you become a glowy ball, which then saunters vaguely upward.
does this mean you go to program heaven?
who knows.
anyway you’re not here anymore.
2. losing the ring game
again, you become a glowy ball.
not enough footage available to say what happens to the glowy ball.
even less certainty of program heaven than a disc de-rez
3. losing the lightcycle game
there isn’t even a glowy ball!
there’s just s crash & you’re gone
what a way to go
(maybe your sacrifice helps someone else escape tho)
4. getting hit in self-defense by a disc warrior cuz you’re a cop who’s after him
you just spin and fall down and then you fade to nothing, in the course of a couple frames.
no glowy effects at all.
very undignified and un-flashy way to de-rez
5. tortured to death by mcp
very cool graphics. you fade away while sorta turning into a visual representation of gridspace or something.
no record of where your energy vanishes to.
no glowy ball that goes upwards or anything
probably either super painful or super pleasurable, going by how clu screams here
you do get to die with the knowledge that the MCP was totally lying to everyone & totally does believe in Users and wants to know who yours is (but lol you didn’t tell him)
6. absorbed by kevin flynn to use as circuit disguise
he honestly didn’t mean to
he’s sorry
but he needed the disguise
you SORT OF become a glowy ball
but it then dissipates into little sparkles that then seem to return into the system and become part of the structures around you
kinda neat. like organic life dying and returning to the earth
is this different effect because you got derezzed by a User?
who knows
anyway you helped him escape, hope you’re ok with that
7. succumbing to wounds from a fall, while holding the hand of the User who tried to save you
strangely similar to the previous
similarly, you become little lines of sparks that flow away in all different directions to rejoin the System
is this because a User was involved?
…did Kevin Flynn screw up and accidentally kill someone with his User powers again
is that the meaning of this pattern in similar de-rez graphics
(geez kevin wtf)
anyway you became part of your surroundings again
are you part of the Recognizer now?
does the Recognizer now have a sentient AI who would rather be an actuary
who knows
anyway you gone now
I talked about this a little bit ago with sound design but I think the deaths are also really connected to video games! There’s a death cry and a simple blip, in this case the ball of released energy. It also helps in this case that the first three are also literally in the video game in a pretty similar manner. It’s a neat little detail to notice how much video games in general absolutely shaped the way their world functions.
I’d like to think a more “natural” and non combat related de-resolution is closer to the last two. Either by deletion, obsoletion, injury etc. You break up into scan lines/wireframes and get reabsorbed by the system, someone else or something else now uses the energy that used to be you. Circle of life.
I’d also like to argue that the MCP torture is likely incredibly painful as , not to bring back everything to the novelization but I do, most of the time it is a incredibly slow process- it’s rooting through your code, looking at your functions, ripping and taking all that benefits it while leaving the rest of you to crumble apart which is ✨so horrific ✨ despite the goofiness of big cylinder
Oooh wow this is all really insightful & cool!!
(yeah definitely. MCP dissects the torture victims and takes whatever parts he can use … “If he thinks he can use you he takes over your functions so he gets bigger”… which is probably related to Sark’s death in a way, except in that case he took over / gave his own functions to Sark’s zombified form and made HIM get bigger which is…. Ok wow this movie is deeply disturbing in places and I love it)
