This is some exciting news. A friend of mine picked this up for me for a dollar. I’ve never read a “novelization”, but I flipped through it, and the dialogue is straight out of the script. BUT there are some significant differences. I’m going to start a new category for notes/annotations on the differences between the novelization and the movie.
Maybe someone can help me with this, but I don’t understand the scene where Flynn tells Tron about what it is like to be a user. If my memory serves me correctly (and it should because I have seen Tron on the order of about 500 times) Tron says to Flynn, “If you’re a user, then everything you do is according to a plan” after which Flynn says something like “well you know how it is, you just keep doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing” and then Tron says “well, that’s the way it is for programs” and Flynn says “sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way it is for users too”.
This recently struck me as strange. Why is it that what-it’s-like-to-be a program is to “keep doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing”? And why does Tron assume that users do everything according to a plan? Are these even different? “Doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing” seems to imply a kind of acquiescence, yet an element of freewill. “According to a plan” would seem to be much more deterministic. Initially it seemed kinda backwards, as if the programs should be the ones that do things according to a plan. I can’t say for sure what the image of the users would be from the perspective of such a program who “does things according to a plan”, so I can’t assume that they would necessarily see the users as “keep doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing”.
On the other side, I suppose we tend to imagine that God (that sonuvabitch) does things according to a plan. And, speaking for myself, that I do things that it seems like I’m supposed to be doing. So, in this way I can see why it is that this scene is scripted as it is. Regardless, it is still curious that what-it’s-like-to-be-a-program is to have the experience of “doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing”. There are some philosophical implications here that I haven’t really thought out yet.
Granted that a program does do things according to a plan (a program), yet it is claimed in the movie that programs have the experience of “doing what it seems like they’re supposed to be doing”. And as I said above, this seems to imply a bit more autonomy than doing things “according to a plan”. This seems to be getting at two sides of the same coin: that the program can be completely determined (by it’s program), and yet still seem to have this autonomy of just rolling with the punches or what have you. I guess just ‘going through the motions’ might have the subjective experience of just “doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing” even though your behavior is completely determined. The thing about freewill is that it certainly feels like I could’ve done something different (even though I didn’t). You get the point, “keep doing what it seems like you’re supposed to be doing” seems to imply a bit more autonomy than “according to a program”.
The other thing I was thinking is that the Bible (never touched the thing) is said to say something like that we were created in the image of God, so it might make sense to think that God is something like us. In that case, the fact that Tron “does what it seems like he is supposed to be doing” might make sense.
Anyways, there seems like some little nugget of something there.
“Oh man. This isn’t happening, it only thinks it’s happening.” (or does he say “I only think it’s happening”?)
From this line (the first thing Flynn says after arriving in the Tron world), it seems like Flynn knows where he is. But this can’t possibly be. You’d think that Flynn would would be suffering a bit more dissonance than this after finding himself in such a strange place wearing a glowing circuit board suit. But he immediately asks to see the guy in charge. When he sat down at Laura’s terminal in that experimental laser lab, he couldn’t possibly have been expecting to be sucked into the Tron world. Yet he seems to have some idea where he is, and just goes with it - “I play games better than anybody”.
(See my earlier post as a preamble to this).
When the original came out, computers may have been a bit more mysterious, not so common as they are today. At the time, most people probably had no idea how distant the technology of digitizing a body was and sucking it into a computer - it might not have seemed so ridiculous (I can’t say, I was just a kid at the time). Regardless, the original didn’t do very well anyways, I think it bombed at the time (except for the few fanatics who were kids at the time). Maybe the cultural climate has changed, or something, but I think a Tron sequel done like the original (a guy getting sucked into a neon computer world) would seem really dumb.
Even if it was made for kids, I don’t think it would work. It didn’t work the first time. And sure there are heaps of fantasy movies around, and you might think that this might hint to a public that is ready for the fantasy of Tron, but I think you are wrong. Fantasy films are set in another world, so we can suspend disbelief. Star Trek was set in the future, and likewise we can imagine that anything might happen in the future. But Tron is set in the present day, and I think that is the place for it (this gets into my vision for Tron’s cultural role, which will have to elaborated on later). Like I said, computers were still so new at the time, and so there were these cheesy speculative movies like ‘Electric Dreams’, ‘Flight of the Navigator’, ‘Short Circuit’, ‘WarGames’, and there was another one I can’t remember. Had the original been set in the future, it might’ve been more popular, but Tron belongs in the real world, here and now. So since it must be set the present day, and we are much more savvy then we used to be, I don’t think the Tron world would work (in the same way) today.
These are the foundational arguments to support my ideas for a Tron sequel (which I haven’t really gotten into yet).
A few words on the Tron constituency before I go on to talk about why the Tron world wouldn’t work in the way it has been used up to now. Who is the sequel being made for? If it is being made for the Tron fans, there aren’t many of them. Among the people I’ve ever met, there is not one who seems to approach my level of concern with Tron, and I am in the right age group for running into Tron fans. It’s novelty status among my age group has possibly swelled a little, but not that much. There are certainly some fans, and it certainly isn’t as forgotten as most movies from the time (it does have that going for it).It wasn’t really popular as a kids movie either, even though it was thought of as a kids movie (what with the acade games, trading cards, learn-to-read book+tape, etc.). It would be a serious shame it the sequel were to be even more geared towards kids. But I can’t see this happening really, so we can discard that possibility.
Otherwise, and of course the obvious answer is that it will be made for mass appeal. The original was targeted for mass appeal, so I can’t argue that mass appeal doesn’t fit the spirit of Tron. But why do it? If you are going for mass appeal, then why use Tron? Why not just make up another story with great special effects and action. People will still go see it anyways if it has all these things. Considering the constituency, you don’t fare to make all that much more money by calling the movie a sequel to Tron. And you would risk possibly pissing off the fans by making a stupid action movie, and ending the Tron legacy forever.
Therefore…don’t make a movie for kids, and don’t make a movie aimed at mass appeal. Make a movie tailored for exactly those who saw something in it from the beginning. Believe me (and I know you have no reason to), but if you make it for this constituency, it will have the same lasting effect, and will probably be even bigger. If you make a movie for mass appeal, it will disappear like any stupid ‘Armageddon’ or ‘Battlefield Earth’ or what the hell ever.
(Continued here)
In the movie you see people playing the light cycle game from the Tron arcade game, and you see Flynn (Jeff Bridges) playing a 1st person type tank game where he is shooting recognizers. This game is exactly what Flynn’s programs look like when he is seen communicating with them from his computer terminal. And we are transported through the screen of light cycle arcade game into the Tron world where everything is as it appears on the screen. Why is this?
I guess Flynn didn’t necessarily design those games (above); he only says that among a “slew” of others, that he wrote “Vice Squad” and “Matrix Blaster”, if my memory serves me.
Whoever designed these games (in the movie), had some intuitive idea of what was going on on the inside, in the Tron world? Do you see what I’m saying? This tank game that Flynn is playing is a window into the Tron world. Because as we see in the Tron world scenes, there are tanks and recognizers just as there is in that game that Flynn is playing. So somehow these games either accurate or direct views of the Tron world, or the Tron world scenes have conformed to the designers design (this idea expanded here).