The Top 10 List – Tron versus Christianity

You don’t have to be a conspiracy buff to notice the none-too-subtle parallelisms between Disney’s new remake of Tron and Christian mythology. Intentional or coincidental? You decide…

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The Top 10 List:

Tron versus Christianity

.(aka. The Theology of Technology)

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First off,  the “Holy Trinity” of Tron…
1. The Father / Creator – Kevin Flynn, the programmer/creator of the digital world of the Grid

2. The Son / Savior – Sam Flynn, only begotten son of the father,  the archetypal messiah who came to their world to save it

3. The Holy Spirit – Quorra was the non-human member of the “Tron Trinity” (she was an ISO) who was the confidante/messenger/sidekick and most importantly, embodied the love of the Father (who loved her as a daughter) and Son.

Other important archetypal characters:
4. The Fallen Angel – like Lucifer, CLU was the source of conflict in their world. He couldn’t create his own minions, only the Creator can. He could only corrupt existing programs to his side. But as was later revealed, he was only doing what he was created to do.

5. The Traitor – like the Judas archetype, the movie also had its traitor in the character of Zuse who sold the protagonists off and also died without having benefited from his ill-gotten gains.

6. Humanity- the ISO’s (Quorra’s race) are obviously a metaphor for mankind, described as innately imperfect but possessing great potential. They were the catalyst for the conflict between Flynn and CLU. In biblical lore, Lucifer revolted when he refused to serve mankind, thinking them below his station. In Tron lore, CLU saw them as aberrations in the perfect world he was tasked to create.

And miscellaneous bits of flavor details which have their counterpart in Christian mythology:
7. The Soul – like the Discs on their backs, entities in the Grid have their “essence” separate from their physical selves. It held their life-force, it was their greatest weapon and most precious possession.

8. The Last Supper – one would wonder why they would have to even “eat” when they’re in a digital world… but like the Last Supper, it was  more to foreshadow the conflict to come.

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9. The Garden of Eden – Notice the “apple” that CLU discovers in the room when he finally breaches Flynn’s refuge in the Outlands… a reference to the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. It was the place where the Creator rested and meditated. Quorra was his digital “Eve”… protected, nurtured and maintaining a pure innocence. The conflict finally escalates after the snake has entered the garden.

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10. The Fall and Redemption of Man –

There are actually 2 different allegorical forms of redemption shown in the movie:

  • The warrior Rinzler, who was later revealed to be the original Tron from the first movie, was corrupted by CLU to serve in his army. But upon meeting Sam (the Savior), repents and sought absolution for his crimes. It builds upon mythical “fall of man from grace” complete with the irksome Catholic twist that you “need” Jesus to save you.
  • Sam, the allegorical Jesus, also fulfills his role as the biblical “New Adam”. Together with Quorra (the digital “Eve”), they flee the doomed Grid world to start anew. It was a rather clever bit of allegorical writing since he fits the criteria of the mythological archetype because he was a “user” and literal son of the Creator, thus free from the imperfection and limitations of the other programs and ISO’s in the Grid world. The only inconsistency was that it was his father’s death, not his own, that purchased their salvation.

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With so many biblical references buried within the storyline, one would expect the religious crowd to grow fond of this movie like they did with the Narnia series (where Jesus was a friggin’ lion! *Rowr*)

Actually, the sentiments were quite the opposite. If you trawled through the online discussions about the movie, some very vocal Christian critics were appalled or even offended by the movie.

So what has gotten them so riled up about the movie?

  • The “Creator” is portrayed as helpless and impotent, trapped within his own creation and forced into a stalemate by something of his own making. In fact, he had to sacrifice himself in the end to negate the threat posed by CLU. Imagine the implication that the ultimate creator is just at par with the arch nemesis he himself created. *ouch*
  • CLU was just following what he was created to do – that is, to help create the perfect world. In order to achieve his primary objective, he had to get rid of the innately imperfect ISO’s. It wasn’t pride or personal ambition that drove him to usurp power from the Creator, it was his programming – it required him to do everything that is necessary to ensure perfection in their world, even if it meant the genocide of all the ISO’s. And therein lies the ultimate blame – the Creator’s own bad programming of his chief steward.
  • The ISO’s weren’t even created by Flynn intentionally. They were accidental beings whose genesis was spontaneous and unplanned.

No. They manifested. The conditions were right and they came into being.

– Kevin Flynn

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design?

Bingo.

But at least Flynn recognized their great potential and sought to keep them despite their “imperfection”, at least in the eyes of CLU who saw them as flawed because unlike him who was literally made in the image and likeness of the Creator, they were creatures of chance (or perhaps of natural selection) instead of design.

  • If Quorra were the new “Eve” then that would make Sam her “Adam”. But he was already playing the archetypal “Messiah” role. And we already know from the “Da Vinci Code” what happens when Hollywood tries hint at the notion of Jesus in a love team… Jesus and Mary Magdalene? Ooh, the righteous indignation! Jesus and Eve? Sacrilege!

13 comments

  1. Omg you dumbasses seriously think this is promoting christian fundamentalism? it was just the author's opinion, his own unique interpretation. It's not promoting anything, you're just too absorbed and trying too hard overthinking this shit.

    • hurray! intelligent readers who actually get it 🙂
      thank you thank you thank you…

      how odd that despite very specific wordings like "allegory", "archetype", "metaphor", etc. peppered all throughout the paragraphs, some people still thought I was cooking up some mystical mumbo-jumbo… haven't they ever taken a comparative literature course in school?

  2. ummm… I'm confused here – please explain – in English – I'm a rather simple person – just WHY CAN'T I SEE SYMBOLISM in this here movie? And just WHY CAN'T MOVIES ACTUALLY REALLY CONTAIN SYMBOLISM??? (many do – that's unarguable!) You're trying to tell me it's not there, and I'm a "loony" – but WHY CAN'T IT REALLY BE THERE??? Give me a good reason, and I'll shut up (not really, I AM a female…). There have been PLENTY of movies where all I saw was a movie – simple entertainment. Also, the Disney genre is basically "family" and "wholesome." So WHY NOT??? Why not have an underscore of family values/beliefs – and aren't these basic values based on biblical structure – isn't this what our country was basically founded upon? So, if Disney is to be sold as "family" – then WHY CAN'T IT HAVE CHRISTIAN undertones in a movie????? Jus askin.
    (next, you're going to try to tell me I'm reading into the Narnia series too…. )

  3. Really. There were sooooo many Christian implications in this movie! The Dude, I mean, the Father, when healing Quarra – actually "breathes" into the double helix form – Genesis 2:7 "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" and at another point, in a moment of chaos, he tells the others to "Be still", again, Psalms 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God". Regardless of the underlying theme that I believe that I understood – it was a good flick. Can we all agree on that at least?

    • LOL 🙂
      I cringed a bit too when Flynn went "You're messing with my Zen thing, man! " but you can't blame the "Dude" since he was trapped in the Grid since the 80's. And yes, the movie gets my 2 thumbs up, sub-text or not 🙂

  4. If a Christian believed Jesus Christ or any Christian dogma was REVEALED in Tron Legacy, then all (Freethinkers, Catholics, Protestants and all who have a brain included) should consider him/her loony! Nonetheless, reading or interpreting Christian doctrine in a secular Disney movie smacks of what Christian fundamentalists are fond of doing! I think this Freethinking interpretation of the movie is perilously coming close to Christian fundamentalism!

    • *face-palm*
      ummm… you *DO* realize I filed this under the HUMOR and ENTERTAINMENT section, right? 🙂

      its a game we play in the internet, making up silly connections and trying to make them all fit somehow. you should try it sometime… it really gets the creative juices flowing.

  5. If I didn't know any better I would think that you are trying to promote Christianity by justifying the presence of GOD/Jesus in every Cool movie to come out. Like Christianity is Cool because it has parallels with TRON: Legacy. Christians would just love to believe that Jesus Christ is in the movie TRON.

    • LOL 🙂 but christianity *is* cool, at least in a literary point of view… the stories in the bible are full of sorcery, epic battles, vengeful gods, with a heavy dose of sex and violence… and it caps everything off with "good moral values" so that it'll have a redeeming value in the eyes of the critics 🙂 in short, it has all the elements a good Hollywood blockbuster should have.

      But personally, I like this Disney remake better than the original biblical version. The original God vs. Lucifer conflict didn't make much sense to me… big plot holes in their motivations, their reactions… the Tron version smoothed out all the rough edges for me and just made more sense. Disney has a good track record of "improving" the original source material… just look at the tweaks they did for Cinderella and the Little Mermaid… their original Brothers Grimm storylines were horribly morbid

  6. Wes, you have to read about the Forer Effect/Barnum Effect – the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, and some types of personality tests like the Myers-Briggs test.
    A related and more generic phenomenon effect is that of subjective validation.[1] Subjective validation occurs when two unrelated or even random events are perceived to be related because a belief, expectancy, or hypothesis demands a relationship. Thus people seek a correspondence between their perception of their personality and the contents of a horoscope.

    Source: Wikipedia

    • close, but not quite. The term you're looking for is "Pareidolia", where our brain is tricked into making sense of random things. But this particular article of mine is thematically hinged more on comparative archetypes in mythology. Christian mythology is by no means an original literary work… it borrows heavily on other past cultures and neighboring folk tales… the trinity, the "Jesus" figure, the rise and fall of humanity, the great Armageddon… they all have equivalents in other cultural myths. Christianity "borrowed" the concepts and now Disney does its own "remake" as well.

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