Director: Joachim Rønning
Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges
Screenplay: Jesse Wigutow
119 mins. Rated PG-13 for violence/action.

Back in 2010, I got into Tron fever. Having never seen the original film due to its dodgy availability, I saw that trailer for Tron: Legacy, hunted down the original film and went a little crazy over the sequel. I figured Tron: Legacy was going to be the next hit franchise. The sequel came and went, and then nothing…for fifteen years. I feared we’d never see another Tron film purely because the sequel was successful, but not more than the MCU and Pixar and then eventually Star Wars once again. Disney only had so many resources and they were going to put them toward the biggest potential hitters. Finally, somehow, a third Tron film materialized with the company’s resident franchise sequeler Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) at the helm. The result is a film that takes interesting concepts and doesn’t really fulfill them, surrounded by the hard-hitting score that uplifts the cool factor immensely.

Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, The Big Lebowski) has never been found after going missing in 1989. His company, ENCOM, is now being run by Eve Kim (Greta Lee, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), and her aim is to discover the Permanence Code, a piece of programming that could help her to create almost anything from the digital space and possibly help with food shortages and other potential problems. Up until now, anything created from the digital space breaks down after 29 minutes. ENCOM’s competitor, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, Deadpool 2) wants the Permanence Code in order to create super-soldiers and military weapons in the blink of an eye. Dillinger’s ultimate AI creation, Ares (Jared Leto, Fight Club), is a super-soldier that can die and respawn at will, but when Ares begins to take on human aspects and feelings, he merely wants to live a life of value in opposition to Dillinger’s monetary aspirations.

Tron: Ares is built from the ground up with the Cool Factor in mind. The movie looks incredible, the money is on the screen, and the score from Nine-Inch Nails is one of the most dynamic and hard-hitting scores I’ve ever listened to. The sound editing and mixing of dialogue and music could’ve been a less eardrum-straining, but the movie is, if nothing else, an awesome 2-hour music video. Seeing more of the ENCOM Grid in opposition to the Dillinger all-red hellscape Grid made for some exciting fan service, as does a pretty notable sequence in the back half that I won’t spoil for anyone.

As far as story goes, this film doesn’t really give much depth to the narrative. The decision to make Ares the focal character of the film doesn’t really work either. I don’t feel that Jared Leto has proven he can carry a movie, as he works much better in supporting roles. This really should’ve been Eve’s film from the start. She has the emotional core, and her journey is just more interesting. The team just slapped a few Frankenstein references to Ares and rolled with it, but it never really worked. There are clear allusions to Terminator 2 and the journey of Schwarzenegger’s cyborg finding his humanity across the film, but it’s not written gracefully enough to work. Ares goes from a stoic blank slate to a wise-cracking program in just a scene or two, and I didn’t buy it. I don’t think Leto is bad in the film, just that he’s not really doing anything noteworthy either.

The real strength of Tron: Ares comes from Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim) as Athena, second-in-command to Ares. She becomes an absolute wrecking ball in the back half, and she does reach the heights of Terminators 2’s T-1000, becoming an unstoppable force of danger. Using simple vocal switches, the menace and terror of her performance will be what stays with me long after leaving the theater. She’s an incredible talent that isn’t being used enough.

Tron: Ares has weak characters and a flimsy story, but its presentation is very strong. It’s the kind of movie that saves itself for pure entertainment value. Though it has ideas, it never really develops them, and the decision to focus on the computer program Ares over the very human and much more relatable Eve showcases more of its flaws. What’s here is definitely entertaining, but I wish the overall package were as thought-provoking and original as its predecessors.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Joachim Rønning’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, click here.