Tron: Is Clu right?(Tron Legacy spoilers)

[FaxModem1]

In Tron Legacy, Clu views users as creatures who simply exploit programs and they are pretty much our slaves. He wants to start a revolution and invade the Earth, yadda yadda yadda. But is his basic point correct? Are users using programs(pun intended), and we should be better about it?

[Zor]

In Tron Legacy, Clu views users as creatures who simply exploit programs and they are pretty much our slaves. He wants to start a revolution and invade the Earth, yadda yadda yadda. But is his basic point correct? Are users using programs(pun intended), and we should be better about it?

I did not get that from him. What i got from CLU's motivations was that of betrayal. He was created to for a purpose and when the ISOs emerged, Flynn (at least in his perception) turned his back on him and his efforts. He felt betreyed (listen to the line "and i will never betrey you" during his speech and how Jeff delivers that line). This leads him to believe that the problem is humanity, which is imperfect and needs to be fixed.

But i will say that Tron adds some unfortunate implications to day to day living. We can debate slavery, but most programs seem to be happy fullfiling their fuctions. You could argue that every home PC has its equivelent of Auschwitz named "Recycle Bin"

Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

And he's not enslaving programs himself? In the original Tron, it seemed that programs were living pretty much more freely (while serving users) than they were under MCP. I mean, users don't put programs in digital extermination camps or whatever.

[FaxModem1]

Not to mention, rid us of the false deity who sought to enslave us. KEVIN FLYNN, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

That's what made me think that part of it was about slavery.

EDIT: Shroomy, you're absolutely right, CLU is a hypocrite, I was just wondering if he had a point.

[Rossum]

Well, the thing is that Users are pretty much unaware that programs are sapient beings. It could be that every goomba you stomp in Mario Bros was in fact a sapient program with friends and family being forced into the games by tyranical game masters... or every time you empty your internet cache then you demolish several blocks of low-income housing and some guys home business... but there's really no way for you to know that due to it all being inside the computer where you can't see it.

However, the programs like the MCP and Clu are down there with everyone and are enforcing their evil while being fully aware of the sapience of their fellow programs. On the other hand (or maybe the same one) Kevin Flynn had first-hand experience seeing that the programs were sapient at least in the computer he went into. That knowledge could very well have revolutionized computing on every level along with ethics.

I mean, if your computers operation is a result of a digital city full of sapient programs running around with their jobs, family, and personal vices then there should be some way to get in contact with them and see how they are doing. If your hard drive is turning into a massive slum full of drug addicts, disorganized garbage piled on top of eachother, and your word processor programs have all had to resort to prostitution to pay their digi-bills because you've just been using your desktop PC for gaming... then it would be nice if there was some way for you to learn about that.

Gamer Geek: Man, work was hell. I think I'll play some Fallout New Vegas before dinner. But... first I'll check the status of my processors.

*Geek turns on a nifty program that lets him see how the digital world in his computer is doing... and sees that its a crime-ridden slum full of crap being thrown into the street and massive unemployment*

Gamer Geek: Holy S***! How could this happen? *makes contact with the digi-mayor*

Digi-Mayor: Oh yeah... well, you've been accessing the internet so much but didn't defragment your system in so many cycles. Plus the lack of anti-virus updates and lets not even get into all the office software you've go installed but never use. But its no biggie, just play your game. I can have the cops round up some undesirables to send into the game grid.

Gamer Geek: Um... no thats.... thats okay. Here, lets access the net and security... unless you want to defragment the place first. I had... I had no friggin idea how things were going down there. I can totally hold off on the games until this place gets fixed up.

Digi-Mayor: Oh, well... yeah that would be nice. But I'd kind of prefer it if you kept the games going (they're really popular with the masses and help punish the serial port rapists). At least browse the web a bit, most of our economy is set toward memory filing now so any major changes in your web browsing habits would plunge the place into a recession.

Gamer Geek: ... Um... okay. I might do that, just give me some updates on how everyone is doing, I'd like to go through this with as few people dying as possible. Actually, does Solitaire result in people dying? I like Solitare, its... well its alot better than minesweeper.

Difi-Mayor: The previous mayor died in a game of Minesweeper.


And so on and so forth. Really, the thing is that humans have no way of really knowing how their actions would effect the programs in their computer without some way of communicating and it looks like the programs view Users as distant gods. Clus actions would be like the people in Whoville forming a facist regime of slavery and genocide to build spaceships so they can fly off of the dust speck they live on and kill Horton the elephant. Sure, all the other animals around Horton think he's crazy for trying to protect a little dust speck but that's mostly because they don't have ears big enough to hear the little people on it.

Though to be fair... Kevin Flynn seemed to want to use this technology to do some kind of weird genetic engineering thing and kept the whole thing to himself. I suspect that if he got a team of people to look at this then they would have better success in preventing mistakes from happening while working to unite the digital and physical worlds into one scientific whole. I'm curious as to how efficient our computers would be if the little program-people in it could communicate with the people outside and together sort out the problems on the outside (slowed computer speeds, bugs in the software) along with those on the inside (facist regimes, mass genocide, slums, extremely camp crime lords shooting people with his laser cane).

[Ford Prefect]

I mean, users don't put programs in digital extermination camps or whatever.

Ever played a video game?

In any case, the movie is careful to frame Clu's motives as a twisting of Flynn's positive information freedom message. You can interpret this in a lot of ways, and I haven't really settled on my preferred interpretation. I was sort of swinging with 'unconscious hypocrisy' for a while, but I'm not sure I like taking away so much agency from such an effective villain. Just plain hypocrisy probably the best interpretation, I guess.