Tron... a Buddhist Themed Movie?

MindGate

So, I watched Tron today and it seemed as though... that it was actually heavily influenced by Buddhist ideas! The father in the movie (which I am assuming, considering he owned the Tao Te Ching, referenced Zen, and meditated) seemed to have been a Zen Buddhist with very pacifistic ideals. Also, at the end, the man says (which seems to be the overall moral of the story, considering it was a very significant scene and moment), "The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us all the time."

Thoughts?

SandalWood

Did you just see the original movie or the recent one?

MindGate

New one. Tron: Legacy. Sorry for not clarifying.

SandalWood

NP. I haven't seen the new one yet. The old one is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Theswingisyellow

I would agree about the Buddhist subtext to Jeff Bridges character. Here are a couple interviews with him and Bernie Glassman in Tricycle;

DaltheJigsaw

Thanks for bringing this up!:)
I really loved the movie!

Takuan

Tron: Legacy did have Buddhist elements within it. For example, "taking the self out of the equation" is mentioned multiple times throughout. Plus, Bridges character is seen sitting in seiza meditating multiple times in the movie. There were a lot of other things in the movie that could be considered Buddhist, but those were the ones that stood out the most for me.

Linc

Moved to Arts & Writings because I think it's a rad discussion and not truly off-topic.

tamm

For some reason the rings on the front of the Tron suits remind me of the rakusu.

Malachy12

Hmm, the only Buddhist underlays I saw was pops meditating a lot, then telling his son "You're throwing off my zen thing". I guess you could say he was torn between doing nothing, or doing something and risking making things worse. Ooh! Or you could say that he realized that he was wrong when he strove to make a perfect world, since the world is already perfect with the right perspective. So mean old bad copy was still striving for perfection and becoming inhumane and cruel in the process. Even the ending had some metaphor to it (but I won't spoil it for anyone who still wants to see it).
I guess there was some Buddhist undertones to the movie! I'm afraid I was just too distracted by the awesome Daftpunk soundtrack, and purty colors to notice the first time around. Daftpunk! Whoo!
Oh, the purty colors were just so... mesmerizing :bowdown:

Cinorjer

I have to shake my head no, but I have not seen this particular version of the movie yet. It's just that every movie that includes a "reality is not really real" or "life is a dream" gets tagged with the Buddhist label. It seems that's all people know about Buddhism, that we say reality is illusion. Such wildly different movies as the Matrix, Groundhog day, Inception, and Tron get this thrust upon them.

And Zen is also wildly misapplied in movies.

Hawkins

Jeff Bridges was consulting by a zen master during the movie. It's definitely based around Zen philosophy

NOTaGangsta

Rather not take ma pointers from hollywood movies know wat im sayin?

Now-Is-reality

Hmmm... i think that if you look for something you can find it. I find myself thinking "Wow, this has to be influenced by Buddhism" to a lot of different movies, songs and whatever else. Maybe placebo effect? For instance you get a new isuzu, and suddenly you're noticing the cars that are similar to yours everywhere... but you didn't notice before other than nothing has changed about the context of cars on the road.