Tron 3 is coming (and Garrett Hedlund is confirmed to come back)

[Mark_Nguyen]

More than Quorra, a spontaneously-created life form that someone got actualized intoan (apparently) human body, popping into real life?

I do hope they address whether or not she is in fact human, quickly in Tron 3 . I actually like the idea that she's just made up of artificial stuff somehow, and not flesh and blood. That way, blow up doll makers everywhere in the world can explode with the possibilities...

Mark

[Christopher]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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More than Quorra, a spontaneously-created life form that someone got actualized intoan (apparently) human body, popping into real life?

Well, that's a whole different topic of discussion. As I said earlier, the two movies took very different views of the Grid; in the original, it was more of a magical approach in which the programs created by the human characters were like tiny little versions of their creators -- the idea of computer programs filtered through an anthropomorphic fantasy metaphor. But the sequel came along in an era where computers were more everyday and less prone to being interpreted magically, so the whole thing was presented from a science-fictional perspective, in which the Programs were AIs created by Flynn. Although Legacy pretends to be a sequel, it's actually a complete refashioning of the premise, approaching it as science fiction rather than fantasy. So the theological/"soul" questions I was joking about before doesn't apply to the issue of the Isos in Legacy/Uprising, because they're simply a matter of AI evolution, spontaneously emerging sentiences within a computer network created to host such sentiences, rather than pieces of programmers' souls somehow mystically imbuing the programs they wrote.

[marillion]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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More than Quorra, a spontaneously-created life form that someone got actualized intoan (apparently) human body, popping into real life?

I do hope they address whether or not she is in fact human, quickly in Tron 3 . I actually like the idea that she's just made up of artificial stuff somehow, and not flesh and blood. That way, blow up doll makers everywhere in the world can explode with the possibilities...

Mark

Interesting thought... While Sam is digitised and transported into the Grid, he retained his humanity, thus his ability to bleed... So then would the true be same for Quorra but in reverse... If she gets cut, will she partially de-rez like she did in the bar fight? And would the same be true for actual programs, given that she's something different? And can programs be fixed the way Kevin fixed her? Hmmmm...

[Christopher]

Really, Quorra (and Clu's army) shouldn't have been able to materialize in the physical world at all. According to Dr. Gibbs's explanation in the original film, the laser disintegrator device worked pretty much exactly like a transporter: It broke down the particles in the body while scanning the pattern as computer data, stored the particles, then reassembled them at a new location according to the recorded pattern. In Flynn's case, the particles of his physical body were presumably just held within the device's "pattern buffer" while his information data were downloaded into the network to interact with the Programs. When he was brought back out again, his original particles were reassembled according to their proper pattern.

Now, okay, since Kevin Flynn had gone in before Sam, and since Sam returned with Quorra instead of Kevin, and since Jeff Bridges significantly outmasses Olivia Wilde, we can assume that, if Kevin's particles were still stored in the buffer after all these years, then even if a certain percentage of the particles had escaped containment, there would've still been enough of them left to assemble into a physical body for Quorra even after Sam's own particles had been reassembled. But since only two human beings had been scanned into the Grid, only two, more or less, could come out again. So what would the source of matter have been for the army of physical bodies and vehicles that Clu intended to materialize in the physical world? There shouldn't have been any way for that to happen, under the rules established in the original film. Contrary to the change in how the Programs were interpreted, this is something that the original movie handled less fancifully than the sequel. The original stayed true to conservation of mass, but the sequel forgot how the teleporter was supposed to work and treated the conversion of data to physical form as pure magic, without any regard to the matter source.

Not to mention -- why did Clu even need to go into the physical world? The MCP in the original was this close to conquering the entire world by taking over its computer networks and controlling the world's nuclear arsenals (in essence, becoming Skynet). The world today is far more dependent on computers than the world then. The writers of Legacy really missed a trick here. Clu's plan shouldn't have been this nebulous thing about materializing a bunch of soldiers and weapons and starting an invasion. That's not how you conquer the world in this day and age. All he needed was to find a way to connect Flynn's isolated Grid to the Internet, and he could've conquered the world without needing to materialize anything.

[Kaijima]

The Shiva laser assembly in the arcade basement had four tanks of raw elements that could be used to construct objects - the matter wasn't coming from nowhere. The tanks can evidently be seen in the film itself.

Obviously, not explicitly stating this on screen is an oversight and leads to confusion. But I believe the same topic was discussed in the production materials and by people who worked on the film.

FYI, one theory about Clu's ultimate plans goes with the strategy of: Clu personally materializes in the real world, impersonates Kevin Flynn with some miraculous explanation for his youthful appearance, and takes control of Encom's huge bankroll to do as he pleased.

As for Quorra's nature in the real world, obviously we have to wait and see. But there has been a huge amount of speculation to the effect that the "digital DNA" of the ISOs is based on human DNA, having been generated from the Grid itself, possibly influenced by Flynn entering it as the only human. In effect Flynn's pattern leaking into the Grid. Therefore, when Quorra is reconstructed in the real world, the pattern exists in her to make use of the laser's reserve supply of matter to allow a human body to fall into place. Her DNA however, is probably very unusual. It has been speculated that the way in which she is important could be medical: ISOs don't appear to age or suffer diseases. What if Quorra's DNA is a pattern for a humanlike being that is immortal and immune to all disease and illness?

Christopher wrote:

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Well, that's a whole different topic of discussion. As I said earlier, the two movies took very different views of the Grid; in the original, it was more of a magical approach in which the programs created by the human characters were like tiny little versions of their creators -- the idea of computer programs filtered through an anthropomorphic fantasy metaphor. But the sequel came along in an era where computers were more everyday and less prone to being interpreted magically, so the whole thing was presented from a science-fictional perspective, in which the Programs were AIs created by Flynn. Although Legacy pretends to be a sequel, it's actually a complete refashioning of the premise, approaching it as science fiction rather than fantasy. So the theological/"soul" questions I was joking about before doesn't apply to the issue of the Isos in Legacy/Uprising, because they're simply a matter of AI evolution, spontaneously emerging sentiences within a computer network created to host such sentiences, rather than pieces of programmers' souls somehow mystically imbuing the programs they wrote.

Here's some more fun speculation that I personally am fond of related to how Legacy has retconned the Tron universe. Essentially, the "electronic world" is a real place, a dimension in some kind of subspace that energy interacts with and is capable of imprinting structure onto. Until the advent of high technology, this dimension was essentially a chaotic, mostly blank realm. Then devices like electric grids and electronic circuits superimpose a kind of structure and order. The human mind itself may even help shape it, being comprised of electrical impulses. Therefore in the original film, the focused concentration of a programmer while writing a program actually does imprint something in the electronic world; an echo, but just enough to make the program resemble its creator if the focus was very personal. As much earlier computer programming and experimentation was.

In Legacy, Flynn takes intentional advantage of this phenomenon to purposefully design a virtual world rather than merely allowing one to spring up as a natural byproduct of a computer operating. At one point, there's a reference to Flynn babbling about "quantum teleportation"; suggesting perhaps that the Shiva laser is an ahead-of-its time discovery allowing a connection to this subspace electronic world. This entire framework also eliminates the problem with a late 80s computer system being able to simulate such a detailed virtual world. It isn't. It's just running a basic program that lays out the literal "grid" of the Grid, along with instructions for a simulation of physics at the level of detail Flynn desired. The natural effect of this strange quantum/subspace dimension does the rest, extrapolating a solid, coherent world out of some very basic principles. (Not unlike... the real world.) Funny enough, the art direction of Legacy as a film seems to go along with this - the further you get from the cities on the Grid, source of power and organization, the more reality breaks down into fractal chaos. First undifferentiated fractal "earth". Then eventually a fractal sea. The portal out of the Grid, situated far away at the "end of the world" is surrounded by abstract floating chunks of matter and dark mist.

[Christopher]

Heck, the laser technology itself could cure all diseases and injuries. Just scan someone into the Grid, modify their code, and beam them back out in a repaired form.

[Anwar]

CLU couldn't try to take over the world the way the MCP was planning on doing because the server he was contained in was cut off from the rest of the world. It was a self-contained world not linked into the rest of the Internet. He'd have to find a way to connect it to the rest of the World's networks to try and do what the MCP was doing.

Perhaps that was his plan? Emerged in our world, simply buy a wi-fi connection and use it to send his army all over cyberspace?

[stj]

^^^That's seems logical, but we are talking about a movie where there's another universe inside a computer, and people who go there have godlike powers because they really are inside the computer!

Nonetheless, neither Tron nor Tron Legacy incorporate magic. They both allege there are scientific explanations for the fantastic stuff. It's true that they are really crappy explanations that can't make it across the theater lobby after you leave the movie, but they are supposed to be natural. That's all it takes to be SF. Tron main selling point was the wonderfully orginal art design. The story was weak, hence it was a failure. Though of us who liked the story well enough turned Tron into a cult movie. Tron Legacy had a much stronger story, so despite the inescapably less original art design, it was more successful.

But Tron Legacy ends with an affirmation of the value of the material world over cool light shows. It's hard to see how the series can be extended without undoing the resolution of Tron Legacy. Still, I'll give it a shot. Maybe they'll surprise me with something new, or unexpected but logical. (Even though logic hasn't been the Tron universe's strong suit.)

[Christopher]

Anwar wrote:

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CLU couldn't try to take over the world the way the MCP was planning on doing because the server he was contained in was cut off from the rest of the world. It was a self-contained world not linked into the rest of the Internet. He'd have to find a way to connect it to the rest of the World's networks to try and do what the MCP was doing.

Well, sure, that's the way the screenwriters set up the situation, but that's just my point -- that the writers set things up in a silly way because they chose to give the villain a plan that was frankly rather underwhelming and unimpressive compared to what the MCP almost achieved. I mean, really, for the early '80s, the idea of using a computer network to take over the world was still pretty bold and futuristic. But Clu was inside a computer network in our modern hyper-computerized world, and his big evil master plan was to fall back on what conventional armies have been doing for centuries. It just wasn't as ambitious or creative an idea on the screenwriters' part. It felt like a big step down from the original film, which is not what you want in a sequel.

I waited to see Legacy until I was able to rent a copy of the original film so I could watch them on consecutive days. And that turned out to be a bad call, because Legacy is a sequel that works a hell of a lot better if you haven't seen the original film at all, or at least not recently enough to remember it clearly. Back to back, the inconsistencies and shortfalls of the sequel are just too prominent.

[Mr Light]

I really loved Legacy, but I agree the bit at the end about invading the real world was completely unnecessary and straining "credibility".

[Kaijima]

Mr Light wrote:

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I really loved Legacy, but I agree the bit at the end about invading the real world was completely unnecessary and straining "credibility".

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a more specific plan for Clu worked out, but much of it didn't make it into clear dialog in the shooting script.

To be fair, the very BASIC logic laid out by Flynn should have scary implications for anyone: "Clu figures if I can be in here, he can be out there". There's a few things implicit in that statement.

Assuming Clu can in fact take Flynn's place, that alone is a clear and present danger. Clu is as smart as Flynn, who is something of a genius. He looks like Kevin Flynn. Sounds like him. There's a real danger he could find a way to take over Kevin's old company, which in Tron is now one of the richest companies on Earth. Clu is also a misguided megalomaniac. That's enough "game over man" for anyone. Bad things would clearly result.

Honestly, the only unfortunately unclear thing we see on the screen is that Clu isn't just trying to get Flynn's disc so he can "open the lock" from the inside and beam out himself. He's flying a carrier to the lock, and plugs the disc into the carrier to program it in some way, for some plan. And Flynn says "he's found out a way to take it all with him".

In the overarching plot for the series, which as evidently already been largely mapped out before and after Legacy, that could have been referring to Clu escaping and transferring his own forces, electronically, to the computers of the outside world. As just one scenario.

As for places a Tron 3 could go, in fact there's a lot of possibilities that flow naturally from the end of Legacy. Look at it this way. Sam Flynn has just been handed the keys to a powerful megacorporation. He is now beyond rich. He has discovered an alternate dimension. He has a device that allows people to enter, and entities created inside to be extracted. He has renewed drive in life thanks to discovering the fate of his father.

Clearly, this boy is going to start some sh*t.

Plus, don't forget - Ed Dillinger Jr, and Dillinger Systems, Encom's rival in the technology world.

My own guess is that full of perhaps naive idealism, Sam will attempt to continue his father's work as well as reforming Encom to support Flynn's vision of technology improving life in the real world and spreading information enlightenment. And probably overreach himself (like father, like son), with some critical miscalculation, and the story is rolling. Very likely, the situation may be taken advantage of by Dillinger Jr.

[Anwar]

One theory was that Dillinger Jr used some aspects of the MCP program to create the new software for Encom that Sam released all over the internet in Legacy. A possible plot for Tron 3 was the MCP being reactivated, only now it's pure software that exists as pure data and not as a single program in a single device and it's achieved it's goal of spreading all over the world like it wanted in the first film.

The only way to stop it is to go back into the Grid (the real Web, not the isolated one) and battle it there.

[Christopher]

^If it means getting David Warner back, at least in voice, I'm all for it.

[Emh]

Agreed. Tron always needs more David Warner.