The Grid
"Even so, the grid gave the island a kind of monumentality and order."
The Grid
"The grid is the ego to our id."
The Grid . . .
and then one day . . .
"Flynn took ownership of ENCOM in 1982, and the company skyrocketed to the top of the tech industry. But things changed in 1985, with the untimely death of Flynn's wife, the mother of his young son, Sam."
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| The Architect |
Flynn lives off the Grid. Clu (Ego) lives in the center of the Grid (the City) and rules over it ("in Xanadu," etc.).
You don't want to vilify your ego. It's as Flynn says, "The more I fight against him, the stronger he becomes." That's an interesting opponent that has that power. It's not necessarily a good or bad. It's how we merge these two sides of ourselves and honor them. . . . One of the things that brought me to this film was the idea of helping to create a modern-day myth to help us navigate these technological waters . . . (Jeff Bridges)Jeff Bridges' own understanding of this movie is not entirely consistent with what is portrayed on the screen (or, rather, he seems to follow his own character's ethic). Flynn is the pillar of Mercy and practices Zen detachment--but this is shown to be an entirely ineffectual way of avoiding the confrontation with his other half. The only result is an eternal stalemate; the Creator must enter into the darkness and drink the cup of bitterness in order to redeem it.
Clu is the pillar of Severity, the Robot Santa Claus in Futurama that condemns everyone by the Law of perfection (Galatians 3). He cannot truly create, but only reshape existing things. Though Clu had called in Sam with hopes of drawing Flynn out of hiding and stealing his Disc (the Omnific Word), resulting in the temporary victory of the Empire, this is the necessary event that at last facilitates the healing of the electronic Wasteland. Combining Mercy and Severity (Flynn and Clu) results in the death of the Old Gods. Flynn is Steve Jobs, the Zen master. Like Moses, he still has to die, while his Joshua-resonating Son enters the Promised Land.
The Dude: Look, man, I've got certain information, all right? Certain things have come to light. And, you know, has it ever occurred to you, that, instead of, uh, you know, running around, uh, uh, blaming me, you know, given the nature of all this new shit, you know, I-I-I-I... this could be a-a-a-a lot more, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, complex, I mean, it's not just, it might not be just such a simple... uh, you know?
(Inception)
Sam: Is she going to make it?
Flynn: I don't know, I gotta identify the damaged code. The sequence on it is just enormously complex.
Sam: But didn't you write it?
Flynn: (Laughs) Some I wrote, the rest of it is just, beyond me.
Sam: She's an Iso.
Flynn: Yeah, the last Iso.
Sam: All this time, you were just protecting her.
Flynn: She's the miracle, man. Everything I ever worked for. "A digital frontier to reshape the human condition."
Sam: I always thought that was just a plug line.
Flynn: In our world, she could change everything.
Flynn was trapped in the Grid after his wife died. Quorra (the Kore Kosmou) is a digital (artificial) creation, but a power higher than the Demiurge has intervened--he teaches her everything he knows and entrusts all power (his Identity Disc--"the Sword slays the god that his head may be offered on a Plate, or Disk") with her (his Shakti).
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| Flynn swaps identities with Quorra . . . |
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| . . . which is the only way to defeat Clu and escape. |
A parallel: Jeff Bridges as the Heavenly Father impregnates the Mary-resonating earth woman, Jenny . . . "But then, I happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way."
(Olivia Wilde?)
