Ticketworthy! - Tron: Ares

Back in 1982, director Steven Lisberger gave the world Tron. It was a divisive film, but a groundbreaking and important one, nonetheless. Technology was beginning to advance at a rapid pace, and video game culture was on the rise. Tron captured that exact moment in history and presented a fantastical look into that technological world. Now, 40 years and one pointless sequel later, Tron: Ares has arrived to explore the rapidly growing technology of Artificial Intelligence. At least, that’s what it starts to do before somewhat falling apart and turning into just another big, dumb action movie.

This third installment in the franchise follows tech CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) as she develops a new technology that allows her to pull organic material for the “Grid”, a digital world inhabited by sentient programs. She wants to use her machine to make food and medicine but needs a special Permanence Code to allow the creations to survive longer than 29 minutes in our world. Her rival, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), also wants the code so that he can make disposable soldiers and weapons. He decides the best way to get it is to have his AI soldier, Ares (Jared Leto), kidnap Kim in the real world and steal the code from her.

Does that plot make any real sense? Probably not. It likely would have been easier for Dillinger to send his programs into Kim’s computer to steal the code digitally, a thing we see he is perfectly capable of doing, instead of committing kidnapping and attempted murder in the middle of a metropolitan city. If he’d done that, though, we wouldn’t have gotten the big motorcycle chases, explosions, and action sequences that this film really cares about. The spectacle is the point. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s smart.

To the film’s credit, the action and spectacle does all look great. A lot of care has clearly gone into the digital effects and choreography, and the vibrant colors make everything pop. The music is also fantastic. One of the things that Tron: Legacy did right was bringing in Daft Punk to craft its soundtrack. Ares continues that trend with an inspired soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails. It’s usually not a great sign when the highlight of a film is the music, but it’s tough to fault the filmmakers for a score this excellent.

As for the acting, it’s mostly just fine. Lee gives a very likeable performance, and Peters makes a great villain. Leto’s performance is a little more complicated. He’s a machine, a program, so the moments where he’s cold and wooden can be excused. However, there are times when he is strangely human as well. I think Leto does a decent job, but it’s a very uneven character. 

Still, it’s all enough to create a movie that is at least entertaining. As dumb, popcorn flicks go, Tron: Ares could certainly be worse. As a Tron movie, though, I found myself wanting a bit more. There’s no harm in mindless entertainment, but this had potential to be much more. In the film, Ares disobeys his directive to thoughtlessly commit violence. I wish the movie had done the same.