"I believe positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time. We all long for redemption, for catharsis."
--Dom Cobb in Inception.
As a writer, I find it hard to dispel this point, and its relevance lays the foundation for most of the way I evaluate entertainment. Good stories are essentially redemption stories. Tron is no exception.
The movie as a whole was phenomenal (more on what I have to say about it later). Stunning visuals that brought to life an environment literally out of this world. But what impressed me more was the blatant realism of the characters placed in an explicitly artificial world. One character, Quorra, talks about how Kevin Flynn has been teaching her about self-sacrifice: "removing yourself from the equation." But its not only positive characteristics that were real: the various programs also demonstrate greed and betrayal on a level comparable to humans. Which makes sense: no creation can surpass the perfection of its creator.
Perfection, the intended goal of Flynn's Grid (where the movie takes place), stands apart as the most interesting thing to take from this movie. Flynn nails it when he says "The thing about perfection is, it's unknowable. And yet its right in front of you." While I would say that we cannot create perfection, and we cannot know it, but we can experience it. We cannot know God's perfection, but we can, through his grace, experience it--be in it. To a lesser extent, you can experience perfection in the grace people show each other, but as all things humans touch, that grace is tainted by those less graceful actions we commit.
From a narrative stand point, Tron hit the mark. The message was woven among the visuals and plot in a subtle but ever-present manner. While trying to escape CLU's numerous attempts to achieve perfection, Sam, Kevin, and Quorra find a little bit of their own: to sum it up in a cheesy Beatles ending: "all you need is love."
