there’s so many allusions to ancient Greece in TRON 1982 and I love it, which makes Legacy hit even harder as a tragedy because… what is a more devastating Greek tragedy than… getting replaced by Rome
yes yes totally!
and also at least some programs seem to be aware that the gods, while powerful, are not omnipotent or infallible (really much more like the ancient greek idea of gods than the modern christian idea)
that said, there’s a uniqueness to it that I’m not sure matches any IRL religion… is there any religion where everyone has a personal religious figure dedicated to them? I mean not just like “the god of farmers” or “the patron saint of carpenters” but like the personal god of andy smith in chicago… i guess sorta “guardian angel” but… if there’s any religion with actual theology on a concept like that, I wanna read about it
at the same time, I very much doubt that every program actually has a specific dedicated User that’s only theirs
because I don’t know any programmers who have only ever written 1 program (if that were the case everyone would be named Hello World and what would the Grid even be like)
Another interesting distinction between this and any other religions I can think of
in every religion I know about, “making people” is all taken care of by the same god
I think
I don’t KNOW of any RL faith in different gods who make different people
but that is really fascinating to think about too
…..
….HAHAHA ok I just had a conversation with two of my adorkable neurodivergent trans girl polycule-roomies and it wasn’t even ABOUT Tron but it made me make a connection
so all 3 of us were raised Catholic to some degree
And one of them was talking about how when she used to go to church, she would always spend the time thinking about things like…. that built-in snuffer thing above the candle and whether it was meant to automatically put the candle out when it burned down far enough, and how mad she was that she never got to SEE the candle do this because they always replaced them with new candles every time, and how she would really just rather sit in the church for 11 hours watching the candle
And I was like AAAA yes, you know what, we autistics should all just make our OWN religion
But then I was like… the ritual devotions would be toooootally different for each one of us, I think each one of us would have our own whole different god…
… AND we are going to watch a movie about that, my friends, this weekend, which will cause you to understand much of what I have been going on about for the last several monrhs
(she replied immediately that every one of our gods is a fucked up dumpster fire in some way, so I am HIGHLY optimistic that she GETS IT)
Anyway, I’ve figured it out. It’s autism. Autism is the IRL equivalent to that religion. Which is probably one of many many reasons it resonates with me SO HARD
Update on polycule-roomie response to being introduced to Classic Tron
Delight at whole concept of Kevin Flynn. One of them indicated she’d seen the other Tron movie with “The Dude” in it… and upon being informed that this one also has a much younger version of same actor, responded with screams of joy (reprised, each time actor was seen at angles making this identity recognizable)
Both were screaming “GAY” through the Flynn/Ram hand-holding scene, screams which quadrupled at the “Oh, my User” line
Insistence that Encom (including its logo) was obviously a reference to Enron, followed by shock at realization that Enron didn’t exist until 1985
Impressed at competence of Lora character
Unimpressed at Tron/Yori chemistry, even in deleted scene; more screams of “GAY” upon seeing Tron respond to Yori’s seduction attempt with continued hyperfixation on getting to I/O Tower
Hilarity through whole I/O Tower scene, fixated on Dumont’s extremely phallic outfit. Both readily accepted my headcanon that Contact with the Users is a Sex Thing (and, unprompted, backed this up with Ram/Flynn Scene as additional source of evidence)
At end of movie, one of the two stated she still had pretty much no idea what happened in it. (Which, fair.)
The other grasped enough of the plot to appreciate the parallels in my “And After All” lyric video….. and even linked me the perfect rendition of Wonderwall to use as audio for it
