There are movie franchises that often take their time in releasing new entries, but when it comes to the movie Tron (1982), it’s had perhaps the longest periods of fallow that any movie franchise has seen.  The original Tron was not exactly a mega hit when it first released in 1982.  Like so other movies that summer, it got overshadowed by the box office behemoth that was Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  It wasn’t until many years later that it received a re-evaluation by both critics and audiences.  Tron was a movie that in terms of the technology that went into it’s production was well ahead of it’s time.  It was the first studio production ever to utilize computer animation, which of course now has become omnipresent as a part of the film-making industry, to the point of replacing many once necessary jobs in the business.  The film’s story about rogue AI programs taking too much control also now seems prophetic, despite coming from very early on in the history of computing.  When computer animation started to take hold in Hollywood in the mid-90’s, a lot of the digital artists and animators often cited Tron as an inspiration.  Without Tron, we probably wouldn’t have had the digital revolution in film-making that we know of today.  And this digital revolution brought more attention to Tron itself.  Disney, the studio that made the film, put the movie out on DVD in 2002 for it’s 20th anniversary, and it became a strong seller for them, helping them to realize that the movie was indeed growing in esteem.  It was time to think about the possibility of a sequel, though this would be a gamble as well.  A lot of time had passed since the last Tron, and the world had advanced so much in those 20 plus years in terms of computer technology.  Was it possible to make a sequel to this film that would feel just as cutting edge as the original.  Despite some of those challenges, we did indeed see the Tron franchise finally come to fruition in 2010.

Tron: Legacy (2010) released into theaters during the holiday season that year.  While it did perform a lot better at the box office than the original film, it also didn’t exceed expectations either.  Audiences were mixed, as well as critics.  Much like the original film, Legacy was viewed as visually stunning but emotionally hollow.  The biggest praise for the movie went instead to the musical score written by the techno punk DJ group Daft Punk, who saw their soundtrack become an award winning best-seller.  Legacy was a valiant attempt to capture some of the unique charm of the original movie while at the same time trying to modernize it and make it relevant again.  But, Tron is still a franchise with a very niche fan base.  The people who are impressed with the Tron movies are usually people with a fair amount of knowledge about computer tech.  They recognize the technical achievements that these movies represent.  To think that the original Tron was rendered with megabyte levels of computing power is astounding.  Legacy also became one of the first movies ever to use digital de-aging on it’s actors, a tool that we are seeing being used more and more in big budget blockbusters.  But, casual audiences are not aware of those things, and the Tron films often feel too cold and detached from emotions to ever feel as thrilling as most other blockbusters from their respective eras.  But, just like with the original, Tron: Legacy has also received a bit of a re-assessment over the years.  While it’s not considered by many to be an all time great action flick, people have come to admire it’s ambition and unique style.  One thing that also has helped to give this movie some extra attention is that it was the first film directed by Joseph Kosinski, who has since gone on to become a very successful movie director in the 15 years since Legacy, including being a part of a little film called Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  With both movies now having some noteworthy attention paid to them, Disney seems to be convinced that it’s time to try again with this franchise, adding a new film into this trilogy.  The only question is, does Tron: Ares manage to justify making the return to the world of Tron after such a long absence, or is it game over for this franchise for good?

The story of Tron: Ares brings the story up to where we are in the present day.  Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the eccentric founder of the ENCOM corporation has been missing since 1989, becoming now more myth than man.  His son Sam has also abdicated his role as CEO of the company and is living off the grid, so ENCOM now lies in the guiding hands of Eve Kim (Greta Lee) who hopes to run the company in the same spirit as Flynn did.  But, she faces stiff competition from the Dillinger Corporation, run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of it’s founder and former corrupt CEO of ENCOM Ed Dillinger.  Both companies are trying to create the next breakthrough in AI technology, which involves creating living matter out of 3D printing with AI to give them sentience.  The only problem is, the creations can only keep their structure together for a maximum of 29 minutes before they disintegrate.  Eve believes that Kevin Flynn managed to crack the code for this problem back when he was still the head of the company, creating what’s been dubbed the Permanence Code, and she’s been digging through decades old computer systems trying to find it.  She manages to find her answer in a secret lab in the frozen Arctic Circle and she hopes to bring it back home with the intent of using the Permanence Code to fix things like food and medicine shortage.  Dillinger, however, wants to use the code to mass produce soldiers and war technology.  In a desperate attempt to steal the Code, he sends out two of his most elite warrior programs, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith).  The two manage to track down and corner Eve, but Ares starts to question the motives behind his programming, believing that Dillinger is crossing the line by seeking to literally destroy his competition.  So, Ares goes rogue and elects to help Eve instead.  But, Dillinger doesn’t take the betrayal lightly, and he re-programs Athena to now hunt down both Ares and Eve together.  What follows is a battle of wills that chaotically shows what happens when AI programs with elite warrior skills take their battle out of the Grid and bring it into the real world.

As the third film in a long running series such as this, Tron: Ares will undoubtedly face immediate comparisons with it’s predecessors.  It’s also difficult to really stack up each film together, considering that each one came from such different eras of filmmaking, to the point where each one almost feel more of a product in it’s own time than cohesive whole.  Tron: Legacy almost felt more like a reboot of the series rather than a straight forward sequel, only loosely tying itself to the original film through the general premise and return of Jeff Bridges.  Tron: Ares pretty much feels the same way as well.  It’s almost like Disney is once again starting from scratch, with this movie choosing not to continue the story of Legacy and instead doing something new with a whole new set of characters.  In some ways that is both a blessing and a curse.  Tron: Ares does have a lot of things going for it that it does do a lot better than the previous films in this series, but it’s also lacking some of the things that made the other films stand out as well.  Truth be told, the Tron movies have never been known for having great stories.  It’s always been a film franchise built on style over substance.  Tron: Ares keeps up that tradition by being as cookie-cutter as possible with barely dimensional characters.  It’s an unfortunate problem that definitely weighs the movie down, but at the same time, it’s kind of par for the course for this series.  The only character of note from this entire series has been Kevin Flynn, and he only stands out because of Jeff Bridges natural magnetic charm.  But unfortunately, starting over again also undercuts most if not all of the previous world-building work that had been put into the series.  There are fleeting references to the previous films (plus one admittedly pretty cool nostalgia filled scene referencing the original Tron), but otherwise Tron: Ares is carving out it’s own path.  That can be good if you want the movie to stand on it’s own, but it also means that Ares also has to go through the whole world-building gauntlet again, and that unfortunately burdens the film more with a lot of unnecessary extra exposition.  It shows Disney being undecisive in their approach to this franchise.  They want to continue to bank on the nostalgia value of the Tron brand, but they also feel like audiences can’t be trusted to already be familiar with the lore of the previous films, so unfortunately we have to have it all spelled out for us again.

But, there is one area where Ares does outdo both of the previous Tron films and that is in the action scenes.  The original Tron certainly was limited by what was possible with computer animation at the time, and still managed to make the most of it.  The light cycle race in particular is still an iconic moment in cinema and remarkably harrowing given the primitive animation used to make it.  Legacy’s biggest problem was that while it was visually a big step up in visual effects, it was also a bit lackluster in the action scenes.  It lacked a visceral feeling, with more emphasis being put on the style of the action rather than any tangible impact; ironic given that the same director went on to make the immersive Top Gun: Maverick.  Tron: Ares actually manages to be the best of both worlds.  It manages to be as thrillingly impactful as the action scenes in the original Tron, while also having the advanced visual style of Tron: Legacy.  The movie hits a high point midway through the film when we have Ares and Athena drive their light cycles in the real world for the first time.  We’ve seen light cycle races in both of the previous Tron movies, but this film makes their scene much more thrilling.  Here we finally see how these things perform under real world physics, and it creates a stark contrast.  One of the great things about this scene is that it looks like they really built physical light cycles as a workable prop in the movie.  It reminded me a lot of the bat cycle scene from The Dark Knight (2008), with this out of this world vehicle cruising through a real city street.  Director Joachim Ronning also makes the wise artistic choice of mounting the camera on the cycle itself, placing us the audience in the drivers seat.  The Tron series has been lacking in action scenes that feel immersive and that’s what helps Ares to stand out.  And while the cycle scene is a definite highlight, the rest of the movie also manages to keep the tempo moving, with a lot of bombast and style working in tandem.  It’s only when the action set pieces stop that the movie starts to lag.  Thankfully, the movie is action heavy, much more so than Legacy, and that helps to make the film a mostly fun time.

One of the things that makes Ares feel different from the other Tron movies is it’s aesthetic.  The original Tron was unlike any other movie ever made, with the use of back-lighting giving both the environments and the characters themselves a neon like glow.  That has carried on throughout the franchise.  While Tron: Legacy added in more naturalistic color, especially on the facial tones of the characters, it also maintained the back-lighting aesthetic with lights built into the costumes.  Tron: Ares does that as well, but here they really upped the contrast between light and dark.  The warrior programs created by the Dillinger Corp. all have the color definition of red in their suits (a carry-over from the original Tron where all the bad guys were in red and the good guys were in blue).  Most of the movie takes place during the dead of night, so when Ares and Athena are out on their cycles or are brandishing their weapons, that red really stands out against the darkness.  This is definitely the darkest film in the series when it comes it’s visuals.  A big reason why the movie looks as good as it does is because it was shot by celebrated cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who has famously done many films for David Fincher including Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010).  He’s a master when it comes to creating dark scenes with stark lighting contrasts, which is probably why Disney sought him out.  Another element of the movie that really adds to the experience is it’s music.  Perhaps as an answer to the success of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, Disney wanted to get another famous rock band involved without having to go back to Daft Punk, who are not the kind of band intent on repeating themselves.  To give the movie a whole different sound, they went to Oscar winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  The famed Nine Inch Nails members have been working in film composition for years now, including being employed by Disney before with their Oscar winning score for Pixar’s Soul (2020).  Given the synth style of music, they seemed like a perfect fit for Tron, but the duo went a bit further, deciding to get the entire band involved on this project.  It would have been unimaginable a decade ago that we’d see a Disney film scored by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, but that’s what make Tron so unique as a series.  And the NIN socre is perfectly suited for this movie, especially if the theater is equipped with a robust sound system.  This film score will definitely be rattling your bones with it’s aggressive sound.  Unfortunately, most of it all feels the same throughout the film, which does make it less memorable than Daft Punk’s Legacy score.  This is the one are where I feel Tron: Legacy was better, because Daft Punk put so much variety into the different themes, whereas Nine Inch Nails just stick with the same beat throughout.

One of the more controversial choices during the making of this movie was casting Jared Leto in the titular role of Ares.  Leto has, to put it lightly, been a controversial figure as of late.  Scandals aside, he’s also had a recent loosing streak at the box office, being a part of multiple box office bombs like House of Gucci (2001), Morbius (2022) and Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023).  Not just casting him in this multi-million dollar tentpole but also placing him at the center is a major risk on Disney’s part, but Leto is far from being the movie’s main problem.  If anything, he’s appropriately cast as Ares.  Ares is by design to be devoid of character; an AI in search of an identity.  It’s in this that Leto’s understated style of acting actually fits, and I’ll take understated Leto over whatever the hell he gave us in House of Gucci or his performance as the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016).  A lot of the other actors do what they can with characters that are unfortunately just as ill-defined as Ares.  Evan Peters has a presence on screen as Julian Dillinger, but his villain role is overly eccentric and cliché and beneath the talent that someone like Peters has shown in other roles.  You definitely miss the aura of grandeur that the late David Warner brought to his villainous role as Dillinger in the original Tron.  Greta Lee also tries her best to make the most of her character, who is also very thinly defined.  The actor who stands out the most is Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena.  She brings a real menacing presence to the film and helps to make her character a lot more memorable than probably was on the page.  What does become clear while watching the movie is that a lot of the performances feel like they were more fleshed out in longer cuts of the movie.  Disney seemed pretty adamant about keeping this movie under 2 hours, and the editing done on this film seems to have mostly centered on fleshing out the action scenes.  So, a lot of character development is missing in the final edit.  Truth be told, Tron has never had the most memorable characters, other than Bridges’ Flynn (who thankfully gets a nice extended cameo here), but you definitely get the feeling that the movie would be a lot more exciting if we actually cared more about what happens to these characters.

You would think that after 15 years of development that Disney would have cracked the code over how to make a Tron movie that actually lives up to it’s potential.  Instead Tron: Ares is just another generic, albeit we-crafted, action movie capitalizing on the nostalgia of it’s predecessors.  If you’re looking for Tron to finally break out and become an elite franchise in the same class as something like Star Wars, you’ll have to wait a bit more because Tron: Ares is not that movie.  It’s hard to tell if there is any future for Tron at all, given the amount of time that we’ve waited for each installment.  If this movie underperforms, Disney may just end up giving up on it entirely.  The one thing that Tron had going for it initially was it’s ground-breaking visual effects and unique aesthetic, and that perhaps was not enough to build a long lasting franchise on, even though 40 plus years later Disney was still trying.  The positive thing about Tron: Ares is that it didn’t solely capitalize on past nostalgia.  It attempted to do things a bit different, and the result did yield some pretty impressive action sequences.  The smart thing that the filmmakers did with Tron: Ares was to keep it from being too self-important, which was Tron: Legacy’s biggest flaw.  It knows that the big selling point is the visuals and the action, and that’s where the focus was put, and the result makes this a better than average action flick that is best appreciated on a big screen with a robust sound system.  I saw this movie in 3D IMAX, and it honestly had some of the best 3D I’ve seen in a long while.  I just wish that maybe Disney would’ve given the script just a little more polish, allowing for better character development so that we could appreciate the story more.  Overall, the original Tron still stands as the best in the series, thanks to it’s pioneering visuals and overall nostalgic charm, but Ares definitely has the best action scenes in the series while Legacy has the best soundtrack.  A lot of people may end up just skipping the movie and end up buying the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack by itself, which is fair.  The sad reality is that there may have been a time and place where Tron could have turned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history, but it’s timing was at the wrong time.  It was either too ahead of it’s time, or just missed out on the right moment to reach it’s audience.  It’s hard to say if Tron: Ares will get the same reassessment from audiences and critics that it’s predecessors did in the years ahead.  Given that Disney is less inclined to give their franchises time to gestate over multiple generations of audiences, it may indeed end up being the end of line for Tron. 

Rating: 7/10