With a digitally de-aged face, Jeff Bridges returns as video game whiz Kevin Flynn, who, we learn via flashback to 1989, was the head of ENCOM and the father of a young son named Sam when, mysteriously, he disappeared. Jump ahead to the present, and Sam (played by Garrett Hedlund) is a tech savvy rebel without a cause who is lured to Flynn�s Arcade and, just like daddy in the first film, zapped into a computer wonderland where �users� aren�t welcome and the programs they created are in charge.

Sam is quickly captured and sentenced to the gaming arena, where he battles for his life and is discovered to be human. This brings him to the attention of Clu (far from his previous incarnation as, well, a dork), the new Master Control Program on the block. (Clu 2.0 is also played by Bridges, again with the de-aged face that at times makes him look like a refugee from Shrek�s Far Far Away.) Now a corrupted program, Clu sends Sam back to the games for a light cycle match to the death.

However, Sam is saved by a comely program named Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who reunites him with his long lost father (embodied by the grizzly Bridges of Crazy Heart fame), now an outcast in the world he literally created. Sam learns that the portal to the outside world will close soon, so he rashly returns to the Grid to seek out the help of a rogue program known as Zuse (Michael Sheen, channeling Alan Cumming), a foppish club owner in Lady Gaga wear, who quickly betrays him. Papa Flynn and Quorra come to the rescue, and the trio escapes to a Solar Sailer heading to the portal, with Clu� who has his own plans for using the portal� in close pursuit�