5. Show Us More Of The Real World
The original Tron, flawed as it may have been, kept us in the real world for a longer stretch than Tron Legacy, or at least it seemed that way. We saw Flynn's life in the arcade, we saw Alan as the Popcorn King of his Cubicle, we even saw Dillinger interfacing with the MCP on his awesomely futuristic looking touchscreen computer. We got to know the real world before we jumped into the world of the Programs. While we saw a little of this in Tron Legacy, I feel we didn't see enough. We got the bare bones coverage on what ENCOM had become, we knew there was another Dillinger in the ENCOM family, and we knew that Sam was a slacker with a reason for being a slacker. In the original film, we got to know the people before we got to know the programs. Mapping the Program to their real world analog is vital because the programs not only take on a facet of their programmer's persona, they serve a function similar to that of their own in the real world. What's Castor's programmer like, and is he as flamboyant and homicidal as his creation? And just what is his function to begin with? These are the questions that begin to crop up when you don't spend enough time in the real world, although it didn't seem like too pressing of an issue in Tron Legacy. However, with the supposedly imminent return of the Dillingers, the real world is going to become even more rife with drama than it was with Legacy. The first sequel was about reclaiming and repairing your family's legacy. We saw it in both the houses of Flynn and Dillinger, and now the second sequel is set to be a story about clashing legacies within the same sphere of influence. Joseph Kosinski wants this to be his Empire Strikes Back. It's the only way he'll sign on to the project, and frankly it's the only way they should be going with this project. Now's the opportunity to tell a darker story, and allow the bad guy to win big. Without that sort of victory, a climactic finale wouldn't be as sweet; and without it, we'd be wasting good Cillian Murphy/David Warner screen time. Hopefully we'll see what the shape of this project looks like in the coming year, as it would be foolish to wait another 28 years to continue the legacy of Flynn. End of Line.