The Hero's Path

The light cycle felt good under this weight. He never thought he'd care for the fast paced action of the Arena, but after your first victory you couldn't help yourself. After all he was a User and everyone in the stands loved him. They loved his blue lined suit. They loved the way he isolated opponents, turned their momentum against them, and kept winning the matches. They loved that he was different. They loved that he had the power to save them...

With all of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack listening I've been doing over the past few weeks I felt like a short blog might be a good idea. I'm saying now that the music from this movie will outlast the movie itself. The music is breathtaking. It feels like it could've been made in the 1980s and that is exactly how it should sound. The usage of the original Tron theme is pitch perfect as well. Anytime the listener needs to feel a connection to the original material Daft Punk drops a few bars of the old stuff. It's very smart for this music to stay close to home while also going for it's own unique sound.



So why does the track "The Grid" make me cry. Not as my wife would call it an "ugly face" cry, but a cry nonetheless. It happens after Jeff Bridges finishes his monologue as the first electronic minor note hits. I feel this rush of nostalgia, this rush of hope, this rush of excitement, this rush of my dreams flooding forward. I think of my dad. I think of my family all over the country. I think about the connections we all to one another. I think of the point to all of this. I think of Jesus. I wonder what makes him smile, cry, laugh, and shake his head.

You see to me Tron: Legacy isn't about technology, digital motorcycles, and all of that futuristic stuff. Tron: Legacy is about the great disconnect Generation Y has with the Baby Boomer generation. This Kid seeks out his father only to find an old Yuppie too concerned with his career to care too much about him. I was expecting Kevin Flynn to be overwhelmed at seeing his son. Instead we find him to be a stoic, Buddhist who tells him they should just wait it out and let the bad guys kill each other off.

Not exactly what I think we would want to find in a father figure. We would want our father to say "let's get out of here". We would want some answers.

But maybe they wouldn't have answers to give. Maybe the quest we have in finding our fathers is one of self discovery. A quest of finding that the answers are not in our Fathers here, but our Father above. This rant reminds me of the following quote from Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. 

Every hero must take this journey, in real life and in mythology. It is my belief that at the heart of our adventure as people we will find Jesus. Jesus is everywhere. He is not just in churches or in televangelists. He is everywhere. He is God. And every Hero will find God when they take up the great adventure of Life.

P.S. With the philosophical stuff out of the way, I thought Tron:Legacy was OK. The effects looked great, the thought the CG face of Jeff Bridges was pretty terrible. I didn't like the way it ended, because I'm a populist and like endings that make sense. I thought the information broker was obnoxious and hurt the film more than he helped it. I felt like the plot needed a big boost and establishing of the rules of the Grid. All in all, the movie was a 5 out of 10 for me. Bridges was great. Boxleitner was great. Effects were slick. Music was top notch.