Tron (1982), part 5

This is part five of my Tron review.

Previously on Tron: Flynn, Tron, and Ram escaped the Game Grid, but were later separated when Sark’s tanks blew up their lightcycles, which eventually killed Ram. But Tron pressed onward with his girlfriend Yori, while Flynn tried to do the same with vehicles that ended up crashing before a skirmish caused him to camouflage himself as one of the bad guys.

Tron and Yori are making their way to the I/O Tower. They deal with several guards before having to climb up skyscraper-height poles to get to a secret entrance. A Recognizer is patrolling the area like a helicopter. Yori decides to use the secret entrance first, prompting Tron to briefly express concern before she slides down into the tower. Tron follows, although the Recognizer briefly catches him in the act.

Once inside, the duo is halted by the tower’s guardian Dumont (also played by Barnard Hughes), who looks like he’s in some sort of compressed box, with only his face and hands visible (and wearing quite unflattering head gear, I must add). Tron explains that they wish to communicate with Alan. But Dumont turns out to be a bit rough around the edges compared to Walter, as he states that he’s surprised that the MCP and Sark haven’t just closed the tower down. But Tron explains that Alan could help change the whole system for the better, allowing the tower to be used more. Dumont remains skeptical until Yori pleads with him, just as Sark’s guards spot them inside. Dumont concedes, shutting out the guards with a force-field.

Dumont asks Tron the name of his user. Tron replies, “Alan One.” I thought his last name was Bradley, but, I must admit, Alan One does have a nice, distinctive ring to it. Dumont says this before allowing Tron to pass:

Dumont: All that is visible must grow beyond itself and extend into the realm of the invisible.

I guess that’s a fortune cookie fortune, only without the cookie? Not that it matters, since Tron is free to proceed.

Outside the tower, Sark arrives and brings in what he calls the “logic probe” to break down the tower’s wall. This thing is really impressive, which is saying a lot considering the other gadgets we already know Sark has at his disposal.

Tron walks to the platform where he can talk to Alan. He whips out his disc and stands on the platform, holding it above his head. He slowly releases the disc and it shoots upward, causing the red light from the tower to turn blue. We hear Alan informing him that he’s souping up Tron’s disc so that Tron can use it to destroy the MCP. Also, the disc must be thrown at the MCP’s base in order to have the desired effect. Curiously, Alan doesn’t ask Tron if Flynn is there, but I guess souping up these discs requires one to pull an all-nighter.

I must also note the irony (no doubt intentional) that the only reason Tron has this disc at all is because Sark issued it to him.

Tron gets his souped-up disc and quickly thanks Dumont before he and Yori bolt. Sark and his men enter, along with Flynn, who can still act incognito thanks to his red armor. Dumont pleads ignorance when Sark asks where Tron is. In response, Sark angrily tells his men to take Dumont into custody, but I’m guessing it’s only because Sark hates Dumont’s hat as much as I do.

Yori and Tron head for the craft we saw being put together earlier. And this film has had its share of gaffes up to this point, but it’s here that we come to the mistake that’s always stuck out for me. As Tron and Yori ascend into the craft, we see that she’s now wearing a helmet similar to Tron, as opposed to the cap we previously saw her wearing. Yori explains that the craft should be able to take them to the MCP.

While she’s prepping the ship, more guards show up. Tron dispatches them, and in all the confusion, Flynn gets knocked down and is left hanging on the side of the craft. This skirmish ends on an amusing note as a guard basically saves Tron the trouble by tossing himself overboard.

Yori soon gets the craft going, with Sark’s vessel slowly in pursuit. As the MCP takes Sark to task for allowing Tron and Yori to steal the craft, Tron encounters Flynn. Delighted that Flynn is still alive, he manages to pull Flynn aboard the ship before he can fall, which returns Flynn’s armor to its blue color. The two do the decent thing and briefly mourn Ram before they meet up with Yori.

As when he first met Tron, Flynn is now astonished at how much Yori resembles Lora. This leads to Tron literally coming between them before Flynn can snap out of it. He then informs both of them that he’s a User, and they continue their journey.

While two Recognizers tail our heroes, we see Dumont being tortured by Sark with waves of energy. Yori’s voice then states that “grid bugs” on the terrain below should be avoided, although that seems easy enough, as these things don’t seem to be able to leap up to catch their sailing ship.

However, the craft is halted by a power surge from the MCP. Their only hope is to move the craft to another beam, but the only one in sight isn’t close enough. Flynn races to the front of the ship and uses himself as a conduit to briefly lift the ship, causing the surge to go past them and take out the Recognizers.

As the ship resumes its journey, Tron takes the dazed Flynn to the other end of the ship to recuperate. As Flynn recovers (in Yori’s arms, no less), Tron asks how Flynn accomplished what he did with the beam. The latter simply states it was elementary physics (well, it’s better than the ones we see in Superman IV, I’ll grant them that). The ship continues onward, passing some interesting looking canyons as well as a city. Eventually though, Sark’s ship catches up with them and breaks the ship apart before sucking it and its occupants inside.

Yori (wearing her cap again) and Flynn are brought to the same cell as Dumont (who’s now wearing a cap himself, rather than the stupid hat seen earlier). Yori sadly informs Dumont that Tron is dead, and that Flynn is a User who came to help. But Dumont begins to doubt that even the Users can help now. Sark comes in, pleased as punch that Tron is dead. But his grin quickly turns upside down when he sees Flynn alive and well. After they exchange some brief “fuck you”s, Sark orders Dumont taken to the holding pit, with his armor glowing to emphasize the point. Yori and Flynn are knocked down when they try to intervene. Sark informs them that Dumont and other guardians are being taken to the MCP, and that the two of them are to remain on board, as the ship will soon “de-rez”, which is program-speak for “they are screwed”.

But to no one’s surprise, Tron is actually alive and stealthily crawling across the exterior of Sark’s vessel. He manages to cling to the capsule that Sark, some of his men, and the guardian programs are now on. The capsule detaches from the ship and makes its way to the MCP.

As Flynn realizes that the cell that he and Yori are in is beginning to lose power, we see the MCP in all its glory as it seems to spin non-stop. But Yori begins to give up and actually comes within inches of disintegrating herself (due to a broken heart, I guess), before Flynn revives her with his magic User touch. It also seems that he was right about their prison wall, because in the next shot we see it’s vanished, allowing both of them to leave. They make their way to the ship’s control panel as it begins to slowly disintegrate, layer by layer.

As the guardians are forcibly pinned to the wall, the MCP stops spinning, no doubt because it’s as dizzy as we are watching it, and informs Sark that it senses a disturbance in the Force. Er, I mean it senses a nearby presence.

Sure enough, Sark goes to the nearby mesa and meets up with Tron, who had previously dispatched Sark’s lieutenant with his disc. In true western style, the two proceed to fight it out with their discs. In the meantime, the MCP informs the guardians that they’re all screwed.

Tron, once again, shows off his badassery, even flat out telling Sark that he’s better than him. As if to emphasize this point, Tron’s next throw creates a clean slice through Sark’s disc, while smacking Sark square in the head, causing him to begin disintegrating. Damn, Tron’s disc is as bad-ass as he is!

Sensing this, the MCP inexplicably transfers all its power to Sark, reviving him and making him grow to King Kong size. The MCP then uses its shields to block Tron’s disc throws until Sark appears, although Tron’s disc doesn’t have any luck against him now.

Flynn tells Yori to bring them to the beam that the MCP is generating. He tells her that he’s going to throw himself into the MCP in order to distract it. Yori objects, but Flynn reassures her with a tender kiss.

He dives in, causing the MCP to briefly go crazy before giving Tron another opening into its core, which he takes advantage of. The impact tosses Flynn out of the MCP, which is reduced to what looks like a small stone with the face of a man using a typewriter. The face quickly vanishes and causes Sark to disintegrate.

As Tron and the guardians make a break for it, the capsule the MCP was housed in breaks apart, causing everything in the system to truly light up. Tron reunites with Yori just as Sark’s ship vanishes. She kisses him again before telling him what Flynn did. Dumont appears and shows the happy couple how things are looking better now, and I’m sure Blossom, Joey, and Six will think it’s so cool.

We go through the computerized 2001 tunnel once more back to real world, where Flynn is conveniently restored to his normal self sitting at that same terminal. To add to this good fortune, the printer next to his terminal prints out info which confirms Dillinger’s crimes. Flynn happily darts off with this hard copy.

The next morning sees Dillinger arriving at the office. He attempts to access the MCP, only to see the same info we saw printed earlier. This leads to Dillinger dropping down into his chair in defeat.

The film ends with Alan and Lora on the roof of the Encom building as an Encom chopper, which Alan says has their boss on board, arrives. That boss turns out to be Flynn, who says “Greetings, programs!” as he happily embraces his friends/subordinates. So Flynn is now the head of Encom. Awesome! I hope this means Walter got his job back. I also hope it means Flynn kept his arcade, because how cool is a CEO who owns an arcade?

Next up: I wrap things up with a look at Tron‘s legacy (and I’m not just talking about the sequel Tron: Legacy).

Tron (1982), part 4

This is part four of my Tron review.

Previously on Tron: Flynn discovered that he’d arrived at a place that is, essentially, Ready Player One before the Ernest Cline book (or the subsequent Spielberg film). He finally met the movie’s title character who, along with another program, helped Flynn kick some ass playing video games where you only get one try.

Flynn, Tron, and Ram escape the game grid in their lightcycles, which lose their trails as they make their way through a crack in the wall. It’s a good thing, too, as our heroes would’ve instantly smashed each other up, making this a very short movie.

As our heroes haul ass as far from Sark as they can, Flynn expresses regret about creating all those programs with tanks, such as the one Clu was driving earlier. Sure enough, tanks seem to emerge from the walls and began chasing our trio. The gunner in the lead tank fires but misses, which makes him curse (don’t let this guy play Donkey Kong if he’s getting this pissed off at missing one measly shot).

The cycles scramble and head in another direction. The pursuing tank stops at the edge of another cliff (if there’s one thing this world has plenty of, it’s cliffs), and in the grand tradition of police cars in wacky comedies, the following tank comes too close to the first, knocking it over the cliff where it literally goes boom. The driver of the other tank reports that they’ve lost one of their number, but doesn’t mention that it was because he himself fucked up.

The chase goes on a bit longer until the three cycles find refuge and stop. The cycles disappear, leaving our heroes standing erect again, with the sticks they grabbed vanishing. I don’t know if the drivers did this themselves or if the cycles did, but after Flynn remarks at how playing a video game in this manner is harder than in his arcade, wee see that our heroes have arrived at some sort of fancy cavern. Looking at this place, there doesn’t seem to be any room for the cycles to maneuver, so I’m guessing Flynn, Tron, and Ram decided to park here.

Elsewhere, Sark is bitching as the search for the trio continues. He says to his lieutenant, “I’ll be lucky if the MCP doesn’t blast me into a dead zone!” I don’t know what the hell Sark means by this. I would call this name-dropping, but the Cronenberg film of the same name was still a year away. So I guess he read the 1979 book it was adapted from.

In the cavern, Tron leads Flynn and Ram up a hill. Once they’re at the top, they see a tower, which Tron identifies as an Input-Output, or I/O Tower. Flynn asks when they’ll take on the MCP, prompting Ram to chuckle and say that the three of them have no chance against the MCP and Sark’s army. Tron states that the next step in stopping the MCP is to get to the tower so he can contact Alan.

Our heroes climb down and see what looks like a lake. Tron takes a drink, which causes his armor to glow. Flynn and Ram quickly follow suit, happy at the chance to regenerate (after all, Mario already ate all the mushrooms that turn you into a giant and the flowers that give you the ability to throw fireballs).

As Sark’s troops continue searching, Tron (I guess) feels a disturbance in the Force. When Flynn and Ram ask what’s up, Tron simply answers, “Alan One.” I guess this refers to Alan, and I’ll actually return to this. Tron then announces he’s ready to head out. Flynn and Ram follow after a few more gulps.

The next shot finds our trio in the cycles again, with Tron leading the way. I guess they can just wish up those sticks whenever they want to go for a drive. Hey, George Jetson had a car that could fit into his briefcase, so why not?

Alas, Sark’s tanks turn up not far behind them. The first tank takes aim at Tron, although the shot instead takes out Flynn and Ram. Tron quickly outruns the subsequent shots, although he’s clearly pissed off when it seems that Flynn and Ram have been destroyed. But among the wreckage, Flynn awakens and drags the unconscious Ram away from the debris before the tanks comb through it and report back to Sark that both men are dead.

Sark orders his men to keep after Tron, while Flynn carries Ram until they reach a pile of debris. He finds a place roomy enough to set Ram down before lying down himself and taking a nap. Not that this matters, but it’s unclear how long Flynn’s nap was, as he’s awakened when he rolls over and hits a button that causes the machinery he and Ram are inside of to suddenly light up. Flynn gets to his feet, while Ram is astonished at how Flynn is apparently bringing this dead machine to life. The pieces around them form into a nearly complete Recognizer, and Ram is further astonished when Flynn notices the controls of the vehicle and instantly sets the Recognizer into motion.

But Flynn stops the Recognizer when the weakening Ram calls him over. They hold hands for a brief time, which prompted my wife to ask if they were going to kiss (not that such an act would’ve been objectionable, just out of place in this instance). Ram is fading fast and asks Flynn if he’s really a user. Flynn nods, prompting Ram to smile, presumably thinking that there’s hope in their situation. Flynn nods again when Ram asks him to help Tron. Ram’s eyes close and he slowly disintegrates as Flynn sadly looks on.

Elsewhere, Tron is continuing his journey on foot. He realizes that he still has a ways to go before he reaches the tower, but his focus changes to Sark’s ship, which Tron notes is nearby. Flynn is also headed toward the tower, but is having trouble with the Recognizer, as it only seems to be able to go in a straight line.

Inside Sark’s ship, we see another vessel being created. This ends up somewhat resembling the ones used by the respective villains in Star Trek: Insurrection and Attack of the Clones. Thankfully, we’re seeing this type of ship in a good movie this time.

Inside the control room overseeing this ship, a female program (also played by Cindy Morgan) informs a guard of its status. As she walks off, Tron snatches her from behind a corner and identifies her as Yori. After she simply repeats what she just told the guard, Tron puts some kind of magic touch on her, which makes her recognize and subsequently embrace him. Yes, these two are sweethearts, like their flesh and blood doppelgangers. Some may roll their eyes at this, but honestly, why not? If the Replicants in Blade Runner can be romantic with each other, why not the residents of this place?

Tron asks Yori where they can go to plan their strategy, and she quickly leads them out of the control room.

Back to Flynn, who suddenly realizes that he’s not alone in the Recognizer. It turns out that Clu’s Bit from earlier has been tagging along, and Flynn recognizes it by its limited vocabulary. He also just shrugs his shoulders when the Bit says Flynn is his program. This actually makes sense, as the program Bit was with earlier in the film looked just like Flynn.

Tron and Yori are continuing their trek on foot, encountering bizarre looking programs on the way. Flynn, on the other hand, is still having trouble with the Recognizer. But the damn thing starts really acting up, even taking out a bridge, dooming the tank that was crossing it. It soon goes down, yep, another cliff. Flynn pushes every button he can but nothing is helping, and the Bit constantly saying “No” is no doubt adding to his frustration. Eventually, the Recognizer, despite Flynn’s efforts, takes itself apart a piece at a time, until the top section containing the control center that Flynn and Bit are currently in just crashes, tossing Flynn out. Bit gets the hell out of there again (thanks for sticking around, twerp).

Flynn is a bit dizzy, but assures the unfazed crowd around him that he’s fine. I guess the people here must be on painkillers or something, because they don’t seemed to have noticed a massive vehicle crash in their immediate facility. Flynn even states that there are some live ones in this area before taking notice of what I’m guessing is a call girl program (hey, Daryl Hannah’s Replicant was referred to as a “pleasure model”, too).

But Flynn doesn’t let the sight of her stop him from continuing on. He reaches the tower, but can’t find Tron. Suddenly, Flynn hears the sound of approaching footsteps, prompting him to hide. The footsteps’ owners turn out to be Sark and his posse. Flynn is watching from above and leaps down to take out the slacker who’s lagging behind the others. After punching him out, Flynn grabs him to presumably get info out of him. But this physical contact causes Flynn’s armor to turn red. Understandably, this freaks him out a bit and prompts him to move away from the guy, who promptly disintegrates. Flynn darts off after muttering, “I don’t believe this!” You and me both, pal.

Next up: We’ll see if Tron and Yori reach the I/O Tower, and if Flynn gets his blue mojo back.