‘Tron: Ares’ Review: Dig That Bio-Digital Jazz, Man!

The universe of Tron is a strange one; a digital world from an analog time. Its computer programs look like people. They travel from place to place on motorcycles and sailboats. They think, they maybe even feel. The original Tron is such an old vision of digital reality that a lot of it was created with optical effects rather than computerized ones. Now all movies are Tron — stories where human beings move through fully digital worlds — even when they don’t look like it.

Even stranger: The older Tron gets, the more prescient it seems. When you boil down its slightly cheesy tale of a video game programmer sucked into a computerized reality, it’s ultimately about artificial intelligence so advanced it begins to threaten our world. That all seemed absurd in the early ’80s. These days ... not so much.

Not that the new Tron: Ares has much to say about AI, or anything else. Let’s be clear: This is a very dumb movie about very smart people doing very silly things — the only kind of movie Hollywood makes about smart people anymore. It seems to spring from a single animating impulse: If it was cool in the two previous Trons to send flesh-and-blood human beings into the digital landscape of “The Grid,” then it stands to reason that it would be equally cool if the programs from the Grid invaded our world.

And you know what? It is cool, especially when the film’s electronic rock soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails revs up to a driving pulse. Like the previous Tron films, Ares is filled with eye candy; gorgeous production and vehicle and costume design. And it’s got ear candy for days, thanks to the terrific NIN music. Just don’t let yourself get too caught up in the story’s specifics. A list of Tron: Ares elements that don’t quite add up would surely be longer the film’s screenplay.

A computerized prologue explains what’s happened in this universe since Tron: Legacy 15 years ago. (It also writes out that movie’s hero, Sam Flynn, with a single line of dialogue from a TV news anchor; he sold his tech company ENCOM to a pair of brilliant sisters “for personal reasons.” Well that’s extremely vague.) ENCOM’s new CEO, Eve Kim (Greta Lee), is locked in bitter feud with her chief rival, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the CEO of Dillinger Systems. Nerds will note approvingly that Julian is the grandson of Ed Dillinger, the villain of the original Tron played by David Warner, but it really doesn’t matter all that much to anyone else.

Tech bro Julian wants to monetize the Grid by using ... uh ... well, they’re kind of like 3D printers that use magical lasers to transport anything from a computer to the real world. But there’s a fairly big (and extremely convenient for story purposes) catch: Whatever Julian brings into the real world can only exist there for 29 minutes, at which point it crumbles into digital dust. That includes Julian’s “Master Control” program Ares (Jared Leto), which he uses as muscle in the digital realm and ours. Julian programmed Ares to be the world’s greatest fighter, and inexplicably built him to have the flowing locks and well-trimmed beard of a rock band frontman.

Both Eve and Julian believe that the long-missing Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), former ENCOM CEO and hero of the original Tron, discovered something called a “Permanence Code,” a piece of software that would allow Ares or any other program to remain in our world forever. That sets up a race to find it, a battle over control of it, and an inevitable Jeff Bridges cameo where he gets to riff one more time about bio-digital jazz, man.

Every aspect of this MacGuffin is absolute nonsense. But you know what? Nonsense can be fun in the right context. With reality the way it is these days, immersing yourself in a little nonsense for a couple hours is a perfectly valid reason to go to the movies. Tron: Ares provides just such a diversion. It embraces the implausibility of its anthropomorphized computer premise — this is, after all, a sequel to a film about a guy who got sucked into a desktop computer where he played a deadly game of Ultimate Frisbee in a neon blue jumpsuit and toga — and seizes on all of its inherent possibilities for large-scale action and over-the-top spectacle.

Ares doesn’t provide as much of a bold facelift to the Tron aesthetic as Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy, but director Joachim Rønning does update Kosinski’s imagery with some fun new weapons, like spears that trail solid walls of light, and vehicles, including a jet ski that can transform on command into a submarine.

As for the performers, well, if you’re gonna cast someone as a sentient app struggling to understand humanity, it might as well be someone as weird as Jared Leto. He does not necessarily bring a great deal of depth to Ares’ quest to understand his purpose, but the oddly bemused air he brings to the character is good for a few chuckles, especially in his big scene with Bridges. (Their conversation about music ... just you wait.) On the other hand, this is not what I would consider the best use of the time of an actor of Greta Lee’s nuance, but if making Tron affords her more opportunities to star in films like Past Lives in the future, that’s a win for everyone.

The best performance in the film actually comes from Gillian Anderson as Julian’s overbearing mother, who ceded control of the family business to her obnoxious son but keeps a close watch on his activities, observing his decisions with well-deserved disdain and disappointment. Jodie Turner-Smith is also good (and very striking) as Ares’ right-hand program Athena. With a bleached crop cut and heavy under eye makeup, she looks absolutely ferocious; far more of a believable digital warrior that Leto, even though he’s supposedly the most brilliant and most unkillable program ever conceived. (Did I mention his hair is great too? How does he keep it so glossy all the time?!?)

Ultimately, Tron’s gonna Tron. These movies have historically been technologically groundbreaking, and maybe even a little prophetic. But they’ve also tended to prioritize imaginative visuals and attention-grabbing music over cogent stories and classic characters. Tron: Ares continues in that tradition. It might even improve on its predecessors in some ways thanks to its unrelenting action and chases and that ferocious Nine Inch Nails score. And, for all the discussion of artificial intelligence, it thankfully doesn’t look like AI art made by ChatGPT.

RATING: 6/10

Get our free mobile app