The question is whether Tron is a story about a place that is not what it seems to be, or a place full of people who cannot be what they are. Either way it leads to a lot of hackneyed fight scenes, and that’s what I find fascinating. Here we have people who are clearly not where they say they are. There is no part of your computer that does that.
And all they can think to do is fight. They fight for each other’s amusement. With the addition of Tron Legacy to the canon, which does a wonderful job of elucidating the thematically bland Tron with brilliant visuals but no additions to the story whatsoever, I think we get closer to the question of what the Grid is.
It’s Faerie.
Literally. It is the land of dreams. It is obvious that we are not inside a computer, but inside the dreams of a computer. Or, to be more precise, the dreams of a bunch of CGI animators.
By not dealing with this problem at all, Tron has allowed itself to describe it perfectly, much like a handful of scattered sand can reveal the outlines of a hidden door.
Or I hear that it can. I’ve never tried it, but I’ve seen it in movies.