Alright, confession time for those who only know me through the blog, but of no surprise to my friends: I am a lifelong tech nerd, dot-com survivor, recovering software engineer, and Tron purist. Not a Tron Legacy apologist. Not a Tron Uprising hipster. Not even a Tron: Evolution (the game) sympathizer. I stake my loyalty to Steven Lisberger and the original, neon-backlit 1982 Disney fever dream (loosely based on the Wizard of Oz … think about it) where programmers were gods, MCP was Big Brother, and light cycles could apparently turn on a dime without breaking physics.

I can’t be the only one out there, right?

That movie broke my 13-year-old brain in the best possible way. While some kids wanted to be astronauts or car-driving bandits, I suddenly wanted to be a User. I watched Jeff Bridges and the titular Bruce Boxlietner inside a computer and thought: “This is it. This is my future. Forget football practice, I’m going to learn FORTRAN!”

That one reckless decision put me on the road to a computer science degree instead of my alternate career path: “Professional Trekkie Who Lives in His Mom’s Basement Waiting for Starfleet to Become Real.” Seriously, I’ve said it before, if not for Tron, my life would have been:

  • 1987: Starbase Indy: Defended the honor of Scotty’s dilithium crystal management system against three Spock impersonators and a guy dressed as a Borg toaster.
  • 1989: Published a fanzine essay arguing the Prime Directive was actually just a plot device to save on set design.
  • 1992: Runner-up in the Captain Kirk Shatner Shout-Off, disqualified for being too dramatic.
  • 1995: Unofficial record-holder for most arguments lost about whether the 1973 Saturday morning cartoon and the Peter Pan records based on it count as canon.
  • 2001: Nearly hired by Paramount as a “Continuity Consultant,” but they went with a guy whose only qualification was that he kept his Mego action figures in their original packaging.

Honestly, I still could make a living out of being “that Star Trek guy,” except that a certain neon-soaked Disney movie told me “programmers are cooler than Trekkies,” and I fell for it.

Tron isn’t just a movie. It’s scripture. Vector lines and glowing grids that made my Atari 2600 look like cave paintings (sorry, William Gibson), a world where programmers weren’t just geeks, but creators of life inside the machine (sorry, Dirk Van Gucht), and Wendy Carlos bending synthesizers like divine harps (sorry, Rick Wakeman).

Small aside, but now that I think about it, that original Tron soundtrack was also a friggin’ gateway drug. That got me into Wendy’s Digital Moonscapes, which turned my obsession with glowing grids into a lifelong love of prog and modal music. That was outer space recoded for human ears: half symphony, half science fiction. It taught me modes, wandered without choruses, and built tension in places most radio DJs would’ve panicked and thrown on REO Speedwagon. Suddenly, I saw the genius of Yes over Zeppelin and Chick Corea over my beloved Black Sabbath. Digital Moonscapes taught me music can feel like architecture or mathematics, not just power chords and blues riffs. It’s why Close to the Edge still feels to me like a light cycle ride stretched into 18 minutes, and why Chick Corea’s Elektric Band feels like subroutines spinning off into parallel processes. Wendy Carlos, thank you!

Okay, Tron: Legacy. Daft Punk did a great job. The de-aged Jeff Bridges looked more like angry Sean Penn to me. It was slick, stylish, and … if I hadn’t seen it in 3D on opening night … mostly forgettable. It tried to make me think I was in a new Grid, but I already had an iPhone, and neither inspired me half as much as that “other movie” did back in ’82. Yes, the light cycles were cooler, but I was clinging to old school harder than a Linux user clings to VI.

I will give them Tron 2.0 (2003). That video game nailed the look, the feel, the music, and the philosophy. That was what I wanted in a sequel: new programs, updated mechanics, and a story that respected the original without trying to be ironic or edgy. I still pretended Tron 2.0 is the true sequel and that Legacy was just expensive fan fiction.

Now we get Tron: Ares, starring Jared Leto, because somewhere in Hollywood, a Disney guy, who already owns my Star Wars and Marvel childhood, said, “You know what Darrin wants? A new Tron movie with that guy who turned The Joker into a creepy Hot Topic Manager!”

Yep, I can see this one already: Jared Leto smirking in neon eyeliner, lecturing me about “the algorithm.” Okay, Trent Reznor doing the soundtrack has kept me from rage-posting so far, but he’s still one mortal man, Disney. I was up close for the ’99 tour. I know he is fallible! Maybe it will be a hit. I hope it is. I’m just saying, this is not the dream of my 12-year-old self. This is the dream where my 12-year-old self wakes up crying, sells the Commodore 64, and becomes a dentist.

I’m now in my 50s, still clacking away at the keyboard, half-believing that somewhere in the Rolls-Royce Defense cloud, a little neon warrior that looks like me is fighting for the Users. When you give me “Tron: Ares,” I don’t think “hope,” I think, “Dammit, Disney, don’t make me explain to my inner child why this crap is canon!”

I won’t be buying a ticket. I mean, I would, in a heartbeat, but nobody I know cares enough about Tron to go with me. I don’t know if your marketing department intended to underwhelm the OG audience or what, but I’ll probably have to wait for home video. Meanwhile, I have my classic DVD release and Wendy’s Digital Moonscapes. With those, I can affirm my stubborn belief that programmers are gods (or at least demigods with root access) because once upon a time, a movie told me I could be one.