MovieChat Forums > Tron: Legacy (2010) Discussion > Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever

Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever

posted 9 years ago by knighty74
15 replies | jump to latest

Its a kiddy flick. The entire story is just laughably bad.

Visuals and soundtrack are great and it helped kill a lazy afternoon but wow...completely and utterly illogical.

Some examples...

1) Physical vs Virtual : when the main character triggers the device that makes him enter the virtual world of Tron, why does his body disappear? Does the biological tissue get converted into digital? How would that even work? How would biological tissue convert into digital? Especially considering the size and mass of the human body compared to circuitry in a computer.

2) Program entities : The programs are explained as being self contained individuals yet a computer system is made up of processor, memory (long/short term), power - essentially a number of components to support a program. If you open Excel for example the program would be 'woken' up and then draw on the memory and power of the system to function. How does the population of Tron work? Is it saying that programs are active all the time? If so how are they being supported?

3) Travel : A program doesn't 'travel' around the electronic components of a computer system. They exist in an OS. It would be impossible to exist outside of whatever OS they were written for.

4) Virtual vs Physical : Similar to my first point above. Lets just pretend a human can be converted into digital - getting back into human form is then simply the process reversed. But how would this work the other way around? How does a piece of software convert itself into blood, tissue, a nervous system, lungs, etc,? Where would the matter come from?

[–] aredo3604gif 9 years ago

by knighty74 » 9 hours ago (Sat Sep 5 2015 05:23:26)
IMDb member since May 2001
Its a kiddy flick. The entire story is just laughably bad.

Visuals and soundtrack are great and it helped kill a lazy afternoon but wow...completely and utterly illogical.

Because your brain can't grasp and understand plot and characters as well as the sci-fi theory it is based on it doesn't mean that it makes no sense.

[–] knighty74 9 years ago

Thanks for you deep and meaningful reply.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] huzdaman 9 years ago

1) Physical vs Virtual : when the main character triggers the device that makes him enter the virtual world of Tron, why does his body disappear? Does the biological tissue get converted into digital? How would that even work? How would biological tissue convert into digital? Especially considering the size and mass of the human body compared to circuitry in a computer.

2) Program entities : The programs are explained as being self contained individuals yet a computer system is made up of processor, memory (long/short term), power - essentially a number of components to support a program. If you open Excel for example the program would be 'woken' up and then draw on the memory and power of the system to function. How does the population of Tron work? Is it saying that programs are active all the time? If so how are they being supported?

3) Travel : A program doesn't 'travel' around the electronic components of a computer system. They exist in an OS. It would be impossible to exist outside of whatever OS they were written for.

4) Virtual vs Physical : Similar to my first point above. Lets just pretend a human can be converted into digital - getting back into human form is then simply the process reversed. But how would this work the other way around? How does a piece of software convert itself into blood, tissue, a nervous system, lungs, etc,? Where would the matter come from?

These are all variants of the same theme, that you just have to accept the rules set by the movie. You suspend disbelief so you can accept that they have a device that turns your body into digital information, and could theoretically work the other way around. Didn't they do just that in the ending, taking Quorra out into the 'real' world?

All valid arguments, by the way. I'm not trying to sound like a [email protected] just have to relax and enjoy the ride.

[–] knighty74 9 years ago

Yeah they did take her out which I really didn't get. I mean converting human to digital then back to human I kind of get. But I really don't understand how a human being can be created from digital.

You're right, you need to just accept the "rules" of the film. It was enjoyable don't get me wrong. Its just that I need more plausibility for me to totally get on board.

Thanks for not insulting me by the way. I wasn't sure if some of this was explained more in original.

[–] huzdaman 9 years ago

I wouldn't insult you. You put your opinion out there, which is what these boards are about. I don't flame people who ask questions or have opinions different from mine. There are too many trolls on the boards already.

I don't remember enough about the original to know if they established the "rules" for zapping people in and out of the computer world. I hear it's on YouTube though, I may give it a look just for curiosity

[–] nocakeforyou 9 years ago

This movie is awful. Everyone knows it and can tell. I still love this movie so much I'd put it in my top 10.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Suntory_Times 9 years ago

1) Watch the first film if you want this addressed.

2) Question, do you know much about how computers actually work, just some of the things you say suggest you have some understanding bu not thorough. With that Tron Legacy is a continuation of Tron, Tron's idea revolves around the idea of having an online profile/life of sorts, something that many deemed silly back when it released but has now happened. It isn't trying to be real to life.

3) Once again, some odd choices of words. Not trying to mock or be mean, but what you say isn't strictly correct.

4) The matter comes from what it broke down to begin with. Sam and his dad enter, Sam and Quorra exit.

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[–] detroit-velvet-smooth 9 years ago

Does the biological tissue get converted into digital? How would that even work?

So far we can't figure out any way to do faster than light travel yet that's in everything. You gonna call those movies crap for that?

This is an arbitrary criticism. Its movie magic. You either suspend your disbelief and go along or you don't watch the movie. Now please go rewatch every old Spaghetti western and ask how one man could be so accurate with a revolver at those distances.

[–] jtf1986 9 years ago

How do the feelings in Inside Out have thoughts and feelings of their own? The setting of the Tron movies is an anthropomorphism of the workings inside a computer just like the Inside Out is an anthropomorphism of the workings inside the human mind. You just have to dispense disbelief.

[–] devilmaster 8 years ago

1) Nothing gets converted. When a character enters the computer world, his body gets analyzed by the laser (which obtains the information used to build his virtual body, presumably a very detailed polygonal model) and broken down into particles which are stored into a particle trap (REAL technology, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap ). This is mentioned as text on the computer display in the scene where Sam gets digitized (hint: freeze-frame the movie and read the lines on the computer display)

2) The programs are artificially intelligent, and yes, they are running all the time. Again, freeze-frame the movie when Sam gets digitized: he uses the ps Unix command (which actually exists: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ps&manpath=SuSE+Linux/i386+11.3 ) and sees that there are over 2000 processes running. They are supported by the computer being left on for over 20 years. How do I know that? Guess (hint: it involves freeze-framing the movie)

3) A program can travel across the RAM it is allowed to use, if it's instructed to do so. In fact, the Grid hosting the programs in Tron works very much like the REAL artificial life simulator called Tierra (see http://life.ou.edu/tierra/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl5rRGVD0QI ).
Personal digression: I read about Tierra for the first time in 2011, shortly after seeing Tron Legacy for the first time, and I was in awe for how much this software resembled a real-life version of Tron.

4) This is a direct consequence of #1. When someone goes in, his particles are stored; when someone comes out, his particles are reassembled. At the end, Sam is made out of a mixture of his own particles and his father's particles. And so is Quorra.

[–] avortac4 (3742) a month ago

"So far we can't figure out any way to do faster than light travel yet that's in everything."

Speak for yourself. Just because cockroaches can't figure out how to make electric cars, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Faster than light is easy; the only thing keeping you from doing it is physical mass. Remove that obstacle, and you can already reach high speeds - for example, when you astral travel while your body is 'asleep', or between incarnations.

You can move physical mass faster than light, too. All you need to do is utilize higher vibration frequencies. It's possible, though somewhat dangerous to elevate your whole body system's frequency, but a more commonly-used and safer method is to simply create a spacecraft without any protrusions, use rich mixtures of purest possible metals for the material, make it as smooth and seamless as possible, and then just generate an energy field to surround the craft to isolate it from external impulses, like gravity.

All you need to do then, is to elevate the vibration frequency of the surrounding, protective energy field, and you can travel in higher realms, which means higher speed than light on the physical side can even try to dream of.

Anyway, back to the topic itself.

I started making a similar thread, but obviously more thorough. However, as the movie progressed, it became such a flood of stupidity, inconsistencies, breaking the movie's own rules, ridiculous reactions, and illogical, unexplained things, like smoke in a digital world, everything being SO PHYSICAL in a digital world (clothes instead of textures, really? WHY?!), gravity being EXACTLY identical.. yet people dying by turning into transparent cubes somehow (pixels are not 3D, so these are what, voxels?), and so on and so forth.

For a long time, I thought I was going to write a very long post just about how the 'Tron arcade cabinet has no power cables but yet has power on', the 'electricity working in an abandoned factory (who gets the bill), BUT!

[–] avortac4 (3742) a month ago

But the movie is in many ways too much like the crappy Dr. Strange movie that makes so little sense that Mauler was able to make around six-hour explanation of its stupidities..

Maybe this movie doesn't have quite as many quite as stupid things, but it has too many for me.. maybe I am too tired, maybe these modern movies just don't deserve more than a couple of groans and some vomit.. although predictably, I even said it out loud, people will WORSHIP this crap and lust for its simplistic 'music' (anyone remember Jon Williams and Alan Silvestri, from when music had actual interesting structure, chords and melody..? I guess not.)

I can't find many posts that do not absolutely drool and praise the Emperor's amazingly beautiful clothes.

The emperor COULDN'T BE more naked, and yet here we are.. best movie ever, no plot, no color, based on RIDICULOUS premise that sucked even the first time, people talking about 'Tron 3', even though Tron 2 doesn't exist (look at the name AND plot of this movie)..

There's just too much stupidity in and surrounding this movie to delve into, and people always praise the most ridiculous things that make the least sense, and have the most hideous, modern visuals (where's the color, SERIOUSLY? Where are the beautiful nature scenes? I realize even the first movie was just glorifying 'computer-made dull visuals', but this movie is even worse with its basically two non-colors and crappy dystopian non-world.

I expected this movie to be even worse than the first one, but it showed me a remarkable thing; how much I can get angry at something modern crapping on something old that I hated in the first place.

Why do I want to defend something that didn't even make sense originally, and was basically just another polished turd, just because a modern remake thing doesn't follow its idiotic rules properly..?

In any case, this movie is not worth my usual 'My Questions' or 'Doesn't make sense' lists, there's just too much fluff to base it on.

[–] avortac4 (3742) a month ago

I mean, there's nothing solid there to stand on, to then look at all the things that do not make sense. I would have to stand on fluff to point at more fluff that makes no sense, and that wouldn't make sense for me to do. In other movies, at least I can stand on more solid ground to then point at the nonsensical clouds of ridiculousness, but how do you stand on nonsense to point at more nonsense..?