The Flaws of Sam Flynn

Sam Flynn is a bit of a tool.  There, I said it.

The bar was raised when it came to Tron:  Legacy.  Primarily because the trailer came out OVER a year before the movie came out.  That's one of the reasons The Phantom Menace and the Matrix Sequels failed; the hype around them was just SO big.

But one of the reasons why I myself didn't love Tron: Legacy was the main protagonist, Sam Flynn.

We meet him riding a motorcycle super fast and evading the police.  I will say this, at least he's wearing a freaking helmet.  One cliche' of some movie "bad boys" is that they ride a motorcycle and are too cool to wear protective headgear:  See Star Trek (2009), Top Gun and that piece-of-crap movie Taylor Lautner did in recent years.

He breaks into ENCOM, his father's company and commits more crimes.  We find out that he's a primary share holder of stock with the company and that the software made by ENCOM was SUPPOSED to be free.  But if you're a major shareholder, surely you can just WALK IN and not need to sneak in.  He already has pull in the company and all this sneaking around and hacking is pointless.

Just seems pointless to me, it would have made more sense if maybe ENCOM was taken from him somehow though legal means.  Here he's just a rich kid acting out because he's mad.  If you want your dad's company to start acting differently, why not take a role in it?  You have shares, you have power, you have the opportunity to make the changes you want.

Now I'm not an expert in business, but I know that his philosophy of giving stuff away just doesn't work.  See Sam, there are people at ENCOM who make things to sell, they're call software designers.  There are people who answer phones, work security, clean the place up, executives to make sure the place functions.  All these people don't work for free, they have bills to pay and need to work.  If he gave everything away for free, the company would fold in a week and bye bye to your money.  Trust me, his tune would change in a heartbeat.

But another thing that aggravates is here we have this young man preaching this and who released this movie?  DISNEY.  As big of a fan I am of Disney's products, they're the king of over-charging for everything they make.  And here they release a movie that says "giving stuff away is cool!"

But still...

After Sam finds his dad and they escape the bad guys, they hitch a ride.  During which, Sam brings his dad up to speed as to what's been going on in the world.  According to Sam, the world is a terrible place.  Let's not mention the fact that we won the cold war.  Nah.

But among all the terrible things going on, he mentions:

"Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer."

This, from the young man with a trust fund.  You're one of those rich people, pal.  You know, if you feel guilty about having all that money, I'm sure there are people who would love to take it from you.

And at the end, he puts Alan Bradley in charge of ENCOM, like he has the power to snap his fingers and do so.  A question I have:  IF it was that easy to just fix the problems with ENCOM, why didn't you do that in the first place?

Over all, many people didn't like Tron: Legacy for many reasons.  This was mine.  That, and the plot was way more complex than it needed to be.  Don't know why.  They needed to keep it simple and they didn't.

Sam is supposed to be a hero of some sort and rule one if you have a hero in your story:  

You have to LIKE THEM.