Tron: Legacy
It took 28 years for Walt Disney Pictures to release a
sequel to Tron (1982). It was
considered the first of its kind: the first film that uses computer graphics in
a live action film. Of course, the film wasn’t perfect. The graphics may have
been impressive in 1982 but if it was released today it would have been
considered “low-res” and amateurish. The laws of physics were not highly
considered while making this film. In the 1982 film, there were hovering ships
that did not require aerodynamics lifting and lightcycles that turn at right
angles without any hints of moving in arcs. The sequel titled Tron: Legacy (2010) was finally released. Kevin Flynn, the main character from the
1982 film, takes his experiences from teleporting to a computer world and
creates a new system called “The Grid” where he has creative control to build
and change programs in his will. CLU, a program designed to continue building
the Grid with or without Kevin’s presence, betrays his creator and claims
control of the Grid. Twenty years later in the real world, Sam Flynn, Kevin’s
27 year old son, makes a strange discovery at his father’s abandoned arcade and
surprisingly enters The Grid while looking for his missing father. In this film
there are many improvements to the CGI graphics and the physics in animation
compared to the 1982 counterpart. But some of the physics are played with and
manipulated because of the aesthetic decisions by the producers to keep elements
consistent with the 1982 film. But the aesthetic decisions work in the story because
the physics are manipulated in a computer world created by Kevin Flynn and CLU.
Gravity
In The
Grid, gravity is manipulated in many ways throughout the film. There are many
objects, both small and large, that require little or no mechanisms to keep the
objects up. The first example is when Sam Flynn enters the Grid and is forced
into a game called “Disc Wars” where combatants fight to the death. The arena
where the combatants play features these battle stages that are suspended
approximately 25 to 30 stories above the ground. The stages can change sizes of
an apartment to a three-story house. There is no indication of what is
physically lifting the stages up. There are no wires or no energy lifts. It
moves up in the 3D space like moving a graphic up on a computer screen.
Another
scene where gravity is manipulated is when Sam is making an escape from the “Light
Cycle Grid”. A character named Quorra arrives on a two seat vehicle to pick up
Sam and escape. Rinzler chases them down and rides his lightcycle at a high
speed upside down on a transparent surface and appear just below where CLU is
standing. When Rinzler has to go back to the top of the surface, he enters
through a rotating door that puts his cycle upright while still driving at a
high speed. For something like this to happen in the real world, wheels of an
upside down vehicle need to be attached to a track, similar to a roller
coaster. For something else similar like this, a vehicle would require
centrifugal force, but it would need lots of speed and frequently spin upside
down inside a cylinder shape pathway.
There
are these “beams of light” that appear frequently in the film. These beams are
an equivalent to cables and train tracks in the real world that move or carry heavy
carriages for transport. The most significant beam is the one transporting a
400-ton freight train that transports Kevin, Sam and Quorra towards the portal.
The beam does not have any rigid materials to keep the beam together nor is it
attached to any support from the ground to keep the beam up or the heavy train.
The beam continuously shines through for miles and miles from the center of the
city to the end of the tracks at CLU’s army base. Also, the start of the track
at the city the beam is angled. Once the beam is at a certain point miles away
from the city the beam will have the train several thousand feet above the
ground, almost the height that aircrafts would travel.
There
are a few vehicles in the Grid that do not require any wings for flight. For
example, the Recognizer, a claw shaped hovering vehicle. This vehicle appears
in the 1982 film, and in that version there is no indication of what is making
it hover. In the 2010 film, the Recognizer appears in film with a new design.
In this version, energy exhaust ports are just below of the legs. It works
somewhat like a rocket but it able to adjust the amount of exhausting energy if
it needs to slow down or land. If this vehicle was made in the real world, it
is likely the vehicle would never have kept its balance up since the vehicle is
a lot heavier on the cockpit and the center of gravity being on the middle of
the overall ship.
Follow-Through and Drag
Another
example of physics being manipulated is the removal of follow-through and drag.
This scene takes place at the End of Line Club that is on top of a 450-level
tower with an elevator on a slightly slanted track (almost by 20 degrees). After
getting into a confrontation with CLU’s henchmen at the Club, Sam, Kevin and
Quorra make an escape through the Club’s only exit, the elevator. One of the henchmen
is able to plant a sticky grenade to entrance that causes the elevator to lose
its grip and drop on an angled free fall. As they fall, the characters stay on
the ground of the elevator, not showing any weightlessness. In the real world,
any person inside an elevator on a free fall would actually be dragged towards
the ceiling since the person is much lighter than the elevator and requires
less air resistance than the elevator to stay up. In terms of story, it could
be that Kevin Flynn altered the weightlessness as you can see him in the movie trying
to empower the elevator with his finger controls.
One
contradiction about the manipulation of follow-through and drag is that it is
not consistent. With the exception of the elevator scene, drag or
follow-through occurs frequently, usually at scenes with vehicles making a high
impact with other objects. In the Light Cycle Grid scene, most of the
combatants would crash into rigid “walls of light”, causing pieces of what is
left of the cycle and the rider to move forward after impact. In one example is
back on the scene where Sam is escaping the Light Cycle Grid. Rinzler’s
lightcycle explodes after Quorra drops grenades in front of him causing him to leap
several feet into the air. But because he was still in motion on the cycle just
before the explosion, there was enough momentum to keep him moving forward and he
lands approximately 30 feet away from the explosion on a backup lightcycle.
Action/Reaction
Two
characters in the film, Rinzler and CLU, are able to defy the Action-Reaction
Principle in Newton’s Laws of Forces. The Action-Reaction Principle states “for
every action force there is equal reaction force in the opposite direction.” This
rule seems to be broken by these characters because only so much force is being
put into a jump and yet they are able to leap into exaggerated distances. The
first example: this is the scene where the freight train arrives at CLU’s army
base and Rinzler is hunting down the Flynns. Rinzler is on top the train, which
is two levels high (or twenty feet long), and notices Quorra running away.
Rinzler runs to give himself momentum and jumps to leap forward at a long
distance to catch up with Quorra. It is a bit hard to tell how far he jumped
because he is jumping towards the camera, but he must have made a leaping
distance of least two times the height of that train.
In the
climax of the film, CLU would do the same thing when chasing down Sam and
Quorra at the portal. The bridge connecting to the portal collapses, making a
50 to 60 feet gap and CLU needs to jumps across that distance. After a
confrontation with Kevin, CLU runs to give himself momentum and jumps off to a large
height to make an arc to get across the gap. He barely makes it across by grabbing
on to the edge of the bridge. If a real world person were to make any of these
jumps, he or she is likely to go only several feet across and a few feet high
while running with momentum.
Vacuum
In the
climax of the film, Sam and Quorra are escaping through the portal and CLU
chases them down while Kevin stays behind. CLU is near reaching Sam and Quorra
and Kevin needs to give them more time to escape. Kevin sacrifices himself and performs
“re-intregration” where he will merge CLU back into himself and “derezz”. But because
CLU is too far for Kevin to reach, he needs to create a vacuum to pull CLU back.
Kevin does not use any device, nor does he need to because he is able to
manipulate the physics of his own world. He simply stands, extends out his
hands out and focuses on maintaining a small vacuum on an open atmosphere. In
the space between Kevin and CLU, the pressure is lowered and CLU pushed back
due to the atmospheric pressure pushing in. In the end, both Kevin and CLU
perish while Sam and Quorra are able to escape to the real world.
-------
The
laws of physics in the film Tron: Legacy
are frequently manipulated as they are meant to be in the story. Kevin Flynn
created the computer world and that world behaves like how graphics move on a
computer screen. Kevin Flynn and CLU could have made decisions to replicate the
Grid with complete real world physics, but seeing this is a computer world,
everything made was out of convenience for themselves and the programs occupying
the Grid. The animations in this film were designed to keep many elements
consistent with the 1982 film (with putting liberties of updating the graphics
and some of the physics). Still, this is an entertaining and visually awesome
film to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment