I wanna know what you guys’ hot takes on the Tron franchise/fandom are 👁👁
In the original Tron film, Tron is described thusly by his creator: “It’s a security program itself, actually. It monitors all contacts between our system and other systems. Finds anything going on that’s not scheduled, it shuts it down.”
This description, and the way he’s portrayed in Tron Betrayal, and in the flasbacks in Uprising, leads me to one conclusion: When he’s not being a freedom figher, when system is working as intended… Tron Is A Cop. Or perhaps a border patrol guard.
I have been thinking that thought for a while , too, and … while it does create some dissonance with my worldview IRL… it really speaks to something deep in how I feel about, I guess… “older and hopeful” speculative fiction
Tron’s programmed to be a cop. Ram is programmed to be an insurance salesman and truly believes insurance companies are doing good for people. Flynn’s the only one who fights the system and even he takes down the CEO only so he can become CEO instead on the strength of his intellectual property rights.
In real life I don’t think a cop, an insurance agent and a CEO (two of whom are capitalist-programmed AIs) could ever walk into a bar and…
…okay I don’t know how to finish that joke so I’ll just say, in real life I don’t think they could ever look at me saying “we saw you from across the room and liked your vibe” and get any sort of positive response from me.
But there’s something ABOUT the fantasy of it. The fantasy that in a better world, with people who actually care about each other, anything could work.
The same sort of fantasy that lets me overlook that Odo’s a cop and Quark is a capitalist and Data is an AI… that Vimes is a cop and CMOT Dibbler is a corrupt salesman and Vetinari is a dictator… The sort of fantasy that I will always remember is NOT REALITY and I’ll never confuse it with reality but at the same time it reminds me that we, at heart, are hopeful creatures.
Dunno if that made sense, I shouldn’t even be awake now but whatever
I guess to expand on the second paragraph: it may also be about how people can change. Can overcome their programming. Eventually.
Though, how it seems to have happened in Legacy, they just ended up becoming something just as bad or worse? and leave us at the end, once again, with the fantasy of Changing the System in one fell swoop without any idea of how the new system is gonna maintain itself…
Which again is a cathartic sorta fantasy but important to remember it’s NOT REALITY
Also, this link answers two questions:
“what bad-or-worse thing did Ram become, though”
and
“ok, big-overload-little-derez, what’s YOUR hot take on Tron franchise”