TRON/Headscratchers

• What is a microcycle? Cycles are quantized clock ticks in a computer, you can't divide them at all, much less into millionths.
  • It's possible to get around this if you think of the word microcycle as "microcomputer cycle" or something. Not perfect, but it feels better.
  • Okay, based on Legacy, a cycle is a year, so a microcycle is about 31 seconds.
    • Note that a cycle is a year inside the computer, specifically.
  • Many computers have some kind of periodic, timer-driven hardware interrupt (my old TRS-80's programmer's manual referred to it as the "heartbeat interrupt") that ensures certain BIOS or system tasks are performed on schedule, so it's entirely possible that a "cycle" could simply be the period of time between each interrupt.

• Flynn's superpower, as a User, was the manipulation of energy (especially in large quantities) in ways that programs could not do without burning themselves to death de-resolution. So why didn't Flynn give Ram an 'energy transplant' to save his life, when he'd just demonstrated to himself that he could do it with a Recognizer?
  • It's possible that he simply didn't know he could do it with other programs at the time, making Ram's death a tragedy of timing.
  • Also, Flynn knew how to repair the Recognizer because, as the inventor of Space Paranoids, he wrote the code for it. Ram wasn't just low on energy, he was injured-or in computer terms, his code had been damaged. Flynn, as a game developer, might not have known how an actuarial program is written, and thus not known how to repair one. (Note that this troper is not a programmer, and may or may not be making false assumptions regarding the degree to which programmers specialize and other matters.)
  • Legacy indicates that in order to repair a program, one has to actually access their disc and repair their code directly. Flynn probably didn't know he could do that, let alone how to.

• So the digitizing laser is obviously pure scifi (hey there, conservation of mass!), but its function is obvious enough: it disintegrates matter and stores it digitally. So, assuming it's under MCP's control, why not just not store Flynn anywhere? Why go to the trouble of putting him in a game world and trying to kill him there?
  • I got the feeling the MCP wanted to "beat" Flynn, to prove himself superior to users.
    • The novelization also suggests that the MCP was getting a bit of a superiority complex on this point. (The novelization actually clears up a number of points, since it was written off an earlier draft of the script and includes several things that were later cut for time, or changed because someone decided the previous dialogue didn't have enough Techno Babble in it.)
  • The MCP outright states that it wants to beat a user. He tells Sark that he's sending Flynn to the game grid and that he wants Sark to kick his ass.
  • That, and it was the same reason Tron himself wasn't just de-rezzed outright. Tron, being the User-believer's champion, would have to be defeated in order to break the spirits of those who resisted him. Now, if Master Control could haul in and destroy a bona-fide User, it serves several purposes - proving to the Programs that Users aren't omnipotent, breaking the spirit of the User-believers, and finding out for himself what it would take to defeat any User who wanted to get in his way after taking over the Pentagon, Kremlin, United Nations, and global banking. (TRON:Legacy's Clu proved Dangerously Genre Savvy on this one - killing the champion breaking the creator's spirit. The Grid was totally his after that, because no one would be dumb enough to oppose him openly).
  • The MCP hadn't yet assimilated the Evil Overlord List.

• I have a text document stating for the record that I designed Super Mario Bros.., and that Shigeru Miyamoto totally stole it from me. By Tron's logic, I can just take it to a judge and get millions, right?
  • The logfile might be something that has some sort of metadata attached to it, proving it to be an actual access log and not just some random thing that Flynn BS'd. To make his case, Flynn might had to have proven that the source of his text document was an official system file that had not been tampered with.
  • Flynn outright says that he's looking for metadata that proves Dillinger stole the files from him. The text on the paper was simply evidence that it actually existed and that he could acquire them (especially after the MCP was down). He could show the original files in a court case and prove he was the original creator.
  • Opposing council: "Code a few levels of Super Mario Bros. for me right now. Here, we've got a computer of the era to work with. Hop to."
  • Your case would be far more plausible if it were on the record that you were also a PhD in computer programming, with a prior career in video game design, who had previously worked on the same project team as Shigeru Miyamoto. Y'know, like Flynn was with Dillinger. Remember, its in-dialogue that 'Flynn used to be the company's #1 programmer until Dillinger suddenly pulled a ton of hot stuff out of his ass and usurped him, then used his new rank to fire Flynn.'

• Where is the game world stored? Is it run on the company's servers? What would happen if it were shut off? And does this mean that every large computer system has an entire world of sentient programs living in it?
  • It is run on company servers. A couple of trailers said so. If it were shut off then it would probably go off or stay on. It's possible that other company servers have this but it depends on what kind of company seeing how Encom is a generally computer related company.
  • If it were shut off the Grid would probably just go into stasis without anyone in it ever noticing, and either it would resume as soon as the system booted up again, or the programs would revert to whatever initialization state they're supposed to have (which would essentially brainwipe them of anything that happened since the last backup.) If the MCP really did start off as a chess program at some guy's garage, it must have been switched off and on more than a few times for upgrades and hardware migration.
  • And not just large systems. All computers have Grids, and in it every program on the system is represented by a Program in the Grid. my Chrome spends a lot of time on the TV Tropes server grid.

• How did Flynn get out of the system? Last we saw he was busy messing up MCP from the inside, nowhere near the point he entered the system.
  • From the design of the MCP's "home", it would suggest that it was in an I/O Tower-like structure. Therefore, it would be possible to re-output Flynn. As no security was running at that point - the replay logic would probably have fired.
  • The novelization suggests that Flynn was assisted in escaping by other programs (presumably, some other laser-experiment programs from Lora or Dr. Gibbs?) that started running after the MCP was terminated.

• How did Flynn get his print out of evidence? He gave up on that quest in favour of going after the MCP itself and never told any of the programs about it. The "End of Line" even suggests that the MCP itself gave it to him!
  • "End of line" could simply be OS job-control. Basing it on IBM mainframe logic(not that I'm a sysadmin on IBM kit or anything), RACF (the security subsystem) runs as one high-priv task under VM/TSO (the timesharing kernel). The MCP was running as privileged code as one task among many... but was a security subsystem... not the OS itself.
  • Since we never see or hear any other conversations between programs and their users from the "real-world" side, it could simply be that "End of Line" is what all programs say when closing the communication channel. (In reality, the EOL control character is used to indicate the end of a line of text, and the dialogue in TRON is liberally peppered with technical terms used in odd, and sometimes wildly inappropriate contexts.

• Clu first speaks in a snappy monotone when we first meet him. Why don't the other programs? (Even Clu himself lapses out of this after he crashes)
  • For the benefit of Bit?
  • Those were some of the first "program world" scenes filmed (which, among other things, is why Clu is orange instead of blue, despite being a "user-loyal" program), so maybe the director and/or the actors decided that having all the characters talking in snappy monotones would irritate the audience after a while, and dropped the idea.