I rewatched Tron yesterday. Man, the factual inaccuracies of that movie… but that’s for another thread. What I didn’t notice last time I saw Tron, mainly because Matrix hadn’t been released at the time, was the numerous links between Tron and the Matrix trilogy. To wit:
- Both works feature a real world (the scorched Earth in Matrix and our world in Tron) and a fake world (the Matrix in Matrix and the computer system in Tron).
- The protagonist is a computer programmer who moves between the real world and the fake world.
- The protagonist has superpowers in the fake world due to his special status as a mythical being (Neo is the One, Flynn is a user). These powers allow him, among other things, to heal damage (Flynn repairs the recognizer whenever it is damaged, Neo comes back from his own death).
- The protagonist uses his superpowers to bring the female lead back to life.
- There is a major character who is unbeatable in the fake world’s preferred mode of combat (Neo is the ultimate martial artist, Tron beats everyone at the games).
- The fake world is ruled by powers that know the real world exists but wish to keep its existence a secret (in Matrix, the agents hunt and kill everyone who knows; in Tron, everyone who believes in the users is captured and killed at the games).
- The heroes travel to their enemies’ “heart” and encounter big grey heads that greatly resemble each other. There, the protagonist sacrifices himself (although Flynn doesn’t actually die, but instead returns to the real world) and thus frees the world from tyranny.
I’m sure there’s more. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, so I’ll just hit Submit and hope for some clever responses.
