Director: Joachim Rønning
Writers: Jesse Wigutow, David DiGilio, Steven Lisberger
Stars: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jeff Bridges
Synopsis: A highly sophisticated Program, Ares, is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission.
Tron: Ares may be the first film to deserve a pull quote of demanding “to be seen on the biggest screen possible,” but is meant to be dripping with sarcasm as an insult. Movies made for IMAX should enhance a filmmaker’s vision and audience enjoyment, not weaponize the cinema experience to disguise hollow storytelling and empty spectacle. That is the feeling you will walk away from with Joachim Rønning’s latest failure to reboot this stale science-fiction franchise.
Of course, what would you expect from a filmmaker who specializes in this kind of cinematic confidence game—the fifth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean and Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil—films that prioritize commercial intent over any brave artistic vision. The only silver lining is that with each failure of a legacy sequel, we appreciate the 1982 cult classic, which looks better with every passing attempt.
The movie follows Julian Dillinger (X-Men’s Evan Peters), a brash CEO of Dillinger Systems. Nearly half a century after Kevin Flynn developed digital “Grid” technology, Dillinger seeks to extract the platform’s resources into the real world. His ultimate goal appears to be dragging into reality—kicking and screaming—Ares (Academy Award winner Jared Leto, being very, uh, Leto-like here). Ares is an artificial intelligence and super-soldier, programmed always to obey his creator’s commands.
The only issue is that anything taken from the GRID can be taken away, like a pizza, in thirty minutes or less. Any AI will evaporate like it wasn’t even there, causing a battle between Dillinger and a rival scientist, Eve Kim (Past Lives’ Greta Lee), CEO of ENCOM. However, Eve hypothesizes that Kevin Flynn solved the issue decades prior but kept the secret to himself. Obviously, before dying off in Tron: Legacy’s digital realm.
As Eve searches for what she calls the “permanence code,” she is hunted by Ares and Athena (The Neon Demon’s Jodie Turner-Smith) under Dillinger’s command, in what’s billed as a digital cold war unlike anything we’ve seen before. Except, well, we have—through countless Tron sequels, prequels, legacy chapters, and knock-offs—making Tron: Ares one of the more vapid science-fiction epics in recent memory.
Yes, movies are a visual medium. From an aesthetic point of view, Tron: Ares is a feast for the eyes with its spectacular special effects. (The “Light Skimmer” chase scene is by far the film’s highlight.) The pulsating score from Nine Inch Nails is visceral and deeply felt, like an all-consuming mental maelstrom on the senses. Yet the techniques evoke sensory bombardment torture—blurring the thin cinematic line between movie spectacle and enhanced interrogation.
That’s because the script by Jesse Wigutow (Daredevil: Born Again) is painfully predictable—nothing in this movie isn’t telegraphed well in advance. Staying alert while being bored out of your mind only makes the quip about enhanced interrogation techniques perfectly clear. The film’s points about artificial intelligence and its dangers have been made thousands of times before. And just because the original Tron had something to say on the issue doesn’t mean this installment deserves a pass when it offers nothing new or fresh on the subject.
Instead, the audience is dragged through a labyrinth of Tron: Ares plotlines—a tedious journey to nowhere. The result feels sanitized and sterile, lacking the emotion or stakes needed to draw viewers in. What’s left is a soulless expedition—shocking, given that the heart of the original film’s conflict was a tug-of-war over our humanity. Tron: Ares isn’t a movie of the moment so much as a recycling of old plot points, as if studio heads are simply mining IPs they think might resonate with today’s world, rather than exploring themes and subtext through fresh eyes and ideas.
You can watch Tron: Ares only in theaters starting October 10th!
