YORI: Horror vacui

Something is happening because Disney created a vacuum. Out of the machine cometh a ghost, and with that, an old idea has become new again. Nature abhors a vacuum. In physics horror vacui is a theory first proposed by Aristotle in the Fourth book of Physics (or Physica) that nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty.

TRON LEGACY had three major flaws in my opinion, and one of those flaws was not necessarily because YORI, LORA BAINES, nor Cindy Morgan were absent, and though it contained certain flaws, it still managed to shine in the face of them, and mean something, but with the absence of Yori/Lora Baines/Cindy Morgan, it essentially forces the issue. What happened to Yori? To Lora?

The first flaw was 3-D, and essentially because this may have lost them many viewers. I did not go to the theater to see TRON LEGACY, I bought it and watched it on DVD. I don't wish to be distracted while being absorbed in a story. When 3-D crap comes flying off the screen, it is only distracting from the story, by taking you and somehow giving you this artificial sense that something is 'three dimensional' or 'real' while you're sitting in a movie theater is a really bad idea from a storytelling sense. The second flaw was computer generated Jeff Bridges. It would have worked better if they only used that effect while inside the 'computer world,' and not in scenes at the beginning which are supposed to reflect 'reality' or normal life outside the Grid. It is somehow more believable inside the 'Grid' because these are, after all, computer generated people. The third flaw is character development of "TRON" and "QUORRA."

However, I do think this movie was even still good enough to survive, entertain, make people think and be 're-watchable' though it contained these obvious flaws. That is saying something. It is still the sort of movie one can watch again and again, for there are many other layers to it which are fascinating. It also brought "TRON" back into public consciousness, thus inspiring a massive amount of artwork, both audio and visual. The "Tron Phenomenon" is back, and is still lurking around. Who's still painting themselves blue because of Avatar? Anybody make Avatar Furniture? Anybody do Avatar Remixes?

The absence of Cindy Morgan however has done one thing in particular, and that is to magnify what her characters were, and what they represented in the original TRON movie. What Disney has done here is they've ignored something that really shouldn't

have been ignored, and though they have two more opportunities to explain, right now what matters is that we look at who YORI and LORA were in this crazy movie which has inspired so many people. In a way, by not developing 'TRON' or 'RINZLER' in TRON LEGACY, they have made people only more curious, they have in effect created a new 'Boba Fett.'

'Boba Fett' is a character created by Ralph McQuarrie for Star Wars, which barely appeared, but when he did, it made quite an impact, and so much so that Boba Fett is one of the major 'iconic' characters in Star Wars. His lack of dialogue, mystery and obscurity brought him to the forefront in ways that George Lucas had never really intended. "Rinzler" ends up with a motivationally flawed 'redemption' in terms of the story, but has captured the imaginations of many new TRON fans. The character has been the focus of countless speculations as to what happened to him and what will happen to him in future installments.

What is evident now, regarding "YORI" is that we have a character who, while the TRON story continues, is left in the shadows. Nature abhors a vacuum. The story of Lora and Alan, and Yori and Tron is yet to be told. But even more interesting is what can happen with a character after movies have come and gone, and to what status the public holds them, and what kind of icon they became, and still can become. When one looks at "YORI" one finds something interesting when placed into the context of the world of internet memes and pop-icons, mythological ideas. A meme spreads generally on its own, a 'viral video' is what it is because people will find it fascinating for whatever reasons, and though it takes some time for many of these things, others take no time at all. In this case, YORI's time hasn't fully come, but it is really just around the corner, and perhaps if DISNEY is smart, they will see just what is going on here.

YORI ended up in a void, probably because the young writers had no idea how to interpret YORI or what to do with the character, but possibly for other reasons, which no one can speculate on, but one thing YORI does represent is the currently unfulfilled potential of

the internet's "USERS" to take their inspiration from the TRON MOVIES, and fuse them intellectually with their own artistic talents and abilities. YORI in a literal context of the story, is a 'design program,' in an allegorical sense, the fulfillment of the USER to utilize the creativity, which may not have yet fully been explored. YORI is the element of 'chaos' inside the computer system, which ends up rebelling and overthrowing the status quo, aiding programs such as TRON, and FLYNN himself, in attaining true 'usefulness' of her technological application. This concept in TRON, is the 'meaning' of which the 'programs' seek. When they are cut off from their USERS by the MCP, they begin to act on their own. They retain some sort of echo or reverberation, and likeness of their creators, or Users. YORI gets TRON to his User, Alan One. Lora gets Alan to Flynn, so they can hack into the system. Lora gets Flynn into the Grid, in a way, and in a way, gets him to the beam, to get out. She is a means, and without her, our heroes would be still battling on the Grid against Sark.

Her integral 'usefulness' also plays on the idea of both what she is as a program, as well as who she is to these characters. Yori's creativity in her apartment in the deleted scene shows that she's standing up to the system to fulfill herself in one way, and this creativity by elaborate artistic decoration or expression, is also something by which TRON or the audience can have an admiration for, even romantically, as it is presented in the deleted scene. She isn't just a design program, she's a design-er. The value of this cannot be discounted, especially in the importance of defeating the tyranny represented by the MCP, but also it is important to responding to the terror of these new technologies we create. If we do not apply art to these things, not by designing them, but by examining them, by abstractly imagining something 'about' them, we will all fail miserably, and this technology will overtake us all.

We may need the spirit of Freedom and courage of Tron, and the cleverness and ingenuity of Flynn, but we will also need the Chaos of Yori. In Tron Legacy, because the roles become reversed to illustrate a point, that Tron and Clu have become evil, our creations have gotten away from us, they will hold us to the 'perfections' we demand of them, we would have probably seen Yori as the Chaos of destruction, and had they thought about it, they would have included her, as probably designing the weapons by which CLU would destroy the ISOs, however this is not particularly necessary, and by being the 'odd man out,' or woman in this case, YORI's chaos could very well have brought the ISOs into existence. I cannot write TRON 3, so I cannot tell you what they will do with the character, and I cannot tell the writers what to do with the character, but I can recommend what you can do with the character, and that is to see it for what it is.

Some may consider this whole idea, "a nerd's conceptual view of the world" with his silly cult film icons, catch-phrases and mythic symbols, but tell that to those guys who named the space program going to the moon, "Apollo." It is just the way things seem to happen. In this case, and perhaps even this site we're caught up in the Yori meme, maybe we're responsible for it, maybe not, but all we're saying is that there is something to this. Its there in the void, ready to be reached for, and it can happen and Chaos can then spread through the Grid.

Yori ends up being something particularly 'needed' at this time, and because this character isn't a cliche like Quorra, and represents something to us in our endeavor to understand technology and the world, acting as an Icon for these ideas, once people begin to grasp the significance, they will see, that even while TRON is still becoming an internet icon of freedom, Yori has another dimension to add, which is nowhere else to be seen, from any other cultural meme.

Yori not only 'Lives,' Yori's chaos will flow into this vacuum, and in this very odd way in which these things work, restore balance to the Grid.

Yori Programming Feats

A long time ago, at a place called the Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox put a bunch of people together to develop a whole lot of stuff for what might be considered the sort of computers we use now. This was before Bill Gates and Steve Jobs messed about with Microsoft and Apple. Many things were discovered and invented there, and it might have been the sort of place Alan Bradley worked.

Two men who worked there were to later co-found a company called Adobe. John Warnock and Charles Geschke would develop a graphics language controlling printing. When Apple finally developed a graphical interface for their personal computers, and then a way you could change fonts and manipulate images, it was all fine and well, but you sure couldn't print that crap, you could only look at it on your screen. Warnock and Geschke's 'page description language' and PostScript, thus brought the digital design from the digital realm to the real world, and voila, stuff from your computer could be brought forth, manifested, onto a printed page.

While Computer-Aided Design goes all the way back to 1960, for the masses, the everyman, it might have been this moment, and Adobe's programs which made it possible for you, for me, for all of us, to have what we have, in the way of designing, and printing, bringing ideas into the Three-Dimensional world, through the device you are utilizing to read this article.

At Encom, what would have been a separate entity which pre-dated Apple and Microsoft, inside a single mainframe, and not a personal computer, existed a program which was a particularly unique design application. It was able to command a series of sub-functions, all handling various details of the design process, one for color perhaps, one for wire-framing, one for rendering, and put the ideas and designs of the USERS into digital reality. This program was called YORI.

We do not know who created this program, but it has been speculated that Dr.Lora Baines developed it. At Encom, she created the Digitizing Laser, which could store physical objects in a computer. It may be that this idea came from her research into the algorithms of the computer-aided design process, and how objects exist in virtual space.

Yori, during the Program Rebellion, when the MCP denied the USERS access, along with other Programs seemed to develop minds of their own, and while a program called Tron was able to literally 'fight back' against the Master Control Program, other programs were able to detach, and refuse commands from the MCP to seemingly operate on their own.

As Tron was able to utilize and manipulate various conceptual elements from different programming systems, even though he was applied, along with hundreds of other programs to become video games by the MCP, Yori was also able to find some way to take a 3-D simulation called the 'Solar Sailer' and apply it to use in navigation to escape the permutations of the MCP. Nobody knows to this day just how all these programs were able to do these things, and we are only recently beginning to understand.

Yori managed to utilize all the functions of a C.A.D. program, and apply all sorts of seemingly unrelated theories and algorithms along with Tron and User Flynn, to crash the Master Control Program, which was itself developing its own Artificial Intelligence.

What should have been, can be.

So there's some nasty programs out there suggesting that Lora Bradley is dead...that Yori was 'deleted,' or is perhaps stuck in an old computer somewhere at Encom. Yes, that's creative thinking. How did CLU and TRON end up in a new one? Do I need to elaborate? Because a writer put them there. So don't tell me 'Yori is Dead.' As for comic books and video game stories. I never read them. Didn't play the game. It didn't happen, those things are not films...and we all know that if it didn't happen in the movie...it didn't happen.

There are dozens of reasonable and clever ways to have Yori and/or Lora in the next TRON projects. If season 1 has already been written, well, is it done yet? We better have a memory or two of ole' Tron thinking back to the time he crushed the MCP... if not that, we have all sorts of considerations here... Yori can be as easily 'rebooted' as CLU or TRON were, so don't hand me this crap about 'she's on the OTHER Grid.' I don't have a problem with TRON Chapter 2 not necessarily including her, because she turns up in Part 3...not at all, but we all know they had no such thing in mind.

Isn't it possible that Quorra finds the old YORI program on a computer back at Encom, when she's busy learning about 'the real world?' Isn't it possible that Lora and Alan could tinker with that laser in FLYNN's basement, thus projecting them onto the Grid? Isn't it possible that YORI could have something to do with the creation of the ISOs? Isn't it possible that Lora could wind up having a lot to do with future Encom technology? It isn't as if there's no possibility that she could return in any logical storytelling sense. Face it, they completely ignored and left the character out, but as I said, it's nothing that can't be fixed. It would be great to have Lora back, perhaps she hacks into the new Grid, and begins creating her own world in there, or perhaps she's there to offer some advice to Quorra or Sam in the next adventure. Ultimately, we know there is nothing stopping them from including this main and integral character, or her Program, Yori.

Did they cut Dr.McCoy out of the Star Trek films because he's just not cool enough to include? Certainly not. The Trio began in the real world, and ended up in the Grid as TRON, FLYNN, and YORI.

So, what can you do to help?

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.