NSFW: Tron porn will not ride you like a Light-cycle.

My relationship with Tron is kind of a weird one. I’m not really nostalgic for it, since I didn’t see the original film until I was an adult, and I wasn’t a big fan of Tron: Legacy. I did think both movies had some intriguing concepts, and wrote some fanfic to explore those concepts, but I’m not sure that counts as being in the fandom.

Okay, so Pron (it’s both a play on words for Tron and one letter away from a delightful Disney movie aimed at the tween set, so triple word score) starts off with some credits. Is it a bad sign that I recognize some of these names? April O’Neil, I know traditional news media isn’t doing so well, but did you really have to turn to this? I know the Turtles live in a sewer, but if they can afford a blimp, they can help you with the rent money. And Brian Street Team? That’s less porn star name and more boy band.

Interestingly, Pron isn’t doing the plot of Tron: Legacy, but the original Tron. Possibly because Tron: Legacy doesn’t have a plot. It starts off at the “adult arcade” of Kevin Fling (we would also have accepted Kevin Frig) in the “early 80s,” when men were men and if someone was trying to violate your privacy online, it was a child molester, not Facebook. Kevin is wondering where his files are, when we cut to the computer world, where the process of hacking into Encom (I guess) is represented by CLU (his avatar—shit, wrong overhyped sci-fi epic) trying to pick up a woman in a bicycle helmet. With Hall & Oates lyrics, because it’s the 80s.

So, wait, every time I watch a Youtube video, it involves two programs going reverse cowgirl? And I thought Tron couldn’t get more disturbing than implying that every video game player had massacred countless innocent Programs.

With two minutes on the clock, CLU is successful, so now I guess we really will find out if the villain of Tron: Legacy just needed to get laid. Uh, movie, you want to establish the premise, characters, anything? Every porn movie has people fucking, the attraction here is the Tron. Someone use Bit for a condom, something.

Meanwhile, Kevin is still hacking away—which you’d think would make the sex semi-consensual at best. I’m not sure what’s creepier, that he keeps using sexual metaphors for hacking a computer or that they’re accurate. Anyway, after thirty minutes of this—man, computers really were slow in the 80s—they finish off with Bicycle Helmet getting a ghetto spa treatment, if you know what I mean. Although, since they established in Tron: Legacy that only Users have blood, how can Programs have semen? Well, I guess you’d have to be a nerd to worry about that—or to buy a Tron porn parody, so whassup?

Also, Kevin Fling looks disturbingly like Tom Hardy, only with a bigger penis. Trust me, I've seen Bronson, I *know*.

Bicycle Helmet reveals she’s working for the Masturbation Control Program—oh, Pron, don’t ever change—which then blocks Kevin. Which I guess would be the real-world equivalent of CLU getting denied anal? Or something? Just then, porno-verse Lora shows up along with Alan Bradley. She calls Fling Flynn, which he vehemently denies, as well as resembling Kevin Flynn. Copyright humor, that’s where the laughs are at! And, uh, the Spider-Man and Superman porns got away with calling their characters Lois, Mary-Jane, Superman, Zod, all that. Look, porno, you don’t have to apologize for naming your characters after stupid puns. We love that about you.

Lora and Alan work at Encom, which is a sex toy manufacturer… okay, what does that have to do with computers? Why would they even need an ‘Erection Computer System,’ as Lora says? This shit is blowing my mind like watching Lost with a head cold.

Kevin shifts the topic from his hacking to Lora being a huge slut, which you really need to be Jeff Bridges to pull off. He reminisces about the time he and Lora dressed up in costumes and reenacted Space Invaders, him being space. Wait, wouldn’t the man be the invader and the woman be space, unless they were… oh. Kevin, you kinky son of a bitch.

After Alan confirms that instead of clothes, porn-Lora leaves dildos lying around—between this and Tron: Legacy, I’m not sure what Tron fans did to deserve this happening to their childhood—we go into the backstory. Oh, please let it involve off-screen genocide of characters we were only introduced to two minutes ago!

Kevin worked for ‘Enrection,’ an up-and-coming sex toy manufacturer, until ‘Ed Dill-licker’ (I didn’t think it was that kind of porno) stole his sex toy molds. Wait, so the Hello Kitty vibrator was plagiarized? Kevin kinda does the same joke, saying that Ed stole his idea for ‘Knight Rider nipple clamps’ before flashing a pair of pliers with KITT lights.

No wonder the Cylons nuked us.

Lora reveals that Ed’s shut out everyone with Level 69 access out of the system—which sounds impressive, but since there are only twelve levels, this is one of those cases where having to make sex puns out of everything backfires, like when Hugh G. Rection was elected over Barack Obama. There was a sex scandal almost immediately.

Ed’s cock-blocking has prevented Lora from testing out her webcam—and with modems that download ten kilobytes a second, who couldn’t use a webcam? It’d be like watching a black and white movie. A silent black and white movie. Directed by Terrence Malick. Kevin has similar sentiments, asking why wouldn’t someone just call each other up on a rotary phone. Didn’t they have touch-tone phones in the 80s? Or were they too busy dealing with Indian war parties and Barbary pirates to install them?

Lora plugs in the webcam, but the moment Kevin walks out the door, she and Alan get busy. Man, isn’t that just like a programmer, always too busy having hot sex to do their jobs? And Lora leaves her huge glasses on, because if she took them out, she might get confused and think she was cuckolding Alan with Daniel Jackson from Stargate Command.

In the time it took you to read this, he's died and been resurrected three times.

After they’re done, Kevin returns and tries to hack into MCP again. This time, the webcam zaps him with a laser, transporting him to a tyrannical world filled with gladiatorial combat and deadly enemies. And why didn’t this happen when Justin Bieber was posting on Youtube?

Inside the computer, a guy with tattoos is making out with a blonde. And if Programs don’t have blood, how do they have skin pigment to be changed by tattoo ink? And c’mon, we just had a sex scene and it’s an hour in. Shouldn’t we get some Disc Wars or light-cycles? Anyway, the guy starts “oh my god”ing (shouldn’t that be “oh my User”?) and ejaculates, causing the woman to derezz. Well, that explains why everyone else is so keen on facials.

Just then, Kevin materializes, and the threatened guy grabs a memory disc to defend himself. “You come in peace!” Kevin assures him, using the intergalactic language of vaudeville.

Kevin wanders off into the nightclub from Tron: Legacy, where leaning against the bar causes the music to stop playing with a record scratch and everyone to stare at him. We don’t take kindly to leaning in this establishment, stranger! Kevin speaks a series of ones and zeroes, since he didn’t just meet a program who spoke English, but it works and everyone laughs, declaring that he told a great binary joke and must be a comedian. Because you have to explain what binary is to someone who’d buy a Tron porn parody.

Kevin meets someone who I guess is meant to be Gem from Legacy, because God forbid anyone introduce themselves, let alone have characterization. She tells him his clothes are out of fashion and helps him change, a la Tron: Legacy, but bizarrely it doesn’t lead to sex.

Well, I don't see how this scene could possibly take a turn for the pornographic.

Having updated his wardrobe, she gives him her Light-Cycle and sends him on his way to the MCP. Then she has sex with a guy with ear plugs, and not the kind you need to watch Glee. Because when watching a sex scene, who doesn’t like being reminded of how grossly flesh can be distended?

Now, far be it for me to criticize, but in Legacy, there were four Sirens who undressed Sam Flynn. Even if you’re not going to literally adapt that scene, isn’t this the perfect excuse for a lesbian scene? A porn movie without a lesbian scene is like a child without laughter, or a Smallville episode without a sense of crushing disappointment.

Speaking of which, Serinda Swan, who played one of the Sirens, also played Zatanna on Smallville, where she tried to date-rape Clark Kent and later sent a wine bottle of magical roofies to Clark’s bachelor party. Crushing disappointment—all is right in the world.

Kevin goes to meet “the Warrior,” who as you might have guessed is a less attractive version of Olivia Wilde. Then again, who isn’t a less attractive version of Olivia Wilde? Though, c’mon, the Warrior? Her character’s name is Quorra. Clitorra? It’s right there, man. It’s practically gift-wrapped.

Pictured: Any given Olivia Wilde magazine cover *before* the airbrushing.

The Warrior—fuck it, I’m calling her Clitorra—plays coy, so Kevin tells her that he doesn’t have time to play games, unless it’s Space Paranoids. Now they decide to make obscure Tron references? Clitorra tells Kevin she’s been expecting him, since a friend from the bar called her on his “awesomely futuristic telephone.” Whereupon she shows him a rotary phone with Tron lighting. What, they couldn’t spring for an 80s cell phone to make a “cell phones in the 80s were huge” joke? That’s exactly the kind of thinking that Reagan wouldn’t have gone for if this really did take place in the 80s.

Clitorra agrees to direct him to the MCP, so long as he has sex with her, because coercing people into having sex with you is only wrong if you’re a boy. Naturally, Kevin goes along, because if you squint a little and just tried to apply logic to any two episodes of Glee, she’s Olivia Wilde, man!

Anyway, apparently Clitorra is satisfied by the exchange, so Kevin goes on his way, eager to get out of this world where attractive women demand sex with him and back to being a programmer. He finds MCP, who is… well, let’s just say ‘end of line’ is probably at the six-inch marker.

Unless he's black.

The MCP asks Kevin if he’s really so horny that he has to stop for sex on his “life-changing, action-packed journey.” Yeah, that time he changed clothes in a bar, really made him ponder the nature of mortality. Kevin points out that Masturbation Control Program lacks hands (with handy visual aids just lying there, since Tron was a cartoon) and if he had them, he could masturbate.

“I could finally hit the hard drive and output some sticky information,” MCP exclaims.

“You could whack a mole,” Kevin adds.

I’m… not sure how someone could work in the porn industry and have those be the best masturbation euphemisms they could come up with.

The MCP agrees to the deal and Kevin walks away… to the real world… I guess. With the files. Which are a literal folder of files. Huh. The credits roll and we find out that the unnamed Programs were called Cookie (okay, that’s kinda clever), Lisa (whuh?), and Steve (oh, forget it!).

Now, I try to look at these movies from a feminist perspective, so it’s interesting that the final sex scene is between Kevin and Clitorra. I’m guessing it’s meant as the climax. Generally, it’s hard to top fake Olivia Wilde in skintight black latex. While I’m glad they got someone who looked a little like Olivia Wilde, even if she doesn’t have breasts the size of a man’s head (just a midget’s head), I’m actually disappointed they didn’t do anything to capture Quorra’s personality, since that was one of the few bright spots of Legacy.

Clitorra is just an emotionless robot who wants sex. That would work for the Sirens, but what made Quorra engaging was that she had this adorable characterization. I realize that doesn’t lend itself to overnight cock storage, but characters with, you know, personalities and facial expressions are actually more attractive than nymphomaniac ciphers.

"I'm not sure I want to have sex with her. Could she be a bit more dead-eyed and joyless?"

It’s like the Starfire debacle. Pretty much any woman you draw in a comic book or cast in a porn movie can be attractive, so the way to set them apart is to make them more than just a warm body. Willingness to have sex isn’t, all by itself, such an attractive quality. I mean, they committed to portraying Lora as a nerd girl (read: she had glasses on, even during sex), so is it really so hard to get a porn star to act like she isn’t dead on the inside?

Rhetorical question.

And since I also like to muse on how porn parodies reflect on the originals, it’s interesting to note that Pron had to take female characters from both Tron movies to fill out the cast, and even then they had to make some up. It’s not like either movie had an ensemble cast, but the original Tron came out thirty years ago and had one female character. Tron: Legacy came out last year, and had… two. And while they were smart enough to not just make Quorra a love interest, being a McGuffin isn’t much better.

Maybe to supplant the Bechdel Test, we should have the Porn Parody Test. If your movie’s being turned into a porn film, are there enough women to keep it from being gay porn by default?

Of course, all the female characters in the world can't help if the *source material* is gay porn.