Why I Am Excited About Tron: Legacy

I remember watching Tron when it first came out. I was 11 years old. I was mesmerized by the thought that there was a virtual world inside computers. The stand up arcade game took a few of my quarters. Back then, people were still trying to figure out their brand new 8-bit home computers. Much of the technical language used in the movie was still foreign to us. E-mail was not even heard of in its current form, it would take 10 more years for that to develop. Flash forward 28 years; there are so many new technologies that were not even dreamed possible in 1982. Even 18 years ago, people would have spit out their drinks if you were to tell them that newspapers would be going out of business due to the internet providing news online over your computer.

These days no one really thinks about what it took to get where we're at. (Well maybe people like me who appreciate history and technology) Interfaces are hidden using other interfaces. Application layers are buried under other application layers. Does anyone born within the past 15 years even understand machine language? Operation codes... Data registers? It doesn't matter, after all the reason why it was covered up is because it is so painstakingly monotonous and dull to work with. Let's face it, when is the last time you were in a business meeting and you said you could just MOV F4,AX; JMP C0B4 and you got a reassuring nod?

If my guess is correct, Tron: Legacy will be a good tool to educate the younger generation on some of these basic concepts, while at the same time linking the past technologies with modern ones. My prediction is that this will be a major underlying theme of the movie, if not part of the main story line. I would venture so far as to say that even future concepts will be outlined in some kind of animated way.

I can imagine the current political landscape being worked in somehow as well. We could see such concepts as botnets, open source vs. proprietary (good vs. evil), digital rights management, public key infrastructure, the list could go on. How about things that are not such big news now? There could be incarnations of the "web", graphics acceleration, broadband, etc.I think this will be a great movie either way it plays out. I wouldn't want them to try to pack too much in, because that ruins movies for me. I don't want to watch a 100 minute history lesson with 20 minutes of story arc. I guess we'll find out when we are able to watch it. Tron: Legacy will be a blockbuster in my opinion.