Photos courtesy of Disney
TRON: ARES— 3 STARS
In the movie business, the creative energy required to push a movie franchise forward is equivalent to man moving a boulder bigger than himself. Leverage, momentum, and reinforcement are required. The leverage comes from audience interest in the brand or intellectual property. Their clamor leads to reinforcement from the studio to invest in the next project, turning the wish into reality. With leverage and reinforcement cinched, it then comes down to momentum to fill a worthy movie. That’s on the storytellers and how they choose to advance the story. The process has happened once between 1982’s Tron and 2010’s Tron: Legacy, and circled back to happen again, fifteen years later with Tron: Ares.
In following Tron’s ascent to cult movie status in three decades, Tron: Legacy, backed by the power of Disney and a massive jolt of newfangled production value and technical prowess, harnessed all three aforementioned factors to reignite the franchise potential of Tron. The fresh faces of Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde were paired with three reminiscent tingles caused by the returning (and then newly-minted Oscar winner) Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner for a story that promised—matching its subtitle—the scope of generational continuation.
Thanks to the ending of Tron: Legacy, the table was set. Daft Punk’s soundtrack created a new signature sound for the franchise, and the film world was introduced to a new visionary action director in Joseph Kosinski. The original rebel, Tron, had his heel turn as Rinzler redemptively reversed, while Bridges was granted his own blaze-of-glory hero moment to go out with a bang and pass the torch. Hedlund’s Sam Flynn ascended to carry on the family business and his father’s vision, with Wilde’s Quorra—an algorithm entity lifted from the The Grid—by his side.
LESSON #1: GAINING OR LOSING STORY MOMENTUM— Having something or someone like Quorra from The Grid enter the flesh-and-blood real world—a “This world will come into ours” prophesy of enormous importance, tantalized across two Tron films—was precisely the shark-jumping leap perfectly suited to move the franchise forward. All of the momentum was on their side to surge into the dawn of the new future. How did Disney respond? The same as they did between 1982 and 2010: a decade-plus tailspin of developmental hell, busted scripts, musical chairs, and bad luck before 2025 and Tron: Ares.
Too many windows of opportunity closed between a disbanded Daft Punk, the previous cast—old and new—and their director discovery who went on to become a newly-minted superstar with Top Gun: Maverick and F1 at other studios. Tron: Legacy aged to become another semi-forgotten cult hit like its predecessor. The momentum was long gone. From what’s left, the best Tron: Ares can offer is matching financial reinforcement granted to Tron: Legacy, but it comes with the act of abandoning the leverage of plotted promise it built for fans in 2010. The good news is this resilient franchise has accomplished this ignition of new momentum once before, and can certainly do it again.
Fifteen years after the events of Tron: Legacy, Sam Flynn has resigned (offscreen) as the CEO of ENCOM, passing the control of the company to the sister team of Eve and Tess Kim (played by Past Lives breakout Greta Lee and Selene Yun in her film debut). Under the Kim leadership, ENCOM has been locked in a space race of sorts with Dillinger Systems, run by Julian Dillinger (Mare of Easttown Emmy winner Evan Peters), the grandson of former ENCOM executive Ed Dillinger (the late David Warner). Their mutual goal is to create digital constructs from their gaming platforms that can operate in perpetuity in the real world. As of the beginning of Tron: Ares, nothing either team creates lasts longer than 29 minutes topside before “derezzing” spectacularly into glowing digital ash.
Boasting a heart to help the world, ENCOM favors creating valuable natural and pharmaceutical resources while the profitable hubris of Julian Dillinger is engineering mods for weapons and soldiers to sell to government contractors. Assuming a guise similar to the Master Control of his grandfather, Julian’s centerpiece guinea pig is an elite commando named Ares (the headlining Oscar winner Jared Leto). With each new version granted Master Control oversight, Ares’s skills increases, as does his acquired intelligence and sympathetic understanding of both the digital and real worlds.
Digging into the old floppy disks of Kevin Flynn to discover the “Permanence Code” in a game file, Eve Kim has found the MacGuffin linchpin necessary to achieve the permanent manifested success. Once Julian gets wind of this development, he sics Ares and his top lieutenant, Athena (Queen & Slim’s Jodie Turner-Smith) to capture Eve, the code, or both to derail ENCOM’s gains and exploit for his own agenda. Needless to say, a roller coaster of neon-tinged and stunt-filled hijinks ensue.
Tron: Ares, directed by Maleficent: Mistress of Evil helmer Joachim Rønning pushing a debut feature script from Daredevil: Born Again writer Jesse Wigutow, has the unenviable task of starting over while flashing roots of the familiar. Greta Lee, like the stellar actress she is, squeezes lemons into lemonade to create a compelling central human character with a serviceable balance of idealism and cardiovascular fitness to get in on the action when necessary. She is very easy to root for while being chased by armored black-and-red wraiths on Lightcycles and Recognizers, especially the absolutely bad-ass Jodie Turner-Smith, glaring and stalking with palpable menace every chance she gets.
One part of the fun factor for Tron: Ares hinges on one’s level of Jared Leto fatigue after his over-the-top run of Morbius, House of Gucci, and playing Joker in the Snyderverse over the last few years. He plays Ares with intentional simplicity and dryness as if this is his turn to fill Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoes as The Terminator from T2. Leto’s Method character work is toned-down, and it helps. Still, his telegraphed face turn, massaged by an extended cameo from a reappearing Jeff Bridges, arrives too easily, even if it counts as a vindicating arc. The bigger accomplishment would have been seeing Lee’s Eve swaying Turner-Smith’s Athena to the bright side, instead of Leto’s easy tweener.
LESSON #2: THE CHALLENGE OF SOFT REBOOTS— Alas, these low-ish stakes spotlight the challenge of soft reboots. The premise of The Grid coming out of the computer fufills a piece of the old wonder from the previous two films, but that’s not enough to populate an entire movie without headier principles or stronger characters. Tron: Legacy had those, and Tron: Ares chose a different direction. The comedic inserts of Hasan Minhaj and Arturo Castro as Eve’s ENCOM buddies are thinner than vapor, and Evan Peter’s chief heavy is a stock villain doing little more than barking orders and making more problems as a greedy nepo baby in over their head. That turnout wastes Gillian Anderson brought in to play his mother. She has stature as a perfomer to be something bigger, but has too few scenes of consequence.
The saving grace for Tron: Ares is the dose of splashy big screen entertainment it provides this fall. Continuing forward from the jaw-dropping dazzle of Tron: Legacy, Rønning’s dexterity and set pieces show off the prominent talent showing off across many artistic areas. True to its lasting cult success, no imaginative action idea was squelched or expense was spared in the set construction, prop creation, costume design, second unit, and stunt departments. If anything, fifteen more years of dreaming only added more possibilities. Should Tron earn a fourth movie (for which intriguing plot seeds are planted here), maybe long gaps allow time for the next innovation to enhance the franchise.
Frequent David Fincher cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth might not be on Claudio Miranda’s level since Tron: Legacy, but speed of it all will still properly pin you to your seats. Presented in IMAX, Tron: Ares, not unlike Sinners earlier this year, will subtly switch aspect ratios to widen or narrow the eyefuls and earfuls of spectacle firing out of the projectors and speakers. Last but not least, for the second Tron movie in a row, the true champion of the movie is its soundtrack. Credited as their Nine Inch Nails identify after over a decade of scoring films with their own names, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross quake your eardrums and supercharge your cochleas with an explosive score and a dynamite new single, “As Alive as You Need My to Be.” Disney knows that anyone buying a ticket for Tron: Ares is ordering the loud and shiny movie, and it delivers the sensory overload goods.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1343)
