@encom-official / encom-official.tumblr.com
*I hold Disney between my god damn hands like an idiot sandwich*
Listen to me you capitalistic bitch, you hold my fucking heart in your hands, you understand me?
I live in Texas in the year of our lord 2025, I have SO MANY reasons to crash out right now. You be so careful.
Side note- I MIGHT forgive you for a bad movie if Tron merch starts getting sold at anime conventions.
So new Tron: Ares trailer dropped, & I have many thoughts & many fears.
Number one, I really don’t want this to be an alien invasion type movie, & I don’t want it to primarily focus on the human world- I don’t enjoy Tron for Earth, I enjoy Tron for the Grid, & it’s reflection of us.
Number two, obviously Jared Leto being a main character is worrying, but even more worrying is the fact that he seems to really resemble Rinzler- he was a favorite so it’s not out of the question that they’d try to bring Tron back in that way. He seems to form whole cloth in one scene, which might alter the lore of how programs are made, or who can make them.
You can hear Kevin’s voice at one point, & I swear to god if they don’t do something meaningful with that I’m gonna be pissed. His death in Legacy served a purpose, & to me was a well written moment. If they retcon this somehow it retroactively makes Legacy worse.
Where is Sam? I don’t think he’s shown, nor is Quorra. This worries me mostly because I’d expect them to be the focus if we’re really pulling the story into the real world, out of the grid.
This is a minor nitpick really but the scene of the light cycle splitting the cop car in half made me frown. It’s not bad effects by any means, but it’s so cookie cutter action movie- part of my love for Tron is the way violence & destruction is treated differently in the Grid, & that includes how it looks. The visual splendor of pixels spilling, rather than melted metal. I don’t want a Marvel movie for Christ’s sake, & I don’t put it past them to try & recreate that success with Tron- we all know Disney loves their formulas.
On the bright side I enjoy the aesthetics of the programs, i think so far that they’ve faithfully recreated the style of the Legacy designs, & I’m excited to see what Nine Inch Nails can do for the music- though I’m somewhat skeptical they can live up to the iconic performance of Daft Punk.
I don’t know if anyone really cares about these details, but one of my favorite nods to the OG movie in Legacy is that Encom was started in a garage by its founder, meaning the one Sam lives in might be the original garage Encom started in.
The shipping container on top of the garage has a ‘Dumont’ logo on the front, which is a reference to the tower guardian in the original movie by the same name.
Another reference you won’t get if you haven’t watched the original movie is when Sam opens the vault door on the outside of Encom tower (with his hacker? Magic necklace? Wish that was explained more) he says “now that is a big door”, this is an homage to when his father says the same thing about a similar door in the original movie.
Something that might be a little more obvious is when CLU visits Flynn’s safe house, he observes two models of spiky gold & silver balls. This is a reference to the original movie’s Bit.
The night club Zues runs is called the ‘End of Line’ club, both a reference to the MCP, & foreshadowing to his eventual death in the club. As CLU says when he leaves him for dead, “end of line, man.”
Finally, as I’m sure any Tron fan worth their salt knows, the go board Kevin & Quorra play on previously in the movie is visible when CLU visits. Quorra says that Kevin’s patience usually beats out her more aggressive strategy, a reference to the fact that computers famously have a difficult time grasping the game of go, & often play aggressively to their own disadvantage.
I forgot one!
Edward Dillinger, the tech bro who is seen at the beginning of the movie taking the respect Allen is supposed to be gaining, has the same last name (& possibly first?) as Ed Dillinger, the man who originally stole Kevin’s code for Space Paranoids. Perhaps his family has legacy in the company.
I don’t know if anyone really cares about these details, but one of my favorite nods to the OG movie in Legacy is that Encom was started in a garage by its founder, meaning the one Sam lives in might be the original garage Encom started in.
The shipping container on top of the garage has a ‘Dumont’ logo on the front, which is a reference to the tower guardian in the original movie by the same name.
Another reference you won’t get if you haven’t watched the original movie is when Sam opens the vault door on the outside of Encom tower (with his hacker? Magic necklace? Wish that was explained more) he says “now that is a big door”, this is an homage to when his father says the same thing about a similar door in the original movie.
Something that might be a little more obvious is when CLU visits Flynn’s safe house, he observes two models of spiky gold & silver balls. This is a reference to the original movie’s Bit.
The night club Zues runs is called the ‘End of Line’ club, both a reference to the MCP, & foreshadowing to his eventual death in the club. As CLU says when he leaves him for dead, “end of line, man.”
Finally, as I’m sure any Tron fan worth their salt knows, the go board Kevin & Quorra play on previously in the movie is visible when CLU visits. Quorra says that Kevin’s patience usually beats out her more aggressive strategy, a reference to the fact that computers famously have a difficult time grasping the game of go, & often play aggressively to their own disadvantage.
Rewatching Legacy for the like, 500th time & what stood out to me this time is CLU’s speech to his soldiers near the end.
He really doesn’t *need* to convince them of anything. He doesn’t need to grandstand to people he, for all intents & purposes, owns & controls.
His wording especially reads as desperate, as angry. Like a little kid almost.
“Give your loyalty to me, & I will *never* betray you.” & calling out Flynn into the air. A child angry at his father. He feels so hurt by Flynn’s failure to…i would say love him. In CLU’s mind, he was betrayed by his creator, who he likely saw as infallible. All of his actions following that are menacing, but…pathetic. Most of them are very much to spite Flynn, & insult him, to take ownership of the Grid. What else is Rinzler but a bastardization of the Users, of the symbols that made them important?
A lot of things that seem odd on first watch can very much be explained by emotion, which is interesting because you would expect CLU to be the opposite of emotional- he’s a computer after all. But under all the slick detail & disc battles, Tron is very much just about emotion, about humans, & family. It’s barely even a metaphor, a good chunk of the plot moves forward solely through Kevin & Sam’s relationship.
It just dawned on me that calling Legacy era Kevin "Grid Jesus" is accurate as hell. Not just in the sense of how he's seen in universe, but also in him trying to establish a "perfect" world that has an easily twisted meaning and wasn't very achievable to begin with. The obvious inspiration behind Clu 2.0's image and Occupation regime adored the concept of Passion Plays.
Add the "God making Adam in his image and then going 'now don't do anything bad ok?' Try to be sinless too'" analogy, and...yeah.
Which makes Kevin choosing Zen Buddhism as a coping mechanism that much more interesting, actually. (ok, not completely choosing it, because hey, he served up an entire pixel pig at supper. Maybe that doesn't count as meat?) I mean, it makes sense he'd want something that favors non-action and emphasizes the every day experience- he's trapped. One could argue he represents stagnation.
The reason I'll say "coping mechanism" is because...I'm not sure Kevin really gains from it. (What good is enlightenment in his position? What good would it do Quorra?) You can kind of see him still struggle with admitting he fucked up at the end when he tells Clu that perfection is "unknowable". A great, big word that defines something the mind can't grasp.
You know what the mind can grasp? When something doesn't exist. He doesn't tell Clu the goal was never real, that perfection is so goddamn subjective that it has no meaning. In a sense, Kevin's still clinging to his sense of higher wisdom/divinity; it's just been cloaked by eastern philosophy. His problem wasn't that he was thinking too big; it's that he wasn't thinking at all.
As a side note, remember how Annihilation changed one part of the book from "character isn't paying attention to her partner because she's too absorbed in something else" to "character is cheating" because they functioned as the same concept emotionally?
That's Kevin and the Grid. Hell, look at the way he'd sees others on the Grid. They're younger, fitter, more adoring and scantily clad versions of the people he knows, including himself. He's addicted to running away from the expectations/responsibility of real life, and it's no coincidence he got trapped in it after his wife died, which is exactly when his son would've needed him the most.
Point being, if Kevin had never got laser-zapped...this all still would've happened if he'd had a family. Just with less glow bikes and such.
I don’t see people talking about the direct Bible analogies in Tron enough. The shot where CLU is in Kevin’s hideout & picks up the decorative apple, before he has a flashback of being created in Kevin’s Image, is a very direct reference to the fruit of knowledge, & Adam being made by God (only to betray him, not through malice but through knowledge. Being misled by misunderstanding. Being a flawed creation.) & also Kevin having a ‘second coming’ in a lot of Tron media, being seen as a creator & savior, having literal acolytes that treat him as a religious figure. I usually don’t enjoy very obvious parallels to Christianity in the grid, because I want their spirituality to be more alien, but I can’t deny that as a person who loves religious mysticism, the idea of CLU being Adam is very interesting.
Kevin’s Buddhism is also something I find interesting, & endearing if I’m honest. It’s a very realistic depiction of a sort of hippie guy in his late age, but it also serves as a succinct symbol of his ideology, the way he sees the world.
In Buddhism (generally, it’s a very diverse religion) life is suffering, & the only way one can find happiness & peace is separating oneself from the physical world, & from possessions. There’s an understanding that all is temporary, including life. Kevin’s idea of “removing oneself from the equation” is very Buddhist, but it is also self serving. It is a flawed interpretation of the idea of seeking enlightenment through separation, because it is an objective truth that through this separation, Kevin is causing harm. Granted he’s in a lose-lose situation so I don’t necessarily blame him, but his ideology is not purely religious or intellectual.
Also Zen Buddhism specifically is secularly quite popular in corporate America, where Kevin is from. The ideas of meditation, mindfulness, & separation from emotions are used to put the responsibility for wellness onto workers, & give the impression of health while still being harmful. It also encourages a minimalist, ‘clean’ lifestyle, that falls in line with WASP ideas of purity, & being good workers. Just something interesting that I think would affect Kevin’s interpretation of Buddhist thought.
(Also hi! I’m posting again! Hello!)
some recent rinzler doodles + @whispering-woodlands’ tronzler and rinzler designs
Dude that little guy is literally me. You drew me dude.
noo don't work for the occupation you're so cute haha
Beck I will join your emo band <3
Ok so, we don’t like Leto, that much is obvious, BUT I am cautiously hopeful about the commentary on the change in aesthetic. I’ve talked about how Tron needs to change to reflect the real state of technology, & it seems the people making Ares think that too. I don’t know how I feel about the soundtrack not being electronic, but maybe I’ll warm up to it. They’re right that Legacy was commercially a flop, but they say they’re retaining the emotional core of what I liked about Legacy, which is a green flag to me. Here’s hoping things turn out well!
Sorry I’ve been just doing reposts recently folks. Been adjusting to the new political climate where I live, & it’s been a struggle.
Anyway, I was thinking today about the…cosmic horror of Tron? I can’t think of it any other way. I’ve talked about it before when it comes to the environments of Uprising, & the weirdness of Identity, but I think it also applies to the vast emptiness of Legacy, & the towering, unnatural forms of the original film. Tron, at its core, implies a sort of depth to reality that we can’t see. People in computers. It’s almost inconceivable with all the questions it brings, & the implications of things like the ISOs, which are essentially living, evolving beings born in a man-made structure.
I think, if taken to the extreme, these ideas could potentially be great sources of horror. We’ve already kinda seen that in Uprising to some extent, but I think it could go much further, & be much more strange & alien, if that is ever a direction the series wants to take. To me, the grids we know are only the surface, like the layers of a circuit board. What’s underneath? Would it even be recognizable?
oh, you know,
“Welcome to the uprising, put these on”
If Beck had worn bootyshorts, the series would not have been canceled
