<a href="https://waxinggibbousmoons.tumblr.com/" style="text-decoration:underline;">waxinggibbousmoons</a>: <p>aster i have an interpretation question about tron 1982 that you might find interesting! in the scene where flynn has the following exchange with sark (recounted to the best of my memory) :</p><p>sark: there's nothing special about you. you're just an ordinary program.</p><p>flynn: so are you. one that should have been erased.</p><p>...what is your take on sark's choice of words here, given the exchange he has with the MCP in the first act of the film about how flynn was in fact a user? for whose benefit is this little display of superiority?</p>

Hmm! Well, I’ve gone through a few different opinions on that, over time.

But I have to say, right now, I have a certain fondness for author Brian Daley’s interpretation in the official Novelization:


Suddenly, light came up to full intensity in the cell; they all looked to the door. Through it came Sark, filled with an appalling glee. He swept them with his stare, saying, "So, we have erased the program that-" He stopped as his eye fell on Flynn. When he'd been informed of the capture of the Sailer's crew, he'd assumed the other program to be of no significance, since he wasn't Tron. But now his eyes widened in disbelief. "You! No!" He'd never seen Flynn close-up, and thought now that Clu had somehow returned from oblivion. "You were de-rezzed," thundered Sark, "I saw you!" Flynn looked him over, the tall figure in elaborate armor and vaned casque-helmet, the Dillinger face which now held surprise and confusion, and even a touch of fear. Flynn smirked, not sure what Sark meant, but quick to play the debonair ghost. "That's never stopped me before." Sark reasserted control over himself. "Well, we can take care of that soon enough." After all, the program had been captured and confined, proving that he had no supernatural powers. This time Sark would see to it that the job was done properly.ALT


which I discussed some more, in the wider context of the story arc and its themes about presumed death and misunderstandings


Basically, I kind of love the idea that Flynn was such a random loose cannon that he helped take down the villains without them ever totally even knowing what was going on.

Sark never even found out that the guy he met in that scene was the User that the MCP brought in (a User that Sark never saw up close, and may have never even known anything about, not even his name!) He just thought he was Clu, the program that had died at the beginning.

And Sark and the MCP both died without ever knowing how much Flynn was involved in taking them both down.

I like how it makes Flynn, from their perspective, just a sort of… forgotten nobody.

And a forgotten nobody can make a difference.

And… well, I like that.