I saw Tron: Legacy the other day. I’m kind of surprised that I feel that this merits any discussion, but like the original Tron, there’s something in it that eludes my understanding.
In college I worked as a grader for the literature department, which was primarily drudgery. Once, however, I came upon an exam with an answer so poetically worded that it took me completely surprised. The guy who had written it used the word “vaporous” in a completely unexpected and brilliant way. It turned out that he was an acquaintance of one of my roommates, so I asked about him. “Is it possible that he’s…a genius?” My roommate paused before saying, “He could be? He’s one of those people that you’ll probably never be able to know for sure one way or the other.”
That to me, is Tron. I have no idea if it really is that smart or thoughtful, or if I have been over-eager in projecting intelligence onto it based on a handful of odd details. Because, and this is true of both Tron and Tron: Legacy, it’s kind of, in many ways, a dumb movie. Attractive and fun, but dumb. And yet there are the barest suggestions of an ambition to say something more.
The original did this by coyly hinting around at the quasi-religious implications of the relationship between the user and technology. So coyly, in fact, that you were left to wonder if they had even been intentional. The sequel shows no such reticence, and all but beats you over the head with religious allegory (a moment where Jeff Bridges makes a creation in his own image, said creation has a moment with a silver apple in hand, I could go on), not to mention a Nazi allegory thrown in there.
Enough with the Nazi allegories. It’s too easy. This has been said many times before, but it bears repeating. Nazi allegories are even more facile than using actual Nazis as villains. There are other reasons for people to be evil than the pursuit of a false purity/perfection.
Interestingly, Black Swan deals with the same motivation, albeit turned inward (mental illness standing in for metaphorical Nazis here). Both movies seem to reach a consensus about true perfection lying in the ability to let go, to allow organic creations or events to influence and combine with formula and precision. Or that this is unattainable. I bet you didn’t expect this to also turn into a discussion of Black Swan. But it’s happening! Right now! Because I saw both movies within 24 hours of each other and the similarities, upon reflection, are inescapable!
Darren Aronofsky has said that Black Swan was his attempt to reinterpret Dostoevsky’s The Double. And the Tron franchise is at it again, intentionally or accidentally, playing with all kinds of fun archetypes! So putting aside the God/Adam allegory for a moment, wasn’t it STILL the absolute worst idea for Jeff Bridges (I could call him by his character’s name, Kevin Flynn, but let’s be real: clearly the only direction he got was “Just do you, Jeff. Love them eye crinkles.”) to create ANOTHER VERSION OF HIMSELF to live on the grid? Like, oh I don’t know, maybe he would become a manifestation of all the darkness within Jeff Bridges’ soul (what a laugh, Jeff Bridges’ soul obviously has only warmth and hanging out and eye crinkles and a nice area rug in there) and there’s that little thing of SEEING YOUR DOUBLE IS A HARBINGER OF DEATH.
SPOILER ALERT FOR LIKE, ALL THE MOVIES I’M TALKING ABOUT, NOT THAT I’M INSULTING YOUR INTELLIGENCE IN THINKING THAT YOU COULDN’T FIGURE THIS OUT FROM WATCHING BOTH TRAILERS, BUT I’M GOING TO GET INTO SPECIFICS. SO YOU KNOW:
Okay, so we know that the double is a harbinger of death because that’s just how it do. IRREFUTABLE FACT. It’s clear in both cases that our protagonists, (sorry younger Flynn, I like Jeff Bridges more than you, although you have a certain crinkly-eyed charm yourself, albeit too much hair product) are going to have to throw themselves on the pyre in the name of attaining true (read: imperfect) perfection. Both movies present the act of creation as one fraught with peril and (literally!) divisive to the self. While the evil CLU is the one in search of perfection in Tron: Legacy, it is, ironically the darker self who embraces imperfection and spontaneity and drugs and make-outs in Black Swan. Either way, Mila CLUnis must die for the greater good! But in the end it’s really Natalie Bridges we’re killing. You must go to the source [code] to destroy the evil. And so some innocentish ballerinas and computer programmers have to take a fall for the rest of us. TO SAVE US FROM ALLEGORICAL NAZIS AND SEXUAL REPRESSION.
What makes Tron: Legacy different from both the original Tron and Black Swan is the (again, coy!) hints at the idea of free technology, net neutrality, and how, as a Disney film, to tentatively maybe criticize Steve Jobs without causing a rift with Pixar YET AGAIN. This isn’t the fucking Social Network; we’re all trying to play nice. Or! Maybe I’m just seeing that because I want to YET AGAIN. By all accounts (read: Jeff Bridges’ swingin’ pad on the outskirts of the grid), the future is Apple (read, white and minimalist). And print media is just a set-up for a groaner of a joke about Jules Verne that nonetheless made me laugh. I mean, nobody’s getting stabbed with broken glass here.
Unlike the original Tron, however, the sequel feels that technology doesn’t provide high enough stakes, so hence, we are suddenly allowing programs to have the potential to exit the grid, with World War III or World Peace as the only conceivable outcomes (you go too far!). So, we’re skirting around relevance, which is fine, because those light cycles are pretty great (and don’t you love the built-in justification for updating the whole look of the movie? When was the last time you wanted to say “SWISH” in response to the creative exploitation of the obvious? Are basketball references not cool anymore?). And let’s look at Computer Generated “Young Jeff Bridges” as CLU. This might be the best intentional exploitation of the Uncanny Valley ever, or everyone working on it was just trying their best to make a “Young Jeff Bridges” who was indistinguishable from young Jeff Bridges and missed the mark. WHO’S TO KNOW.
Tron: Legacy’s quasi-intelligence falls into the same territory as Black Swan’s camp, which is to say, I really can’t tell if it’s on purpose. Natalie Portman burning all her stuffed animals is serious Brian DePalma territory. Which is fine! I love heavy-handedness, but I can’t tell if Black Swan is doing so ingenuously or pretentiously. My appreciation of a movie is usually not predicated on artistic intention, but with both of these films, it seems almost intrinsic (this is also how I feel about Showgirls and Flashdance—why does nobody talk about how weird these movies are?). And while they both invite us to ask these questions, they also do everything in their power (fancy action sequences! images of utterly grotesque horror!) to distract you from answering them. Probably rightly so! I mean, have we learned nothing here? Perfection happens by accident! But let’s not call either of these movies perfect or maybe even good. But nonetheless: Good Job! You did a good job.
Which I guess is all that I can say about Tron: Legacy and Black Swan. I guess you both succeeded in a sense, even if you wind up bleeding out on a mattress afterward.
