Tron & the Quest for Permanence

How Tron: Ares Calls Us to Purpose Beyond Our Programming

by Bryce Morgan

[SPOILER WARNING: Key ideas and key moments in the movie are discussed in this post.]

As the third installment in the decades-spanning Tron franchise (Tron (1982), Tron: Legacy (2010)), Tron: Ares is both visually stunning and conceptually interesting. To be clear, Tron movies require that you don't ask too many questions about life inside of a digital world (or how that digital world could emerge from a virtual world to then exist in our own). But once you suspend your disbelief in this way, the action and adventure can be satisfying (even when plot and pacing are less than ideal). Beyond the appealing look and feel of Tron: Ares, the film is also satisfying in that it raises some really important topics about both life in our digital age, and human life in general. Here are a few I was thinking about:

Permanence and Impermanence. This seems to be the main question the movie attempts to explore. The plot hinges on Julian Dillinger trying to develop, then steal, the permanence code from Encom's Eve Kim. For Dillinger, acquiring this code will lead to acquiring acclaim, wealth, and power. For the newly sentient Ares, securing the code means securing a permanent life beyond 'the grid', and beyond the whims and schemes of Dillinger.

Programming and Purpose. In his final standoff against the obedient Athena, Ares explains to her that following Dillinger's directives are not his or her purpose, it is simply their programming. Given what the film reveals about Dillinger (and his family legacy), it's clear that Ares has come to recognize that this programming is highly problematic, even immoral. As the liberated and titular 'program' makes clear to Athena, his purpose is yet to be determined.

Red and Blue. Tron: Ares does not subscribe to moral relativism (i.e., the idea that there are no moral absolutes, only moral opinions). It presents us with a world like ours: one characterized by good and evil; black and white in terms of our moral order. In the movie, this is visualized through the regular shift between blue (good) and red (bad) illumination. Interestingly, when Ares is, in a sense, born again from Flynn's server (near the end of the movie), he is neither blue nor red, but white.

Material and Magical. On one hand, Tron: Ares operates on the faulty assumption of many moderns that the only real things that exist are material things. This philosophically materialistic viewpoint lies underneath many of today's depictions concerning the possibilities of artificial intelligence. If we are nothing more than bio-chemical machines, then conceivably, electronic and digital machines could also evolve into something we would recognize as 'alive'. But as Ares, the most advanced of any 'program' in the Tron-verse, accumulates every bit of possible data about Eve Kim and our world as a whole, it leads him to conclude that human life is more than material. It is magical, mysterious, even miraculous (the movie uses rain as a device to, in some sense, awaken the programs'--Ares and Athena--to this mystery).

If we step back and consider these ideas, I think it's abundantly clear that, like Ares, all of us also long for what we could call existential permanence. A version of Kevin Flynn affirms this at one point in the film, opining that his so-called 'permanence code' should really be called the 'impermanence code', since it simply brings digital life into our decay-filled and death-haunted world (as Eve's story attempts to illustrate through the death of her sister). So what permanence is possible for us? Like Eve's first 'permanent' creation in the Alaskan snow, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures also depict a tree of life, one that allows us to enjoy eternal permanence with the God who made us. No. This isn't a real tree producing magical fruit. It's simply an image meant to remind us that an eternally permanent state of true life can only come from God himself. We are more than bio-chemicals machines. We are both material and spiritual, made (as is often the case in the Tron-verse) in our Maker's image.

But in a fallen world, our fallen 'programming' must first be challenged if we are to ever be right with God. Jesus did that very thing two-thousand years ago, making our true purpose possible by living a perfect life that resisted such programming. Only then could he provide the uncorrupted sacrifice we needed. Through his impermanence (i.e., through his death), he alone now makes divine permanence possible (i.e., through his resurrection). This is no digital fantasy or Hollywood production. As Ares discovered, liberation and permanence are real gifts offered to us IRL by the ultimate Programmer; one who was even willing to die for his creation.

Bryce Morgan is a husband and father, and the founder of Pop Eternal. He's also the creator of the Captain Sun adventures, as well as the author of "Confessions of a Secret Santa".