So, Why is YORI Important to Tron?

So why should anybody care about "YORI," a character from the original 1982 TRON movie now that there has been a brand new update? Why should we? First of all, you must ask yourself just who was this "YORI" and what was she in this old TRON movie. She is one of a trio of heroes who defeated the MCP, and of course "Tron's" main squeeze. The first question is, wasn't she more than that? Yes, as a matter of fact, she was. As each character played a dual role in TRON, portraying a 'real world' person, and an 'electronic' person in the "Grid," the alter-egos or 'avatars' if you will must be understood within the context of the story. Alan Bradley, played by Bruce Boxleitner was a "User" of a program in the computer called "Tron." Kevin Flynn was a "User" of a program called "CLU," and of course Cindy Morgan played Lora Baines, who we must assume was the "User" of a program called "Yori."

Our trio in the real world breaks into Encom to retrieve some files, and once Flynn is digitized by Lora's laser, we do not see or hear from "Lora" again until the very end. What happens is that when we see "Yori" we (and Kevin Flynn) wonder if it is Lora, we cannot be shown Lora up to this point, and back in the 80s, the weirdness of this event and the whole idea of 'ater egos' within a computer system was pretty strange, we are pleasantly surprised to see Lora as Yori once we've seen Flynn have some rather crazy adventures. Her appearance is that of strange familiarity, and we never see what is going on in the 'real world' once Flynn is inside. We do hear ALAN's voice when Tron contacts his 'User.'

But who the hell are all these people anyway? The 'electronic people' in TRON are not exactly 'human' and they're not exactly entirely to be understood as plain characters in an adventure plot. They are extensions of our human characters at the beginning, but they are NOT them, as we might understand an 'avatar' or 'alter ego' they are 'programs' which are being 'used' by our 'Users,' our human characters at the beginning. So when Flynn runs into them, he's human, and they are not the people he knows, they are 'programs' which seem to be awake, aware and emotional beings. For the sake of the story they perform as humans might, but in some very strange ways, personified computer applications, they are endowed with faces of their "Users" and strangely enough, seem to carry on some part of the personalities of their 'Users.'

Alan is a bit of an uptight programmer, he's created a kind of security program, which he wants to apply to the MCP. He is furious when he's locked out of the system. He just wants 'user freedom.' This is of course what "TRON" wants, and in the electronic world, Alan's counterpart is a heroic fighter, not a computer nerd, and big bad tough guy. He appears to embody that which Alan really wants to be. Lora Baines is a genius who has invented a digitizing teleportation laser for Encom. It may be that her work is tedius, perhaps she designed the 'Solar Sailer' which is a painting hanging in Dillinger's office, and was coldly rejected and told that she wasn't hired to create flights of fancy, and went back to work in the cold sterile lab in the basement, applying her scientific skills...to turn something...into nothing. Her opposite, her counterpart in the electronic world is "Yori," and when we meet her, she's hypnotized by the work of overseeing the 'resolution' or construction of the Solar Sailer, spouting numbers and seemingly in a dull and boring job working for Sark. This is no coincidence. Our characters are, in a way, presented as perhaps how they wish they could be, as later, Yori steals the Solar Sailer with Tron to destroy the MCP. She reclaims what could be her own beautiful design.

Yori is a design program. She is described in the novel this way as well, as a 'design program.' Yori is like a C.A.D. program, or computer-aided design, or for the everyman, Photoshop, or Paintshop, etc. She expresses a secret and 'illegal' creativity in the deleted scene, by being able to change her apartment into a brilliantly psychedelic colored, or perhaps fractal designed apartment. Inside, she's creative, she's an artist, and as Tron is the "Liberator" and personifies that, she is literally, "Creativity." Yori's presence in the movie isn't as simple as "Tron's squeeze" or the "damsel in distress" she's unusual in that she is the creative spirit. Tron is the burning desire for freedom, and the strength to achieve it, Flynn is the mischievous hacker, the intelligence in the system, he's the mind, and free-thinking part of the equation, and what you have left is Yori, the creativity, the soul of beauty, and art.

The importance of Yori in TRON is now clear, and so now that we've intellectually pegged it down, why does any of this matter? The spirit of "TRON" is essentially that of inspiration in a world which is bogged down in cold sterile technology. Numbers. Breaking free, to not be controlled and imprisoned and enslaved by that system, but to use it, to be yourself, and be free, otherwise that system is useless to us humans.

Yori represents what must not be forgotten in an age of technology as advanced (and advancing) as ours today, like any character in such a mythological film, we often need to be reminded as we become more and more numbed by our technology that we need creativity, we need art, we need it to makes sense out of what is going on, and we need it to be free. If we end up living in a cold sterile computerized world, and everyone mindlessly works for the system, using their talents to do nothing but devise and design weapons and sterile technical things which will do us all harm one day, than Yori will truly be dead. Just as certain characters we celebrate and enjoy because of what they MEAN, it would be a mistake to leave Yori behind, deleted, consigned to the abandonware shelf, only to be replaced by the latest cliche.

Tron is indeed a cult film, and a classic of cinema in that we've seen nothing like it before it, and nothing like it since, and as we are all happy they have finally brought it back to the public consciousness, we also need to know what happened to our characters. We don't all read comics and play videogames, so the missing element was of course where's Lora Baines and where's Yori? Yori had no particular replacement, and when certain characters like TRON or FLYNN begin to represent certain things in culture, we need to know where the other pieces are and as the meanings can be updated and changed to say something new, as in LEGACY, we still have a missing piece, and it need not be missing for long, as two more TRON projects are forthcoming, UPRISING and a third picture. There is nothing more magical than having original cast members reprise their roles, and nothing more cheap and depressing than having them replaced. Join this internet campaign to demand that if they want to continue TRON, it only MAKES SENSE to follow up this inspirational character, and that we still have CINDY MORGAN here to continue that role, so it only makes sense for her return. Once people realize just what YORI means in the context of what TRON means to a lot of people, it will MAKE SENSE to have her come back and finish the story.