TRON Legacy -- Taken at Face Value

[lazerus]

For fun, I decided to analyze TRON at face value. That is everything we see on screen occured exactly as we saw it but we do not suspend our disbelief at any point. We analyze it like rational, intelligent beings observing some very unusual events, but one's that we know for certain actually occurred just as portrayed. Hilariously, I think the result is actually more interesting then the original premise of the film. For the purposes of this review, the elder Flynn shall just be called "Flynn", while the younger Flynn shall just be called "Sam."

First, we can reach some immediate conclusions:
1) The idea that this is occurring inside the computer is clearly false -- putting all issues of conservation of mass aside, a piece of computer code who's entire logical structure can be perceived and understood by a single programmer is clearly not sapient. The issues of exactly where this is occurring is more complicated, but for now, it's enough to say that the "laser' in the basement of that arcade doesn't suck you inside the outdated computer system it's attacked too.
2) Whatever Flynn is, a computer programmer isn't it. While it is not immediately obvious if he believes what he's doing is programming and is simply wrong, or if he has acquired some esoteric skill set he refers too as programming is unclear, but it is obvious that he has powers over the Grid that don't make sense even in the context of "The Grid as the inside of the computer." For all intents and purposes, can do things just by thinking about them.
3) The Grid makes Conservation of Mass it's bitch and so does the laser in the arcade. This can be clearly seen by the idea that the laser is capable (as implied by Clu's escape) of creating objects it never disintegrated. That is, while we cannot say with any certainty if objects in the grid have mass the same way that objects in our world have mass, the "laser" device is certainly capable of endowing them with such properties.
4) Programs are clearly fully sapient. Numerous examples throughout the movie -- they scream in fear before death, they clutch the remains of dead loved one's, they fall to their knees in what they believe to be their god's presence, etc. Turing test passable with flying colors.

This allows us to move on to address specific points of note in the movie:
>The pig when Sam meets Flynn suggests that the Grid must be capable of replicating foreign matter, although if this is a general ability or if it requires special Flynn powers is unclear.
>Flynn references a time dilation effect of approximately 60:1, implying that he has been in the Grid for, from his perspective, roughly a thousand years. Despite this, he has aged only 20 years, corresponding with the time that has passed in the outside world.
>The world they live in has dust, rain, mountains, rocky offroad areas, and other sections of "wilderness" that don't even pretend to follow the 'Grid as inside the computer' idea, being blatantly natural. Only areas encountered by Flynn or Flynn's programs constitute the shiny "Grid" we associate with the movie.
>The world they live in will, on occasion, spontaneously generate objects or even sapient creatures based on what is going on inside the Grid, without apparent cause.

Bringing all these points together, we can reach a potential conclusion. The laser device takes you to some other universe who's laws and methods of operation are, in some respect, determined by how you believe they should operate. Flynn, being a cyber-hippie of the 80's, pictured the inside of his computer as the Grid, and so the empty wilderness generated it just as it later generated the ISO's. It is not clear if the alternate plane just remained responsive to Flynn's wants over time, or if he actually develops Space Wizard powers at some point during his 1000 year stay, but it is abundantly clear that by the time of the film he is capable of performing impossible tasks with nothing more then a wave of his hand, directly manipulating the laws that rule the Grid. This explains where the mass lost to the arcade goes, as well as where any materialized programs mass would come from. It also explains Flynn's lack of aging -- namely, he believed that he would age at the normal outside rate and so the rules of the universe the Grid exists on obliged him.

The interaction between the Grid and our reality -- bearing in mind that this summary concerns itself only with TRON Legacy and not with the original -- is essentially nonexistent. Any links we see are easily explained away by Flynn rationalizing the beliefs he already possesses. The only firm interaction we see between the Grid and the outside world occurs at the direct behest of a number of powerful beings in the Grid, all of whom have some manner of access to the arcade and the laser device there.

We see confirmation of this in the end scene, where Sam materializes with a flash device that is implied to be Flynn's data disk. That is a flash device -- something neither Flynn nor anyone on the Grid could possibly have known about. If, as the end scenes imply, all of Sam's Grid equipment materialized as some kind of "real world equivilant" device, then clearly, it is manifesting as what Sam would consider the real world equivilant, further confirming that whatever universe the Grid takes place on is, in some way, sensitive to how the Users expect it to behave.

In conclusion, TRON Legacy is actually an epic Fantasy film about an urban wizard trapped in a magical alternate plane of his own creation, only to be ultimately saved by his son, who will no doubt go on to continue his tradition of space-wizardry in the sequel, journeying to his own alternate plane based on how he (with his more modern ideas) perceives the internet as functioning.

[mr friendly guy]

It is not clear if the alternate plane just remained responsive to Flynn's wants over time, or if he actually develops Space Wizard powers at some point during his 1000 year stay, but it is abundantly clear that by the time of the film he is capable of performing impossible tasks with nothing more then a wave of his hand, directly manipulating the laws that rule the Grid.

He could already do that in the original Tron. Examples include resurrecting Yori, diverting a travel line, and distracting the MCP long enough for its defenses to be lowered and allow Tron to "kill" it.

Edit - I then saw your line about focussing only on Tron legacy and not the original.

[Ryushikaze]

The interaction between the Grid and our reality -- bearing in mind that this summary concerns itself only with TRON Legacy and not with the original -- is essentially nonexistent. Any links we see are easily explained away by Flynn rationalizing the beliefs he already possesses. The only firm interaction we see between the Grid and the outside world occurs at the direct behest of a number of powerful beings in the Grid, all of whom have some manner of access to the arcade and the laser device there.

This isn't quite the case. The grid is associated with computer devices in our world, or at least the link to it. Data on the Grid could be seen on Flynn's display over at the Arcade, and at the end, where Sam uploads the information from the old computer to the flash drive.

We see confirmation of this in the end scene, where Sam materializes with a flash device that is implied to be Flynn's data disk. That is a flash device -- something neither Flynn nor anyone on the Grid could possibly have known about. If, as the end scenes imply, all of Sam's Grid equipment materialized as some kind of "real world equivilant" device, then clearly, it is manifesting as what Sam would consider the real world equivilant, further confirming that whatever universe the Grid takes place on is, in some way, sensitive to how the Users expect it to behave.

The problem is, we don't see him Materializing at the end, as Quorra's not in the same room with him, but outside with the bike. What he was doing- or at least what I inferred he was doing- was using his handheld to download the information from the grid onto that flash drive before shutting the computer down.
The Time Dilation also means that the ending sequence, which occurs right before dawn, didn't happen immediately after exiting, which would have only been around eight minutes in the real world, assuming the 60:1 ratio was an exact one, as Flynn said it would be open for only 8 hours, roughly a Millicycle of local time. (Interestingly, this gives us 8000 hours as a cycle, and 1000 cycles, which gives us a total local time of 913 and a quarter years since Clu going rogue.) Unless Sam was lying about sending the page out and Clu sent another one, the only time he could have done it was as he was exiting, and Alan was already at the Arcade by the time Sam was done on the computer downstairs.

You're right that Flynn's actions aren't programming, unless he can Code on the fly in insane ways, but a more intuitive affecting of the reality of the world of Tron, but that world does have a link to computers, whether it is actually stored upon them or they merely act as a way to view and travel to the other world.

[neoolong]

I assumed that Sam downloading the Grid or whatever just happened the next day or something. He sent the page to Alan in the real world and they just met up after Sam downloaded the Grid. It explains why Quorra has real world clothes.

Also, in Snow Crash there was this section that explained how, in the universe of the book, that hackers had such a deep understanding of computer code that their brains would be able to process it if they saw it visually. This led to a computer virus infecting hackers by visually seeing it. I imagine that Users in Tron have something similar where they have such an intuitive grasp of the digital world that they could manipulate it in ways others can't. So Joe Schmoe getting digitzed wouldn't be able to do what Flynn did.

[Gil Hamilton]

1) The idea that this is occurring inside the computer is clearly false -- putting all issues of conservation of mass aside, a piece of computer code who's entire logical structure can be perceived and understood by a single programmer is clearly not sapient. The issues of exactly where this is occurring is more complicated, but for now, it's enough to say that the "laser' in the basement of that arcade doesn't suck you inside the outdated computer system it's attacked too.

Somehow, I think that there are some AI folks who are going to disagree with you. You don't need to know the entire logical structure to know exactly how it works. I don't see why anything in Tron couldn't happen within an elaborate computer simulation, with the "laser" being a destructive scanner of some sort.

2) Whatever Flynn is, a computer programmer isn't it. While it is not immediately obvious if he believes what he's doing is programming and is simply wrong, or if he has acquired some esoteric skill set he refers too as programming is unclear, but it is obvious that he has powers over the Grid that don't make sense even in the context of "The Grid as the inside of the computer." For all intents and purposes, can do things just by thinking about them.

Do his powers make more sense anywhere else? Being inside a giant computer simulation is the MOST sensible place for people to have strange and arbitrary powers, because physics need only apply as much as they are put in as constrains on the users.

3) The Grid makes Conservation of Mass it's bitch and so does the laser in the arcade. This can be clearly seen by the idea that the laser is capable (as implied by Clu's escape) of creating objects it never disintegrated. That is, while we cannot say with any certainty if objects in the grid have mass the same way that objects in our world have mass, the "laser" device is certainly capable of endowing them with such properties.

Only if the beam doesn't have a mass source to draw from, which is not something we know for certain. Her mass came from SOMEWHERE, whether or not it's from stored matter from another user or from a supply tank. They wouldn't have designed the system so that you could never RETRIEVE a human from the inside, so they probably have material in a tank nearby for reconstructive purposes.

Needless to say, the Conservation of Mass doesn't apply inside a computer simulation, because there is no mass in the first place. If things are rampantly violating the CoM, that's an excellent indication that it is, in fact, inside a computer.

4) Programs are clearly fully sapient. Numerous examples throughout the movie -- they scream in fear before death, they clutch the remains of dead loved one's, they fall to their knees in what they believe to be their god's presence, etc. Turing test passable with flying colors.

You mean that a human having a natural language conversation with these programs can't reliably tell if they are addressing a machine or a person? Cause that's what the Turing Test is. However, nothing you listed indicates they have any sort of self-awareness. The NPCs in Half-Life 2 do two of the things you listed, because they are scripted to do so, and don't do the third because clearly there is no human god. Those guys scream "STRIDER!" in clear fear of the giant monster, they must be intelligent!