The Master Control Program, also known as the MCP. As Tron would say: ugly, isn't it?
It's been a while since my last proposal, but here I am again to propose another villain, this time not from an indie product but instead from a very popular franchise, one that I grew up with. I debated whether this should be my next candidate or if I should save it for later, but after some consideration, I decided to make this proposal now.
However, I want to make some very important notes before starting. This proposal is only for the version of the character present in the Kingdom Hearts games, not its movie counterpart. While some Disney villains from the Kingdom Hearts franchise are very similar to their movie counterparts, this specific character has many differences, a separate story and unique crimes compared to its movie version. As such, discussing both in one proposal would be counterintuitive. Not only that, but with "Tron: Ares" in production, it would be risky to propose any villain from that franchise right now. So, instead, I will take a look at its Kingdom Hearts version and see if it can qualify, so any discussion of the Tron movie should be left for another day. And as always, this proposal contains spoilers for the game, so I highly suggest either playing it or watching some gameplays before reading the proposal. But if you don't mind spoilers, then scroll down without problems.
Now that this is clarified, let's dive right into it!
What's the work?[]
Kingdom Hearts is a game franchise composed of several games and titles, with three mainline games and eight spin-offs (depending on how you count, but all of them are just as important as the mainline ones) at the time of writing this proposal. A fourth mainline game and a ninth spin-off are both in development, but no news has been announced at the moment for either of them. The story of the games is quite long, so I will try to be as brief as possible.
The story of the franchise revolves around Sora, a young boy who lives in a world called Destiny Island until said world is destroyed by beings known as Heartless and his two best friends, Riku and Kairi, disappear. During this attack, he is chosen by the Keyblade, the only weapon that can destroy the Heartless, and while searching for his friends in Traverse Town (another world), he is approached by Donald and Goofy, who were searching for him due to King Mickey's instructions to find the one chosen by the Keyblade. The three begin to travel across different worlds (inspired by Disney movies), solving many problems and stopping the group of villains that commands the Heartless. A lot happens, and some time later, another group known as Organization XIII threatens the worlds, prompting the three to travel again to find a way to stop them. The group arrives at the Hollow Bastion, where a computer can help them gain more informations about their enemies, but they are unaware that inside it lurks a ruthless program that is merely waiting for its chance to take over...
Who is the MCP? What did it do?[]
| “ | Tron... Don't you understand? We don't need Users. We've advanced... they are superfluous. | „ |
| ~ The MCP explaining how it views humans. |
The Master Control Program, better known in the game as the MCP, is the program that took over Ansem's computer. It was initially developed by a company called ENCOM (the same company from the movies), alongside the entire computer system that included Tron and Sark. However, the system was destroyed at some point, leading to it being forgotten (and becoming the sleeping world known as The Grid). Thankfully, the ruler of the Radiant Garden, a man known as Ansem the Wise, found the old system and created a copy of it for his own network, which he would later use for his studies on Hearts, Heartless, Nobodies, and such. Alongside the system, he also copied every program in it, including Tron, Sark and the MCP, but he wisely decided to store the latter away after realizing how dangerous it could be. However, when the Radiant Garden fell because of Xehanort (long story short, he entered Terra's body, had amnesia, remembered everything and then brought chaos on the world, causing it to be renamed "Hollow Bastion"), the MCP was reactivated and took over the system once again.
Some time later, Ansem's computer is found once again by the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee, formed by Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Cid and Merlin. When Sora, Donald and Goofy return to the Hollow Bastion, they share the good news, and in the hope of finding some important information to battle against those threatening the worlds (a group called Organization XIII), they try to access it. Not knowing the password, they begin to enter random words, which angers the MCP, who drags them into the system, a world called Space Paranoids, where they are captured by Sark and meet Tron in the prison, who explains to them where they are and what the MCP is.
While the group manages to escape the cell and tries to power up a terminal so that the three Users (humans from the real world) can return to the real world, Sark contacts the MCP, asking it why he still hasn't de-rezzed Tron. The program tells him that he still hasn't located the password for the DTD, the dataspace, which would allow it to have full access to the system and finally take over it completely. At that moment, the alarm starts ringing, and the MCP tells Sark to stop the anomalies, or else he will face the consequences. Before Sora, Donald and Goofy go back to the real world, Tron asks them to find the password for the DTD so that he can access his previous functions and try to restore the system to how it was before the MCP rewrote everything. The three return to the real world and, thanks to King Mickey's help, they find the password, which prompts them to go back to Space Paranoids to give it to Tron. However, they are instead dragged into a mortal game by the MCP, but they manage to escape and regroup with Tron, deciding to go together to the dataspace.
The four use the password, restoring Tron to all of his original functions, but also accidentally granting access to the DTD to the MCP, who discovers an emergency destruct program for the town, intending to exterminate all the Users in the outside world with it. Tron quickly manages to override its authority and change the password, but the MCP initiates the loading of the Hostile Program, a powerful entity that it plans to unleash on the town to completely destroy it. The group arrives before the Hostile Program can enter the outside world, and they defeat it after a long and hard-fought battle. Tron states that, now that he has all of his functions, he can attempt to take the system away from the MCP, and he tells them to return to the real world, where they will be able to access the DTD through the new password.
A lot happens as Sora, Donald and Goofy fight an army of Heartless before traveling to other worlds once again. After a while, they return to the Hollow Bastion, only to find it overrun by electronic Heartless, with the defensive mechanism hostile towards them. The group manages to meet Leon and the others, who explain that the MCP has taken over the system once again and is now in full control of Ansem's computer, using its data to create an army of Heartless to attack the town. The Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee is beginning to work on an MCP Eradication program, but they first need to get in contact with Tron, prompting Sora, Donald and Goofy to return inside the computer to search for him. They find him in the Game Grid, where the MCP trapped him to be killed by the electronic Heartless, but the three manage to defeat the creatures and save him.
Tron explains to them that the MCP is ready to wage war against the Users of the outside world and must be stopped quickly. After this, they head to the I/O Tower, where Leon and the others will upload the MCP Eradication program. After Cid finishes it and Merlin powers it up with his magic, Leon brings the disk with the program to the computer room, where Aerith successfully uploads it despite the MCP blocking access to the Users. Tron manages to obtain the program, and the group begins moving toward the tower where the MCP is located, but they are attacked by a vast number of electronic Heartless on their way. Despite this, they reach the MCP, where Sark is waiting and attacks them, but they successfully defeat him. Now face-to-face with the MCP itself, it tells Tron that they don't need Users and have advanced beyond needing them, urging him to join it in place of Sark so they can control the world. Tron, of course, refuses, at which point the MCP transfers its functions to Sark's body, controlling him like a puppet and using him to attack the group. After a long battle, however, they manage to use the MCP Eradication program to finally erase it, putting an end to its plans once and for all.
Mitigating factors?[]
| “ | The Master Control Program. He rules the system as the chief control program. Instead of working for the users, the MCP is planning to take over the system for himself. By refusing to follow the users' orders and trying to enact his evil plan, he's causing chaos among the other programs. | „ |
| ~ Jiminy's Journal's entry about the MCP, which straight up confirms it has full Moral Agency. |
As with every AI, the main problem that may arise with the MCP is Moral Agency, since it may have been programmed to act this way or it could be pushing its programming to the extreme (similar to the other Tron villain, CLU). However, we have a very straightforward confirmation in its entry in Jiminy's Journal that states it is willingly going against its programming, refusing to follow any orders from the Users, and instead pursuing its own evil plans. As such, there are no issues with its Moral Agency.
For the rest, there is honestly not much to say. It clearly doesn't care about Sark, as it threatens to punish him if he fails to capture Sora, Donald and Goofy, and it shows no reaction when Tron kills him in front of it. Additionally, giving Sark its functions is solely to use him as a puppet rather than out of any genuine concern. And, while it does invite Tron to join it, it clearly does so out of pragmatism, seeing him as a useful tool rather than having any actual care for him, especially since it tries to kill him immediately after he refuses and would have killed him earlier if it had access to the DTD.
Overall, it really lacks any potential mitigating factors, it is clearly written to be a purely evil character, and it shows.
Heinous Standards?[]
The Hostile Program, the being that the MCP wanted to unleash upon the Hollow Bastion. It's Jiminy's Journal's entry says: "An executable called from the DTD dataspace to destroy the town."
| “ | What's this? An emergency destruct program for the town. Let's see how it performs. | „ |
| ~ The MCP seconds after gaining full access to the DTD and immediately pursuing the genocidal route. |
This might be the most complicated part of the proposal, mainly because the KH franchise has a rather large number of heinous villains. There are several Disney villains from each world, and in addition to them, there are original villains like Xehanort, Vanitas, Ansem, Xemnas, Maleficent and others. How does the MCP compare to them? Well, I think the first thing to note is that the main group of antagonists can't really be compared to it due to an immense resource difference. And by that, I mean that the difference is of literally cosmic proportions.
To give a bit of context to those who don't know much about the franchise, the Universe in KH is divided into different worlds, each completely isolated and separate from each other. The main antagonists of the franchise, such as The Darkness, Xehanort, Vanitas, and the Organization XIII, have all means to travel across all the worlds, allowing them to access any world they desire. They can also control immense and nearly endless armies of Heartless and possess the power to singlehandedly devastate a world without many problems, as seen with Xehanort and the Land of Departure. Even among the Disney villains, the Council of Disney Villains can also travel across the worlds and comand armies of Heartless to destroy entire worlds by corrupting their Hearts.
Meanwhile, the MCP is just a computer program, confined in a computer and unable to fully affect the outside world of Hollow Bastion without access to the DTD, while also having access to a significantly lower number of Heartless, being able to only control the electronic ones from its world. When it gains access to more resources, it immediately uses them to be as destructive as possible. It has access to the DTD for a few seconds before Tron changes the password to lock it out, and in that brief window, it attempts to commit genocide against the Users of the external world by using the Hostile Program. The same occurs when it hacks into the Heartless production machine, which it instantly uses to wage war against humanity by attacking the town.
Aside from the previously mentioned villains that can travel between worlds, no other villain attempts destruction on such a large scale among the Disney ones. Several attempt to conquer their respective worlds, even resorting to violence with the Heartless, but none seeks to destroy an entire world like the MCP (I will refers to its attempt to destroy the town of the Hollow Bastion as "destroying an entire world" because we know for a fact that's the only town within that world). It also helps that a significant number of Disney villains aren't as heinous as their movie counterparts, mostly because they lack many of their crimes. Of those that might be able to compete, there is Frollo, who, however, never attempts destruction on such a vast scale, and possibly the villain from the other Tron movie, CLU, who, in this case, is actually notably less heinous than the MCP for a number of reasons: he plans to destroy the User's world, however this heavily relies on Fridge Horror since we never see that version of the User's world, and given that he is in a Sleeping World that represents the original program that was destroyed, he might not even be able to access that outside world for all we know.
Talking about the Disney villains that are part of the Council of Disney Villains, while they do destroy several worlds, this relies mainly on Fridge Horror, and all they do on-screen is attempt to conquer their respective worlds by using the Heartless and trying to find the Keyhole of their world. Even Maleficent herself suffers from the same problems as the others, despite being by far the most heinous among them. I would say that the MCP stands out compared to them, given that it attempts to exterminate an entire world on-screen, and does so twice too. There might be other Disney villains that I am forgetting, but regardless, I would personally argue that the MCP sets the heinous standard for the villains of the individual worlds while simultaneously possessing far lower resources than any of them.
But even disregarding the huge difference in resources, as I am aware that resources alone are not a free pass, I would say that the MCP stands out even among the other genocidal villains due to the nature of the destruction it would cause. The Council of Disney Villains destroys several worlds in the first game, sure, but not only does this heavily relies on Fridge Horror (since we only see their Heartless destroy Destiny Island and the rest occur off-screen), but also all of those worlds are restored by the end of the game. This destruction relies on corrupting the Hearts of the worlds with darkness to cause a collapse and send them to the Kingdom Hearts of Worlds, and once this one is closed it restores all of what was destroyed. Meanwhile, Xehanort aimed to use Kingdom Hearts to erase everything and turn all of existence into a white, pure void, while the Darkness intended to envelop the world in darkness.
Compared to them, I would say that the MCP's attempted genocides are more brutal, as they would not merely cause a collapse of the world or erase everything. Instead, it unleashes upon the Hollow Bastion a Hostile Program that would physically destroy the entire town and exterminate its inhabitants, killing everyone permanently with no chance of coming back, unlike the world destructions perpetrated by the Council of Disney Villains. To further differentiate this, it should be noted that the Hostile Program is not a Heartless and, as such, it doesn't turn others into Heartless; those killed by it would simply die with no Heartless or Nobody being generated, making these potential deaths permanent. It also attempts a second genocide, which involves sending a never-ending army of Heartless to overrun the city, trying to kill anyone who opposes it while also taking over the town's defense system. This is unique compared to others since it directly involves the Heartless killing everyone rather than just using them to collect Hearts or cause chaos. These are quite unique attempts at genocide (especially the first one), and I believe they make it stand out compared to the others, even if they are not on the same scale as those attempted by other villains due to its lack of access to other worlds. However, I assure you that if it did have such access, it would instantly attempt to exterminate Users across all worlds.
Overall, I would say that it passes. Despite having a ridiculously low amount of resources compared to most other villains, as it is just a computer program that can affect the real world in very limited ways and has no access to other worlds, it does the worst it can with what little it has. It attempts genocide on the world of Hollow Bastion twice in generally unique ways, especially the first time, and sets the standard for world-exclusive villains in the franchise.
Verdict?[]
I would say that he is a yes. Moral Agency is not an issue since the journal itself confirms it is operating outside of its own programming, and due to low resources and two attempted genocides executed in a unique way compared to the larger-scale villains, I would assert it has enough to stand out on its own. But as always, I will let you all decide.