I know it has quite a niche audience (so you may want to give up reading now) but my brother and I have been waiting for the sequel to "Tron" for quite a while (i know, we're both geeks). Tron is the 1980's movie of a computer programmer who finds himself inside his own computer game and having to fight for his way out. The "30-years-later" sequel is the tale of his son. I watched it (again) yesterday and ended up chatting about it to a guy called Mike, waiting in a never-ending security line at Orlando airport this morning.Mike had seen the original and, after doing our comparisons, Mike mentioned the "spiritual" agenda in the movie. He'd dabbled with meditation and was interested to see the "Buddhist influence" in the movie. I'd not really noticed it until we started chatting, but I replied I was intrigued by the Christian analogy. The essence of the sequel is about the Creator's son entering into the created (virtual) world and becoming like one of the inhabitants - the programmes. Despite being known as the creator's son, he was mis-treated, hated and plans were made to kill him. All this because the ruler of that world had aspirations and wanted to be like the creator. Sounding familiar? It has a bit of a twist at the end (warning: spoiler coming if you haven't seen the movie and might want to!!) as the father sacrifices himself to save both his son and, in a way, his creation.
It wasn't quite as clear and complete as that when I was chatting to Mike and disappointingly just as I was getting to the "so where are you on this spiritual journey?" question, the good security folks got a surge of energy and we parted company. I miss my days in youth and schools work when it was part of my job description to spot this stuff and weave it into conversations in youth clubs but I do love it when the opportunity pops up anyway.
I have no idea where Mike is at or where he is heading but do pray he gets to his destination.
