Thursday, December 30, 2010

What Tron Taught Me

Spoiler Alert:  The following post contains some of my musings after seeing the movie Tron: Legacy.  While I am not writing out a summary of the movie, my musings will definitely reveal many of the plot points.  If this offends you turn back now, or proceed at your own risk.

The Company I work for has a fabulous tradition of going to see a movie sometime in December during the work day.  This tradition is what is commonly known as awesome.  This year the movie of choice was Tron: Legacy.  It was a fun movie, not life changing or anything but I did notice some important life lessons as I was watching the movie.  Here are the things I discovered in no particular order.

Programmers have Phenomenal Cosmic Powers
Kevin Flynn was seen by all of the programs as a messianic character.  They showed him reverence as their creator.  No program I have written has ever worshiped me, but apparently that's only because in our world the programs are sets of instructions that just do what they're told.  In the computer world, a simple binary translator program could be rocking at a light cycle game or chilling at the bar.

In the same way, in our world I have to write code to make stuff happen.  In the computer world I just hold up my hands and magic happens.  I don't think anyone in our world appreciates how cool programmers are.

I Want one of These
I'm just sayin'

Bad Guys Glow Red
I think our world could be improved if bad guys always glowed red and good guys glowed blue or white.  Imagine if a sketchy salesman was trying to sell you something.  Is he glowing blue?  You can trust him.  If not, just walk away.  (I know, that one dude that betrayed them wasn't glowing red but he wasn't glowing at all so I'm pretty sure you can trust people if they're glowing blue.)

My brain is in HD
This new movie had some super sweet graphics for the light cycles and the other contests.  The strange thing is that when I saw the original Tron as a little kid I'm pretty sure the graphics were just as cool.  At least, I remember it looking cool.  But I went back and watched the original Tron and it turns out that my brain had upconverted the picture that I saw as a little child, because the movie itself is pretty ghetto.  Who knew?

Thirteen is in the computer world
On the TV show House, the character known as 13 vanished quite abruptly.  It turns out she was in the computer world the whole time.  Not even Dr. Gregory House was able to figure that one out.

That's all the information I learned from watching Tron.  Do you have anything you would like to add?

5 comments:

  1. I just wrote about Tron. Like literally finished the post five minutes ago.

    Although... in my post I failed to mention how AWESOME it would be if there were some visible cues like glowing blue or red to let me know if someone was trustworthy... I agree, that would be awesome.

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  2. I haven't seen the movie yet, but programmers are pretty awesome. I do feel pretty good about watching a movie while you are working, that's legit.

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  3. I'll probably never see this movie, but just in case, I'll hold off reading for a bit. :)

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  4. I'm glad you learned so many things, and I am glad I got to crash this tradition. I think I should come every year (well, only if it is a movie I want to see).

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  5. I just had to share this tweet that I saw on twitter. A guy named Sponky said, "I would have liked one of the programs in Tron:Legacy to have been a guy just standing there shouting 'Hello World!' to everyone walking by."

    I wish I had thought of that brilliance.

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