I loved Tron as a kid. It doesn’t hold up, but it made my little brain buzz when I didn’t know any better, and I wasn’t old enough to see Blade Runner in the theater.
Sometime in the early 90s, I sent a short pitch to Disney for a Tron sequel, Tron 2.0 : HyperTron. I even got back a brief reply: Tron didn’t make any money. Not interested.
My basic idea was, since the first movie was about a real person going into the computer world, the second movie should be the computer world coming out into the real world. When Tron: Legacy eventually came out, I was happy to see they ruined this idea by making it the motivation of the antagonist only mentioned in passing, once, I think. Maybe twice.
The point of this tale is to telegraph my intent for this Script Trace. Building on the last one, which was primarily critique and analysis, I want to also explore an alternative story for Tron: Legacy here. For old times’ sake.
Master Control Pitch
Let’s start with the pitch.
Sam Flynn, the only child of Kevin Flynn who has been trapped in the Grid for the past 20 years, is lured into this computer world by CLU, Kevin’s Codified Likeness Utility. CLU’s plan is to use Sam to lure Kevin out into the open so CLU can steal Kevin’s Identity Disc and expand the Grid into the real world. Sam must avoid CLU’s machinations and find a way to save his father and escape the Grid.
You should be able to tell by the necessarily convoluted summary that this movie has issues with clarity. Ironic for a movie with such a light-centered visual design.
Establishing Shot
The first thing to notice about the summary is Sam doesn’t have a goal. CLU does. Sam is just an unwitting pawn for CLU. Sam’s motivation is incidental to his circumstances, which are driven by CLU in his conflict with Kevin. Sam’s motivation doesn’t arise until he is taken into the Grid and reunited with his father.
The story tries to connect Sam’s motives to his father’s dream of a free and open system by way of Sam’s opening prank, releasing Encom OS 12 to the public for free. But it really doesn’t have anything to do with the story from then on.
Sam is taken into the Grid where the conflict is about CLU’s relentless pursuit of a “perfect system,” and tangentially about the emergent and unplanned miracle of the ISOs, and how they were going to change the real world, somehow, maybe. And maybe also something about a rebellion against god when he is trapped in the world of his creation. But all of these are conflicts between Kevin and CLU. Sam is just hanging around while it’s going on. (Also, all these Grid conflicts are a bit up its own ass, like all the literary name drops in Kevin’s digital hermit cave. It’s all a miracle of technology that was gonna save the world, man. You dig? Religion, philosophy, it’s all gonna change because of the Grid, dude! It’s all just an epic eyeroll.)
Sam’s opening prank is essentially just cheap setups for cheap payoffs, and some establishing exposition with Alan, who received a page from CLU the night before, and who gives the keys to the arcade over to Sam. And since Alan received the page, it could be argued CLU didn’t even want Sam in the Grid, he wanted Alan.
Sam’s disinterest in running Encom mirrors Kevin’s withdraw from the conflict with CLU, but why? Kevin is avoiding conflict with CLU because that would just play into CLU’s plans, for some reason (“it makes CLU stronger,” is the excuse but this isn’t explained because lazy writing). How does Sam’s lack of involvement with Encom parallel this? It doesn’t, so it’s ultimately a superficial, or accidental, parallel that doesn’t bear on the story.
Silver Platter
By the time Alan gives Sam everything he needs to push the plot forward, the movie is almost nineteen minutes in, and the most the script has done is establish that Sam rides a motorcycle, can skydive off a building, and isn’t interested in running Encom, but is still interested in his annual pranks. None of these things are driving the plot forward. Alan is. The page from the night before, the keys to the arcade, Alan just hands these over to Sam. You can even argue the quarter gave Sam the clue that the Tron cabinet was a secret door.
Then he’s in the Grid and it’s thirty-seven minutes by the end of the games. And just before the fifty minute mark, Sam finally meets his father. At the hour mark, we’re finally given the terms of the conflict. Now, the Midpoint doesn’t have to be the exact middle of the movie, but here we are at the middle of the movie and we’re really just getting to the end of the First Act where we are given the rules of the world and the conflict the hero now faces.
Worse than all the pacing issues, though, Sam doesn’t win his disc combat with Rinzler, he is spared. Then Sam doesn’t win his light cycle battle with CLU, he is rescued by Quorra. And Sam doesn’t find his father, he’s taken to him. Sam is in the habit of having things happen to him, all the things necessary for the plot to progress. He is a passive protagonist. Or the wrong protagonist.
What are Sam’s motivation after given the terms of the conflict he now faces? To get to the Portal and escape with his father, which is a fine and reasonable goal, but how does this speak to his character flaw and what he actually needs to conclude the drama?
I imagine it’s supposed to show that he now sees the value of getting involved, and his brash temper in how he thinks to go about it. But that’s not what’s communicated. He doesn’t want to get to the Portal because he now sees the imperative of taking action or the flaw in standing back and letting things progress without his direct involvement. He wants to get to the portal because he found his father and he wants to get out of their predicament. That’s how it’s presented in the movie. There isn’t some epiphany. No moment of revelation. No turning point other than, oh, look, his father is alive. Let’s go!
So Sam needs to get to the Portal. How does he do this? Quorra gives him directions to someone who can help him. Again, Sam doesn’t do anything to earn this plot point. It is literally handed to him. Quorra pulls it out of a book, goes to his room, and hands him what he needs and tells him what it is. Then he travels to the where he was told to travel and happens to meet up with one of the tailors from earlier, who takes him to the person he needs to see. So of course when Sam meets Zeus, he just asks him to solve his problem for him.
Sam is betrayed, because it’s that time in the script formula, and in the ensuing fight, he is rescued by Quorra, and then Kevin. They escape in the elevator, which is damaged and threatens to kills them, and they are saved by Kevin.
Even in Sam’s active decisions to retrieve Kevin’s Identity Disc and rescue Quorra, he fights his way to the disc, sure, but Quorra is then just brought to him in a coincidence of timing. And the digital parachute just happens to be there, conveniently. It may have been a part of his plan to parachute down after getting the disc, but he didn’t do anything to make that happen. It was just there, right on his path of escape.
Finally, the final confrontation with CLU at the Portal, it’s Kevin who sacrifices himself so Sam can hold the discs in the blue laser to the sky.
Sam is a completely useless protagonist who has everything given to him. He just punches a few programs along the way.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
So let’s go back and try to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. And this should start with Sam. The story, as it is, seems to want the hero to be Kevin. The conflict is born of Kevin and is between Kevin and CLU. Kevin makes the dramatic decision to get involved to save his son, offscreen. But the execution of the story seems to want Sam to be the hero since he is presented as the center of all the action, despite not doing much of anything to create that action. So let’s try to work with Sam.
This is his through line: Sam goes from not wanting to take control of Encom to wanting to take control of Encom.
Why is this his through line? What is holding him back from making this change? How does the story show how Sam finally decides to make this change? What are the plot points that drive Sam to understand what he thought he wanted was actually holding him back from what he needs?
Why is Sam reluctant to take control of Encom to begin with? This isn’t explained by the movie. Instead, there’s a lot of “are we gonna do this again” talk to gloss over the fact that this discussion has been had and need not be rehashed. In other words, don’t show and don’t tell. This makes it difficult to figure out what Sam needs to change.
How does this relate to Sam’s conflict on the Grid? As explained, it doesn’t. Which leads us back to why?
Maybe Sam is the wrong protagonist and maybe not wanting to take control of Encom is the wrong starting point. And taking control of Encom the wrong end point.
But let’s assume, out of all of the studio’s imperatives for this soft reboot, the most important one is establishing a new protagonist, Sam, because Jeff is too old, or he doesn’t want to do any more of these, or whatever. So we need to fix Sam first and foremost.
And let’s assume the studio’s second most important imperative is the story premise, that Kevin has been stuck in the Grid for the past twenty years, the antagonist wants to escape the Grid and take over the real world, and the primary action takes place in the computer world, not in the real world.
Control Alt Delete
I’m not a fan of the beginning flashback, but I’m also okay with not fighting that battle. I understand the occasional need for explicit handholding. I’m okay with keeping all of it except after Kevin disappears. The scene with the TVs on the floor is nonsensical and the news as exposition is terribly cliché. All the ramifications of Kevin’s disappearance can be shown in the action between Sam, Alan, and Encom to follow.
Sam should have an obvious goal according to this introductory scene: find his father, or solve the mystery behind his father’s disappearance. Perhaps, given this beginning flashback, Sam is still holding on to hope that his father is alive, even after all these years, but what he really needs is to learn to let go.
And maybe when all is said and done, Sam doesn’t take control of Encom, Alan does. Because Sam has learned to let go. And Alan, in parallel to Tron, is the real savior of Encom.
So Sam has been trying since he turned eighteen to take control of Encom but he has failed at every turn. He was willed a controlling interest in Encom but through cutthroat dealings far above the heads of his conservators, Sam was cheated out of his inheritance as a child. And Alan was forced out of his position as well.
Sam spends his days hacking Encom, trying to find some missing annotated code buried in old, encrypted archives that might hint at what happened to his father. And with every new clue he finds, the mystery gets more enigmatic, and eventually, because of a bug report for an alpha build of the Grid OS, from a specific machine address tracked to cold storage, the only solution is to break into Encom Tower to access that offline workstation buried in a vault of old equipment.
Sam has plenty of money, but he spends it freely in his quest. And it concerns everyone who has stuck with him through his mania, including Alan. Maybe establish more of a father stand-in role for Alan beyond throwaway lines. And more of a bond between Alan and Kevin while we’re at it. If it’s exposition that helps to build empathy for the characters and the emotional stakes among them, I’m much happier with that than floor TV exposition.
The other thing we want to do in this beginning is setup what Sam will encounter on the Grid. Hidden in the clues he finds are foreshadows of what he eventually confronts. Not stupid, blunt force but meaningless lines like, “we’re on the same team,” or “he’s a rescue,” and instead real foreshadowing and subtle little easter eggs you might not notice the first time around, or if you do, you get a moment to feel smart when the payoff happens. (And yes, this would require a bit of back and forth writing where, after the main drama of the Grid is written, I come back and fill in those details. I’m not doing that here in the 1,000 words I have left.)
So that’s the through line now: Sam starts off wanting to take control of Encom and to muster all of its resources in the search for his father, then after overcoming the challenges of the Grid, he returns to the real world realizing he just needed to let go the whole time. And this should make it clear who the antagonist is supposed to be: it’s Kevin.
God, Emperor, Kevin
So I have the math around here somewhere but I won’t bother you with it. Essentially, given the time dilation established in the first movie and Moore’s Law, Kevin, having been trapped on the Grid for twenty years or so, would have experienced the equivalent of something like 150,000 “years” of computer time.
And maybe we think up some lazy excuse as to why Kevin couldn’t escape. If we’re gonna use a lazy excuse, it might as well be here. Maybe he did it to himself and forgot.
So Kevin has become some crazy, critically disassociated and fractured psyche, that has been working on building some bizarre perversion of his original vision, and plotting to unleash it on the real world in revenge for abandoning him here. A twisted world that mocks reality, arbitrarily bends convention, and reveals the depths of Kevin’s madness that drove him to this fate. Kevin is the MCP turned inside out, upside down, and backwards.
Seeing this, Sam wants to save his father all the more. He feels responsible, almost. As if, if he had only tried harder all this time. He could have saved his father before he had gone so mad.
And maybe the big bad isn’t clearly Kevin at first. Maybe Sam is trying to put the pieces of his father’s psyche back together all while the big bad tries to deres him and the allies he finds along the way. And then it turns out the big bad is actually another shard of Kevin’s madness, the worst one.
And maybe, Tron is the reluctant ally in the story. It has changed its appearance many times over the cycles in its neverending attempts to hide from Kevin. And Sam becomes the voice of responsibility, the role Alan played for him, that eventually convinces it to join in the final battle.
And in the end, even when it might seem like Sam is breaking through, both Kevin and Sam realize they need to let go. Things have gone too far. Kevin is too far gone so much that even his machinations are out of his control. Even if Sam could completely restore his father, Kevin’s mad scheme would still manage to be unleashed on the real world. And the only way to stop it is to sacrifice Kevin. And Tron is there to convince Sam of this, offering to destroy Kevin to spare Sam the trauma of it. But Kevin makes the decision and kills Kevin’s process, saving the day and unlocking the Portal out of the Grid.
In the real world, the Grid resolution also managed to somehow restore Sam and Alan’s controlling interest in Encom (yes, more clever writing necessary here) and, just as he did in the Grid, leaving Tron in control, Sam cedes control of Encom to Alan.
The end.
End of Line
I’m not fully done with this. I have a few exercises I want to explore for themes and motifs.
The visual design of this movie was the best part, by far. And I want to follow this up with digging into the visuals to find a way to focus in on the visual aspect of telling this visual story. And the throw away philosophy of the movie had some promise in premise, but definitely not in execution.
So next, I’m going to followup with some conceptual explorations of light, and some philosophical dives into Descartes, the Concept of Mind, and Gilbert Ryle. Or maybe something else entirely. I don’t know yet. Which is the point.