Tron: Ares isn’t a continuation of Tron and Tron: Legacy, but a spin-off.  It’s Tron-adjacent, set within the Tron universe with only the slightest connection to the previous films.  It’s the same approach behind this year’s Jurassic World: Rebirth, which was basically a CGI dinosaur movie  populated with entirely new characters.  This movie offers Tron-styled action and aesthetics with a completely different cast.  In both cases, branding propels the endeavor instead of storytelling continuity or narrative cohesion, with logic not entering into the equation.  On the plus side, members of the audience with minimal knowledge of what came before can still enjoy these films on the basis of the sheer spectacle they provide.  While that ultimately wasn’t enough in the case of Rebirth, it does make Tron: Legacy a very watchable experience.  It’s the most captivating screen saver ever created.

A pixilated opening montage explains that Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) stepped away from leading his father’s company, ENCOM, presumably to explore the world with the now-human Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who was de-digitized (undigitized?) into a flesh-and-blood woman at the end of Legacy.  I’m not sure why this sequence was rendered this way.  Does it mean that denizens of the Troniverse watch the news, or was it a matter of making it look as cool as possible?  (My money’s on the latter.)

In Sam’s absence, ENCOM recruited two code-savvy sisters, Eve (Greta Lee) and Tess (Selene Yun) as co-CEOs.  They’ve been locked in a battle for digital supremacy with Dillinger Systems, with both companies trying to unlock the secret of keeping their rendered creations alive in the real world for more than twenty-nine minutes.  Why twenty-nine minutes?  No reason.  (The movie’s overriding arbitrariness is frustrating but amusing.)

Dillinger Systems is led by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of Ed Dillinger (David Warner) from the original movie.  (Warner passed away in 2022).  Julian is an SOB like his granddad and wants to sell his anthropomorphic security beings to the military.  ENCOM, however, wants to solve world hunger.  If you can’t tell who the good guys and the bad guys are in this movie, consider watching “Bluey” instead.

As previously mentioned, both tech company’s digital creations crumble to dust in short order.  ENCOM, however, has the edge because company founder Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) had previously developed the “permanence code”, which has kept Quorra alive in the real world for the past fifteen years.  (Outside of a few photos, she is not part of this story.)  Eve and Tess were searching for said code in a secret coding station location Flynn’s in Alaska.  Then Tess became seriously ill and died, effectively putting the search for permanence on hold.

At Dillinger Systems, Julian Dillinger (Even Peters) shows off his latest creation, Ares (Jared Leto), to a group of military types.  His pitch is that Ares is the perfect soldier.  Ares does what it’s told without question, is stronger than any human soldier and, most importantly, can be recreated at the touch of a button.  The head honchos are interested, as his mom and former CEO Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson), reminds him, they’ll be upset when their super soldiers unexpectedly disappear on the battlefield.  Mom shouldn’t worry, though, because Julian is just as devious as his granddad.  He easily hacks into the ENCOM network within minutes and sends Ares to gather everything it can on Eve.

In Alaska, Eve locates the one floppy out of hundreds with permanence code and splices it into her late sister’s programming.  Eve and her jovial colleague Seth (Arturo Castro) test the mod by materializing an orange tree, and it stays alive indefinitely.  Success!  Ares, who had been scanning the internet for intel on Eve, notices this progress and alerts Julian.  Additionally, her empathy has sparked additional self-awareness inside him, and while he still must follow Julian’s orders, he’s really interested in meeting Eve in person.  (It doesn’t hurt that Eve is also very cute.)

When Eve and Seth return to ENCOM headquarters, CTO Ajay (Hasan Minhaj) alerts them to  the cyber attack and tells them to take the USB drive outta there.  This is wise because Julian has rendered Ares and his second in command Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to go get that code.  The movie kicks things up a notch, with Ares and Athena pursuing Eve on their Light Cycles.  Even though Ares seems to be helping Eve escape, she doesn’t trust him and destroys the drive.  However, another one of Dillinger’s henchmen digitizes her before she can escape.

In the Dillinger Grid, everything is bathed in reds and Nine Inch Nails music plays 24-7.  (Is this experience coming to Disney World?)  When Eve comes on line, Ares explains that Dillinger wants to extract the permanence code from her identity disk.  (It’s the glowing frisbee that holds the essence of every program and user in the grid.)  That might damage Eve, and Ares really doesn’t want to do that because he thinks Eve is cool and stuff.

Ares delays the extraction process by lying to Athena that Julian is “indisposed”, but she suspects something is up and alerts the big boss.  Julian tells Athena to extract the code from Eve and to destroy Ares if he gets in the way.  Ares and Eve make a frantic beeline for the grid transporter beam and are rendered in Flynn’s arcade.

On their way to the ENCOM HQ, Eve realizes that Ares is trustworthy because he likes Eighties synth-pop music and muscle cars.  Unfortunately, they only have twenty-nine minutes to find another copy of the code before Ares dematerializes and is destroyed.  Cheesed that Eve and Ares escaped, Julian promotes Athena to Master Control Program status and tells her to take Ares down and get that dang code!  This results in a full-blown digital world versus real world throwdown, which looks incredible even if I didn’t believe any of it.

Recommendation

Having seen the previous two Tron movies, I knew what to expect from Tron: Ares.  It’s a vehicle for impressive computer effects, strung together by a plot that is at once simple enough for a child to understand and incomprehensible.  All that matters is that the movie features people wearing suits that emit light, cruising around on Light Cycles and throwing electrified frisbees at each other, all set to groovy electronic music.  Whether any of it (or none of it) makes sense is irrelevant because the movie is eye candy of the first order.

Yes, the story Tron: Ares tells in a half-hearted way is silly, but that comes with the territory.  Also a given is that no matter who leads these movies, they all deliver equally bland performances.  Like Jeff Bridges and Garrett Hedlund before him, Jared Leto brings almost none of the intense charisma he’s known for to this movie.  He’s OK, but there’s nothing he does here that couldn’t have been done by any other actor.  I do give Leto credit for his ability to keep finding roles that don’t require him to cut his hair or shave his beard.  Those who appreciate his signature look will feel like this movie was made expressly for them.

Although Greta Lee seems like an odd choice for this movie, I understood why she was brought on board within minutes.  Her naturally warm presence effectively counterbalances both the film’s overwhelmingly angry tone.   Lee’s a wonderfully emotive actor, so much so that she’s able to draw Leto out of his monotone tendencies.  Lee is the human element injected into this overwhelmingly artificial machine, and she makes us feel emotions the movie wouldn’t have  concerned itself about otherwise.  She also has a nice rapport with the supporting actors who play her colleagues, Arturo Castro and Hasan Minhaj.

Another curious element of the Tron films is that there’s always a supporting performance that commands our attention over all others.  This time it’s Jodie Turner-Smith’s badass Athena, who brings loads of fierceness and menace to her role.  On the negative side, Gillian Anderson is content to walk around in a business suit and refine her British accent.  Evan Peters is passable as the real-world villain, although like Anderson he’s done far more interesting work elsewhere.  Jeff Bridges does his trademark stoner-mentor act again and it’s as fun as before, even though it makes as little sense in context.

Given this film’s focus on the military applications of technology, the movie has a harder edge than the original Tron or Tron: Legacy.  The color palette is skewed towards brilliant reds and oranges, the Nine Inch Nails-fueled soundtrack pummels the ears, and the physical confrontations are more violent.  The movie’s main idea–bringing the Tron universe into the real world–results in several scenes that are incredible to look at, from Light Cycles speeding through traffic to a massive Recognizer cruising between skyscrapers.  It’s all undeniably ridiculous and silly, but I couldn’t help but gape at the awesomeness of it all.

Like its predecessors, Tron: Ares is a visual feast for the eyes and ears.  If you put your brain on hold and ignore how ludicrous it is, the movie is entertaining fluff.  Greta Lee brings a welcome human touch to the techno-leaden proceedings.  Mildly recommended.

Analysis

In the first Tron movie, Kevin Flynn was digitized, rendered in a totally electronic world and came back.  The second one (Legacy) rendered a program, Quorra, in the real world.  Is either remotely possible?  No, but I still struggled with the incredible flights of fancy within Tron: Ares.  This time around, lasers can create everything from Jared Leto, to Light Cycles, to orange trees out of thin air.  The power of the technology is incredible, far more advanced than anything I can remember in Star Trek or Star Wars.

Maybe that’s where my problem with this film lies.  The technology in this latest Tron is so untethered to reality it’s godlike.  Why would anyone bother creating orange trees or Jared Leto’s when you can create anything?  The possibilities are unlimited, but it’s relegated to things that show little imagination beyond, “Wow, that looks cool!”

The coolness factor

I believe that the overriding creative principle behind Tron: Ares was, “If it will look cool, put it in the movie!”  Logically, there’s no way that you could use lasers to print a fully-functional Light Cycle and have it emit plasma beams.  But the sight of them zipping around cars, leaving orange trails behind them looks amazing.  Later, when Athena pilots a Recognizer around city skyscrapers, it’s an incredible sight.  Of course, neither makes any sense because both devices could only ever work in The Grid, an entirely electronic world untethered by the physics of our world.  Whatever power source those machines used there simply wouldn’t work in ours.  But coolness overrides logic in this movie, so that’s what we get.

Weaponry of the future, today!

If this movie hadn’t been made by Disney, it might have had the courage to say something about the various technologies it alludes to, including drone warfare, ghost guns and AI.  But since this is a Disney movie, it never acknowledges any parallels to problems in the real world.  The idea that a government could print a weapon–drone, soldier, what have you, have it kill someone and be completely untraceable, is a terrifying one.

On Jared Leto

Leto’s ability to get roles that don’t require him to change his distinct appearance in the slightest is unparalleled.  He looks the same as he did in Morbius, to the point where I felt like he was playing the exact same character.

Among the many things about the movie that I fail to understand is Leto’s performance.  The movie was a passion project for him.  He’s spoken of his affection for the Tron films and how much he wanted to be in a Tron movie.  However, you can’t tell any of that based on his nondescript performance in this movie.

Leto has been a good actor before, in Dallas Buyer’s Club and Requiem for a Dream.  I thought his hammy performance in House of Gucci was hilarious.  Why he chose to give so little of himself in these superhero films escapes me.  There’s no reason for him to be so monochromatic in Tron: Ares.  His fellow actors show plenty of emotion in the movie, whether they’re portraying programs or humans.

Wither romance

The saving grace of the Tron franchise has been the female leads, who free the movies from their obsessive technology focus with the possibility of romance.  Greta Lee follows Cindy Morgan’s Yori (Tron) and Olivia Wilde’s Quorra (Tron: Legacy) in being something to distract the male leads from their gamer-centered activities.  Unfortunately, that’s all that these movies give us.  Not that I’m expecting sex scenes in The Grid, but the biggest show of affection that’s ever been depicted between consenting humans/programs is a warm embrace.

Tron: Ares barely suggests that there’s anything other than a Platonic affection between Ares and Eve.  In the end, Ares is alone, content to send Eve postcards from the far corners of the Earth while she grows orange trees for the masses.  Sigh.  All of these Tron movies were created to appeal to the mindset of a twelve year-old boy, in that girls are alluring, but living inside a video game is the ultimate experience.

Lucy and the football

Tron is similar to the Jurassic World franchise in that every time a new entry is released, people think it will be better than before, only to find that it’s more of the same.  The problem with the Tron franchise is that it has been a special effects extravaganza from the beginning.  If the effects are done on the cheap, nobody would want to see these films.  These films also must have recognizable actors in it, otherwise people may feel they’re paying to watch someone play a video game.  After seeing three of these films, it’s obvious that the filmmakers behind them have always cut corners on the script, which is odd because it’s the cheapest aspect of filmmaking.

Logic whoppers

Tron: Ares is filled with these, which are plot points that are offered up without explanation and make no sense.

First mention that Ed Dillinger had a daughter and a grandson.

First mention that Kevin Flynn had a secret coding outpost in Alaska.

How is it possible that floppy discs sitting around in an abandoned office in Alaska still work after forty-some years?

How is it possible that whatever Flynn wrote back in the Eighties can be tacked onto modern code and simply work?

Why does the Dillinger Grid look almost identical to the Flynn Grid?  Ed Dillinger was fired in the first film, so how did his grid and Flynn’s grid evolve in the exact same way?

Why does the Dillinger Grid contain a portal back to Flynn’s arcade?  Is this a matter of Ed Dillinger’s coders not reviewing what they copy/pasta’d?

Why does Gillian Anderson’s Elisabeth have a British accent?  And why doesn’t Julian?

If it only takes Eve only an hour or so to find the floppy disc, so why couldn’t she and her sister have accomplished this before Tess became sick?

Why is Julian’s model for the ideal security figure a fifty year-old man with long hair, a beard and wrinkles?

How can Julian hack into ENCOM’s network so easily?  Isn’t ENCOM a tech powerhouse?  Or did they forget to renew their McAfee subscriptions?

What does Ares think of Depeche Mode’s music after Vince Clarke’s departure?  Does he have a Spotify playlist?

Why is Flynn’s arcade still sitting untouched and abandoned after all this time?  Who’s paying the property taxes?

Why would the Kevin Flynn in the Eighties version of The Grid have aged?  Hadn’t that version of The Grid been sitting dormant for decades?  I actually know the answer to this one.  They didn’t de-age Bridges this time around because it looked ridiculous in Legacy.