The other night I was watching Tron and I suddenly had a revelation. The story line is a total metaphor for the gospel and the writers didn’t even try very hard to disguise it either. I’m sure that a lot of you will have a hard time seeing Kevin Flynn as Jesus Christ, he isn’t really his character is still only human after all, but the idea is there.
It began when the Master Control Program (MCP) saw itself as equal to, nay, even greater than his Creator and began taking over his fellow created beings in order to gain more power. The MCP sounds a lot like Satan so far.
Flynn is a User, a writer of code and a creator of Programs. He is transformed into a program by the MPC who sees Flynn as a threat and thinks that he can humiliate and destroy him on the gamming grid.
Satan did not make God man. He doesn’t have that kind of power. Christ chose to become human and he chose to die. This makes Christ greater than Flynn.
As a User Flynn finds that he has special powers that allow him to alter the way the virtual world operates. And in the Scriptures Jesus performs many miracles in order to demonstrate the power of God.
In the end Flynn throws himself into the MCP in order to give Tron a chance to destroy him. Just like Jesus sacrificed himself in order to save us his creations.
Then there is the character of Ram, the faithful believer who is the first one to be graced with the knowledge that the creator walks among the created. He even uses the line “Oh My User,” and not in the shocked way that we humans exclaim “Oh My God.”
Another stunning parallel is the scene where Tron goes into the input tower to speak with Alan One. The reverence and the magnitude of the moment are similar to a high priest entering the Holy of Holies to speak directly with God. Which is pretty much what Tron is doing.
I also love the opening of the movie, when the guard program throws the accounting program into the holding cell he calls him a “Religious nut.” Like I said, the movie makers certainly weren’t trying very hard to hide the symbolism.
It all still holds up even with the addition of Tron: Legacy to the Canon. In fact if you really think about it Tron: Legacy is really just the same movie only with better effects.
Yes I realize that there is nothing new under the sun. Especially when the sun is a thirty year old movie with a cult following. Here are some other good articles that make the same observations I just did:
www.overthinkingit.com/2009/09/29/tron-religious-subtext
totallytawn.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/tron-legacy-and-religion
C. O. Bonham 