Tron: Legacy – Analysis

 

Tron:Legacy Trailer

Like SO many films before it; The Matrix, The Truman Show, Pleasantville, Vanilla Sky, The Fifth Element, Donnie Darko, to name but a few, Tron: Legacy is rife with Illuminati symbolism and Gnostic teachings.  To first understand you have to watch this 35min introduction video on gnosticism and what it really means:

VIDEO – Michael Heiser: Gnosticism (part 1) – “Introduction”

When finished this, continue reading below!!!

TRON LEGACY – Analysis

Leaving the breathtakingly amazing computer generated world of Tron Legacy to one side, and having examined many possible incarnations the Illuminus usually like to depict, I would assert that this film is a straight depiction of Gnosticism. In fact it’s almost a mirror image.

Now for those who aren’t familiar with EXACT Gnostic beliefs and principles (and considering their confusing variations, they must have problems understanding it too!) I will try to explain the basics and mirror up the characters, what they are/do with those in the gnostic belief system. And trust me this is not easy as it’s complicated and as usual with most religions, it’s branched off into different splinters.

I’m going to use some direct quotes from wiki which is in italic bold to mirror up the characters. If you haven’t seen the film yet, don’t worry, these films always go along the same lines and usually aren’t hard to guess, I would in this case say READ ON as it may actually help you understand what the hell is going on when you see the film!

Badass Reviews 13th Dec 2010

Most of the publications and reviews of the film think that the special effects are amazing BUT the storyline is ‘terrible’. That’s because they don’t realise, as the majority of the public don’t realise, WHAT THEY ARE WATCHING.  No fault of theirs but this is a bizarre trait of so many of these films.  They are not for the ‘profane’, they are for the initiates. The ‘profane’ (ie. the masses) are supposed to focus on the dazzling special effects and have the storyline ‘downloaded’ to them.  Oh the irony when it comes to a film such as TRON!

C Net News 17 Dec 2010

Understanding the deep filmic message is seemingly not important for the paying public and it is this fact that enables this faction to DEPICT EVERYTHING IN PLAIN SIGHT because they only need to do basic ‘audience testing’ to discover that the general public at large have no idea what they are viewing. Even in interviews with the cast members themselves, NOT ONE OF THEM MENTIONS THE GNOSTIC BELIEF SYSTEM INHERENT IN THE STORYLINE. Maybe they have no clue either?!  Or just in plain denial!

These storylines are not unusual for us here but releasing films which are little understood by the public would be a rather strange sales/marketing ploy. But this is intentional!

Guardian Review 5th Dec 2010

Total Film Review 6th Dec 2010

 

Now I’m going to take it step by step.  Here are the fundamental traits of gnosticism:

Firstly, you have KEVIN FLYNN, creator of this cyber space called Tron and father to Sam, he plays the Godhead figure, the One, Pleroma.

Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn the Creator

It is the notion of a remote, supreme monadic divinity, source – this figure is known under a variety of names, including ‘Pleroma’ (fullness, totality) and ‘Bythos’ (depth, profundity).

Secondly in gnostic beliefs, you have the introduction of a SECOND DISTINCT CREATOR GOD KNOWN AS THE DEMIURGE – THIS IS THE DUALITY. The Demiurge is CLU in Tron Legacy, he has been created by Kevin Flynn (Godhead) to exact, create and develop the supposed perfect world of the programs and the Grid in Tron. It is the results of the DEMIURGE we see in the film with him as the false God, leader of the masses.

CLU also known as the Demiurge

The introduction of a distinct creator God or demiurge. Which is an illusion and as a later emanation from the single monad or source, this second God is a lesser and inferior or false God. This creator god is commonly referred to as the demiourgós (a technical term literally denoting a public worker the Latinized form of Greek dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, hence “ergon or energy”, “public God or skilled worker” “false God” or “God of the masses”), used in the Platonist tradition. The DEMIURGE is blind; because of his power and his ignorance and his arrogance he said, with his power, “It is I who am God; there is none apart from me.” When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. And this speech got up to incorruptibility; then there was a voice that came forth from incorruptibility, saying, “You are mistaken, Samael” – which is, “god of the blind.”

(Please note; the Demiurge is often depicted as a lion faced serpent, you may want to bear that in mind for any future analysis!)

The snake lion Demiurge

Blake's depiction of the Demiurge

 

So as you see CLU is the God of the masses (Programs), we see this clearly when he oversees the Romanesque Stadium styled death game challenges Sam is forced to play against Rinzler (Tron) and against other ‘programs’. This is a direct reference to Rome. It’s undeniable.

CLU watching the arena below

Sam in the Games Arena like roman times

Gnostic beliefs centered around DUALITY of the Godhead. There are 2 distinct GODS and this again references Metatron who was believed in Talmudic tradition to be the Scribe of God, this scribe of God in the film is NOT TRON (character aka as Rinzler), this is a deliberate error I believe, if you recall Tron (character) in the film is the ‘protector’ and is not a co-creator, only Clu is the co-creator of the world of Tron and the Grid. This makes CLU the Demiurge.

Tron as Metatron though NOT the Creator but Protector

“The estimation of the world, owing to the above, as flawed or a production of ‘error’ but possibly as good as its constituent material might allow. This world is typically an inferior simulacrum of a higher-level reality or consciousness. The inferiority may be compared to the technical inferiority of a painting, sculpture, or other handicraft to the thing(s) of which those crafts are supposed to be a representation. In certain other cases it takes on a more ascetic tendency to view material existence, negatively. Which then becomes more extreme when materiality, and the human body, is perceived as evil and constrictive, a deliberate prison for its inhabitants;

Elsewhere this figure is called ‘Ialdabaoth’,[13] ‘Samael’ (Aramaic: sæmʻa-ʼel, ‘blind god’) or ‘Saklas’ (Syriac: sækla, ‘the foolish one’), who is sometimes ignorant of the superior God, and sometimes opposed to it; thus in the latter case he is correspondingly malevolent.
The demiurge as a tyrannical God having caused the imperfect material world and all of its suffering, is as the creator God of the pagan philosophers (Zeus) and the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic creator God (Yahweh or Adonai) not real but a construct or illusion of the human mind (as nous). Since no secondary creator God is necessary or of high importance as everything is eternal or emanated and can not be created or destroyed. The demiurge typically creates a group of co-actors named ‘Archons’, who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it;

If you note the last few sentences in this paragraph above you will note an almost EXACT REPLICA OF WHAT KEVIN FLYNN SAYS WHEN HE, SAM AND QUORRA DISCOVER THE ARMY CLU IS CREATING. Kevin says Clu knows he cannot ‘create or destroy’ the programs, he can only reassign them.

CLU's Tron army

Gnostics believe in essence that the material world created by the Demiurge is deliberately brutal and imperfect in order for the initiates (not the profane) to endure various tests in order to attain ‘enlightenment’ or ‘illumination’ to then be at one with the divine Godhead figure.

Enlightenment in Armageddon

This belief system has been bastardised and co-opted by various nefarious factions which probably include Luciferianism, etc. The premise being to submit to horrific trauma and brutality to ascend!  Theoretically in their eyes, the more horrific the world is the greater the chance towards enlightenment !! 

We see that before Sam is about to undertake his ‘tests’ in the Grid Arena, he walks into a bright light, this is a nod to this path towards illumination.

The stage has been set for the ultimate showdown between G(o)od and (D)Evil.

The pathway of illumination

Right, now I hope those concepts have sunk in? 

All-Seeing Eye of Illumination

                          

Now onto the next characters…
 
Next we have;

RINZLER (TRON),

Rinsler/ Tron

ZUSE:

Zuse

JARVIS ;

Jarvis

… these characters have some influence or power over their various areas in Tron.  These are all parts or reflections of the DEMIURGE (CLU) who’s position it is to rule over the material cyber realm.  One might include Gwen in this, however she is too insignificant a character.  She is essentially a worker program.

Gwen the worker girl

THEY ARE KNOWN IN GNOSTICISM AS ARCHONS.   And are the ‘controllers’ dispatched by the Demiurge (CLU).

Greys are a type of Archon

“In late antiquity the term archon was used in Gnosticism to refer to several servants of the Demiurge, the “creator god” that stood between the human race and a transcendent God that could only be reached through gnosis. In this context they have the role of the angels and demons of the Old Testament. They give their name to the sect called Archontics.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archons

Now to the ISO’s which include Quorra who we are led to believe is the last living ISO following the great purge or genocidal extinction by CLU.

Isomorphic Algorithms (better known as ISOs) are a race of programs that spontaneously evolved on the Grid, as opposed to being created by users. Their existence is considered a miracle by Kevin Flynn, however Clu considers them to be an obstruction in his mission to create the perfect system.

Quorra the last (ISO) Isomorphic Algorithym

CLU believes these ISO’s are a threat to his NWO and to his more competitive and destructive ordered world of perceived perfection.

Quorra

The ISO’s are a manifestation of this cyber space considered by Kevin Flynn (Godhead) to be perfection, knowing all areas of philosophy, science, embodying naive perfection … it is the information inherent in their knowledge and existence that Kevin believes will assist human kind on the real world plane. He protects the one ISO left, Quorra …

Now the ISO’s represent AEONS in Gnosticism, though Kevin didn’t admit to actually creating them, it is hinted that they are a part of him as he created this cyber world and they manifested into existence at the appropriate time and he reveres them, this is because in Gnostic tradition they are a constituent part of the DIVINE GODHEAD:

In many Gnostic systems, the æons are the various emanations of the superior God, who is also known by such names as the One, the Monad, Aion teleos (Greek: “The Complete Æon”), Bythos (Greek: Βυθος, ‘Depth’ or ‘profundity’), Proarkhe (Greek: προαρχη, “Before the Beginning’), E Arkhe (Greek: ἡ ἀρχή, ‘The Beginning’), Ennoia (Greek: “Thought”) of the Light[37] or Sige (Greek: Σιγη, “Silence”).

From this first being, also an æon, a series of different emanations occur, beginning in certain Gnostic texts with the hermaphroditic Barbelo, from which successive pairs of aeons emanate, often in male-female pairings called syzygies; the numbers of these pairings varied from text to text, though some identify their number as being thirty. The aeons as a totality constitute the pleroma, the “region of light”. The lowest regions of the pleroma are closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world.

As you can see we have a virtual exact mirroring of Gnosticism, to deny this in Tron Legacy would be ridiculous, it’s just the vast majority of people will not know what they are watching. They are seeing a treatise on the Godhead dilemma.
 
So to our final and arguably most important characters:

Sam Flynn (Christ) and Quorra (Sophia)

 CHRIST – SAM FLYNN

SOPHIA – QUORRA

In Gnostic tradition Sophia originally created the Demiurge (CLU) and since this was not inherent in the original film Tron as we know that CLU was created by Kevin then I think they found it too difficult to incorporate Sophia (Quorra) as the manifestor or creator of CLU to Tron Legacy.

So instead Quorra is an Aeon which is a part of the Divine Godhead as reflected in Gnosticism but this time is NOT the creator of the Demiurge (Kevin Flynn is the Creator in the film).

QUORRA AS SOPHIA

You will recall TRINITY from the Matrix, Trinity was SOPHIA and so was Leeloo in The Fifth Element. She is the fallen whom has sinned or has made a mistake in some way and searches for redemption. The Christ figure helps her attain redemption.

Trinity as Sophia

Leeloo as Sophia

 

She is always paired up with the Christ figure … the chosen one to assist in bringing the message of gnosis to humanity.

This is the origin of the rescue of the ‘damsel in distress’.

Here is the story of Sophia:

I will highlight the most relevant points … direct quotation from wiki:

 

 

Sam and Quorra (the Gnostic bride of Christ)

In Gnostic tradition, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the feminine aspects of God. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy of Jesus Christ (i.e. the Bride of Christ), and Holy Spirit of the Trinity.  In the Nag Hammadi texts, Sophia is the lowest Aeon, or anthropic expression of the emanation of the light of God.  She is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world.

The Great Pleroma of God

Almost all Gnostic systems of the Syrian or Egyptian type taught that the universe began with an original, unknowable God, referred to as the Parent or Bythos, or as the Monad by Monoimus…. the One spontaneously emanated further Aeons, being pairs of progressively ‘lesser’ beings in sequence.  Together with the source from which they emanate they form the Pleroma, or fullness, of God, and thus should not be seen as distinct from the divine, but symbolic abstractions of the divine nature. The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Aeons.

In most versions of the Gnostic Mythos, it is Sophia who brings about this instability in the Pleroma, in turn bringing about the creation of materiality. Thus a positive or negative view of the world depends a great deal on the interpretations of Sophia’s actions in the Mythos. According to some Gnostic texts, the crisis occurs as a result of Sophia trying to emanate without her syzygy or, in another tradition, because she tries to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos. After cataclysmically falling from the Pleroma, Sophia’s fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) causes confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hylē, ὕλη) and soul (Greek: psychē, ψυχή) accidentally come into existence.

Now briefly back to the film, when Sam arrives his father (the Divine Creator) Kevin has exiled himself to that of the life of Zen Master type hermit indulging in Far Eastern esoteric tradition of meditation believing that the only path to take is one of omission to act and observance rather than reaction to the disastrous world his Demiurge CLU has created and become.

The Creator as Zen Master

If you note it is in fact Quorra (Sophia) who facilitates the cataclysmic events to follow. She believes that Sam can be helped by one of effectively the Demiurges controllers, Zuse (I believe this was a reference to Konrad Zuse and not Zeus the Greek God) which is of course a trap.

SIDE NOTE:

Konrad Zuse (22 June 1910 Berlin – 18 December 1995 Hünfeld near Fulda) was a German engineer and computer pioneer.  His greatest achievement was the world’s first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941.

This in the film is Sophia’s ‘downfall’.  It is Sophia (Quorra) who brings about the ‘instability’ in the Pleroma (Divine God) as once Kevin realises what she has done and where she has sent Sam he must finally act and by doing so he exposes himself to discovery and the inevitable conclusion of the events that must follow.  Thereby Quorra (Sophia) causes the instability.

Kevin realises he must now take action

As a result they must both go, they arrive at the END OF LINE CLUB (note the name!) to save Sam.

End of the Line Club

Also she had split from her AEon pairing which is that of the Christ figure (Sam) as also mentioned in Gnosticism.

Sam and Zuse getting better acquinted

She is then injured and almost dies in the film …

Quorra in a bar fight

If you recall for the Divine Godhead Kevin to fix her he finds a part of her precious injured DNA code divinity and flicks it away, this is a nod to this ‘spark of divinity’ before she reboots.

Sam carries the injured Quorra

And just in case you were in any doubt whatsoever, Sam and Quorra then sit together and talk about the ‘Sunrise’ we even see a shot of them with the illumination of their world in the distance … The Christ figure and Sophia unified in partnership backdropped by ‘enlightenment’.

Talking 'sunshine' while getting healed

Now this is the general turn of events in this part of the film, it describes the relationship between CLU and QUORRA (DEMIURGE AND SOPHIA) and then that of KEVIN (Divine God), SAM (Christ/Jesus) and QUORRA (Sophia):

The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless manages to infuse some spiritual spark or pneuma into his creation.

In the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent from the Godhead in order to bring Sophia back into the fullness (Pleroma). Christ enables her to again see the light, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνευμα). Christ is then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the Gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to the spiritual world. In Gnosticism, the Gospel story of Jesus is itself allegorical: it is the Outer Mystery, used as an introduction to Gnosis, rather than being literally true in a historical context. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all of us as the Divine Spark.

By now you should probably have no problem reading this part and also seeing it in the film.

The Godhead in this film does not bring the Christ figure but we are led to believe this, however SAM is of course still the SON of KEVIN. It was in fact the trickery of the Demiurge (CLU) who brought Christ into this realm to join with Sophia. And it is Sophia’s intervention on the Grid that brings them together. Followed by the Divine God, Kevin who plans and allows Sophia and Christ to take his disc knowledge to the human plane for their benefit when Kevin fights CLU to get Quorra and Sam into the Portal to ascend back to the real world.

The Creator must fight His Creation

And as he says to CLU, “it’s my son” … he means both his Son and the Christ figure … the saviour and chosen one with the Sophia, the divine spark that resides in us all. The final clip is of Christ showing the Sophia the sunrise, the illumination of the Gnosis and what they have in their possession (disc containing the divine spark of information to transform the human condition) to ‘enlighten’ the world …

Through the portal to 'enlighten' the real world

Hope I’ve covered everything, there are very few variations from the Gnostic tradition in Tron Legacy.

There seems little point in adding all the other various symbols, I have no doubt you noticed them all, the pyramids, the hexagons, hexagrams, all-seeing eyes, etc al.

As you all know this theme is played out several times in many films. Once you know the key characters and what they represent you will be able to recognise it … again and again.

I might also add that Gnostic tradition is in itself not Luciferic or Satanic per se. What has happened though is that various organisations have manipulated, distorted it and more so INVERTED the traditional forms of Christianity. Gnosticism is/was a fringe branch of Christianity but was voted out at the Council of Nicea in the year 325.

Please try to remember to make the distinction …

Keep watching movies and recognise the symbolism therein.

JP