EXODUS Wrote:I seem to remember there being other forms of comunication in the first film.
For example:
* After Tron, Flynn & Ram escape the Gaming Grid and flee, the Rectifier & a squadron of tanks are seeing travelling through the canyons. In that scene, you can hear the tank commander (I think) reporting in.
* When the Solar Sailer is being rendered for Tron and Yori's use, someone seems to be making some kind of tannoy annoucement, presumably for someone to here.
And let's not forget Flynn talking DIRECTLY to Clu (the original one) in the tank when he was trying to hack in near the begining of the film. |
That wasn't the Rectifier in the first Tron film. That was Sark's carrier, and even though the design looked similar,
it was a completely different ship. TRON 1 took place inside the ENCOM 511; Tron Legacy took place inside of Flynn's personal secret server, a whole different server, which was not connected to the internet or any outside systems.
The Tank Commander was talking into his head set to Sark, who could hear the radio chatter of his soldiers in the command center. We see and hear this whenever the camera cuts back to the command center - you hear radio chatter of Sark's men in the background. In terms of the real world, the radio chatter would symbolize whatever guardian programs on the ENCOM 511 (under the MCP's "direction") were communicating to each other, during the duration of their operational functioning. Reminds me of some computer terminology I've heard used in reference to how hard drives or components talk to each other: master and slave. Lisberger and Ms. MacBird were geniuses when they combined those elements into TRON.
As far as Flynn, "talking directly to Clu",
he wasn't. That was Lisberger symbolizing what Clu would have heard from the instructions that Flynn was giving Clu through what was being typed into the computer. To Clu, it registered as if Flynn was literally talking to him over a phone or something. Same thing when Tron went into the I/O Tower: though you could hear Alan1's voice, Alan Bradley wasn't literally sitting there talking into his computer to Tron. Tron's programming registered what was in the code as if Alan1 was talking directly to him. Upon closer inspection, you will notice that Alan1 doesn't even give direct verbal responses to what Tron is saying; however, it seems as if Flynn does. I count that to either the writers wanting to emphasize Flynn's specialness, or to reiterate the fact that Clu 1.0 was actually a renegade program, hence why his circuits were yellow. The only allegiance Clu 1 had was to his USER Kevin, which further makes sense when Clu is trapped by the MCP and interrogated. He says to the MCP, "Hey Mister High-and-Mighty Master Control,
you're not making me talk!!!!".
Also, another key thing that was stated in the first Tron film, and I recall Tron, Yori, Dumont, and possibly Ram saying this, is that communication between USERS and PROGRAMS had been cut off. That's why Dumont was hesitant to let Tron, Yori, and probably any other program in to the I/O Tower, because Sark and the MCP forbade it, making it an offense punishable by derezzing. One of the first things Dumont says is,
"Well, I could be derezzed for letting you in here!".
In regards to the original poster, that's an interesting question. You would think that the USERS and Programs would be able to simultaneously talk to each other through IMs or SMS or something like that. However, I think that Programs not being able to talk directly to their USERS is a stylistic choice that Steven Lisberger, Joe Kosinski and the writers decided to take - it reinforces the idea that the
USERS are god-like beings that can only be reached through special means, i.e., that means, only being able to reach a User via an I/O Tower in the first film (just like in the real world when it is said that people can talk to God either in a church or via meditation), or as in Legacy,
having the USER directly beam themself into the Grid via the Shiva Laser. Also, even though in the real world we have the ability to talk to other people via IMs and SMS, I still have yet to see the ability to use that same software to actually communicate with a USER. However, one exception to this was the relationship between Ed Dillinger and the MCP - they literally talked directly to each other without any middleman. Again, they may have been a stylistic choice, as maybe the bad guys were meant to be able to talk directly to each other whereas the good guys would have to suffer being cut off with their USERs.
In Tron: Legacy, since there weren't any I/O Towers, I'd think that any communication between the USER, (who'd be Kevin Flynn) would have to be either coded in when a program was rezzed up, or if Flynn himself literally beamed himself inside the Grid. That's a significant difference between the first film and second one. We see this in the comic book as well as the film when the backstory is shown of how Flynn left Tron and Clu 2.0 to look after the Grid, while he handled his business in the real world. Flynn (or more exactly, his digital form) was literally right there with Tron and Clu 2.0, talking to them. It would have been nice to have seen a scene of Flynn sitting at his computer doing some actual coding and then cut in shots of Clu 2.0 and Tron responding to what was being coded. That was one complaint I've heard of in regards to Tron Legacy, and I agree.
In the end, I think it's a stylistic device that reinforces one of the main thematic elements of the TRONiverse, that being the gap between USERs and PROGRAMs, just like the gap between MORTALS and their GODS/GODDESSES/DEITIES that they communicate with.