videogame; "Disk Cache," a Pac-Man clone; "GUI," a text editor; and "PCI Bus," a web browser. Of course, since we never see RAM's real-life version in the film, there's never a question that he's gonna bite the big one. It's sort of like when that Russian in Hunt for Red Oktober started talking about marrying a large wife and moving to Montana - he was obviously going to die. Which was probably an act of mercy, mind you. I mean, Montana? Need drama? Kill a marginally-developed extra character!
A character who didn't die but probably deserved to was was Walter, the doddering old fool who somehow managed to start a multinational corporation out of his garage but ended up as a low-level peon in the research department. Even worse, the dimwitted Senior Executive Vice President of the company, Ed Dillinger, actually threatens him - one of the founders. One word for you, Walter - "Stock Options." If you're going to found a massive, evil corporate entity, at least have the sense to maintain a majority share so you don't have to put up with crap like that. Walter sort of looks like one of my journalism professors from college, except that my former prof would have broken Dillinger's soul with a single piercing stare. I'm sure Walter and his baby Encom are supposed to be patterned after Apple, that heroic company out of Cupertino which was borne from the garage of two Steves and rose to power in the early '80s. The main difference is that the founders of Apple were brilliant, savvy guys, whereas Walter is a senile old coot who dresses like Cid from Final Fantasy VI and takes lonely solace in pestering his somewhat-attractive female protegé with inane jokes about the semantics of laser technology.
Of course, stupidity is par for the course among these people - the only thing linking Dillinger to Flynn's stolen work is a computer file, right? Hey, no problem - delete it! No, wait, he files it away in MCP. And it's not even scrambled in an EEPROM or anything obscure like that - all Flynn has to do is turn into an immortal videogame character and dig it out. What about firewalls? What about, oh I don't know, the Delete key? But despite the fact that Dillinger has no common sense about computers and was described as "not so bright," he still managed to create the world's first self-aware program, a creation which would make Alan Turing break out in a cold sweat. Of course, MCP was supposed to be a chess program rather than a talking electronic embodiment of Bill Gates, so in that regard I guess Dillinger was an incompetent failure as well.
Speaking of Bill Gates, another thing that bugs me about this movie is the idea that all programs look like their creators. Considering how many of Microsoft's programs have saturated the marketplace, that's a whole lot of programs that look like Billy. That's why Speech Recognition is so slow in coming - they can't get speech on Microsoft-based systems to sound like anything other than Gates' Kermit-like croak. Which isn't to say ALL MS software would resemble Gates... I bet if you crack open Windows, it looks like Steve Jobs. And MS Internet Explorer looks like the staff of Netscape. Another disturbing thought; have you seen the staff of Netscape? Or most programmers? They don't quite look quite as attractive Tron and Yori, which makes the notion of them mackin' down inside my hardware enough to make me want to gag every time I hear a computer's startup chimes.
The notion of programs having sexual relations is, of course, beyond icky. I bet there were quite a few people (most of them in the UK) who watched this movie and said, "Cor! Programs can get it on?" at which point they grabbed a copy of Riana Rouge and Tomb Raider III installed them into the same directory, and hoped for the best. I don't even have the heart to tell them it's just a fantasy... and pretty sad one at that.
There are many other wonderful fantasy elements to this movie that make no sense whatsoever in the context of actual computers. I especially like the fact that the Game Grid is reserved for programs. Yes, that's right, programs play programs. Bear in mind this was before the days of emulation, OK? I know some of you are astounded to learn that one upon a time, there was no emulations scene... but bear with me, gentle children. The idea of making Tron and RAM play light cycles is sort of like me trying to force Netscape Navigator to play Quake III. It never seems to work for me - no matter how hard I jab Excel in the back with one of those zap sticks, I can't convince it to get into an arena and face off against me in a game of Triple Triad.
But despite its fantastic nature, don't think that Tron doesn't offer important moral lessons. In fact, one of the most prominent is shown in the arcade - a guy wearing a Xanadu-inspired sweatsuit. The point? It pays not to be born in the wrong decade. That poor guy in the sweat band and tube socks. There's little doubt that the high point of his entire life was to appear as an extra in this second-rate movie about utterly nonsensical computer violence... and he shows up in this outfit. This is the sort of thing that keeps you from getting married, from having friends, from landing a good career. Everyone he meets says, "Hey, weren't you the sweatband guy in Tron?" Just think, if he had been born 10 years later, like me, he'd have been in great shape; he'd be too young to remember Carter, and the early 80s would have been a vague blur, when any lapse in taste could easily have been attributed to the fact his parents dressed him that way. But no - he's definitely old enough to dress himself, meaning this formerly fashionable fool has no one to blame but himself. Play it safe, kids - exercise caution when growing up in stupid decades. And never, ever star in a breakdancing movie.
As a final touch of whimsy, the movie ends on a cheerful note with "1990s Theme," a blistering song from none other than Boston. Or maybe Journey. Or was it Foreigner? REO Speedwagon? Crap, I can't remember - all those bands sound the same anyway. Not surprisingly, the song sounds more like "Early 1980s Theme" than "1990s Theme," but maybe that's to be expected, as the members of Boston/Journey/Foreigner spent most of the '90s in an unemployment line after refusing to wear tattered flannel onstage. As everyone knows, the real theme of the '90s was written by Kurt Cobain and consisted of three cords and gunshot.
Ultimately, though, I've come to the conclusion that Tron is one of the worst movies ever. Oh, it's fun to watch and the effects were nifty and all. But the computer-generated imagery paved the way for one of the greatest cinematic travesties in history: Jar-Jar Binks. If not for that stupid floating Bit, George Lucas might have used his vast array of money and computing power to create a truly likable and amusing character instead of, of... that thing. Curse you, Tron... curse your blackened soul.