Tron: Ares (2025)

If we're being honest, none of the Tron movies are really very good. The plots are often non-sensical and overly simplistic, even bordering on dull, with rather paper thin characters who experience only the most rote development. What makes the Tron films work at all is they are visually incredible, each for their time, and speak to our anxieties and fascinations about the digital world. It is often the video games inspired by the films which are the bigger hits and create the nostalgia. There is a reason why this franchise has never quite taken off and only pops up every decade or so hoping to finally crack the blockbuster code never quite achieving that. 

Tron: Ares is unlikely to change the trajectory for these films but I'm going out on a limb to say I found it more engaging than the earlier films. It doesn't always make much sense either but the plot (while still rote) wasn't quite as (dare I say it) boring. Yes it was still about as predictable as anything Hollywood puts out, and yes the characters remained 2D while the effects around them stole the show. I just wasn't as bored as I have been watching the previous films. 

I know people love to hate on Leto and Ares likely won't change that but for different reasons. The title character is the opposite of a normal Leto role. He is drab and dull and lifeless. You aren't going to care for him or what happens to him at all. Everyone around him is far more interesting (Lee, Turner-Smith, Castro). Peters and Anderson are just there to chew scenery and they prove the understood the assignment. The more I talk about Ares the more I'm talking myself out of liking it. 

But I did sort of enjoy it. Visually it is remarkably gorgeous. I felt Legacy always felt a bit hollow in its beauty but Ares nails it. Rønning structures his set pieces incredibly and captures a kinetic energy that is palpable. I saw this film in Imax 3D and perhaps that influenced by experience because this took advantage of those gimmicks wonderfully. Maybe it wouldn't work as well watching it on a plane on a tablet. Perhaps, like with the other films, the spectacle remains the thing. 

But there was something else. The film got me thinking. This last part requires some mild *spoilers* so stop reading if you are adverse to that. The film ends with Ares, an AI character, escaping into the physical world and making his life there. He quite offhandly references Quorra (Olivia Wilde's character from Legacy) and it got me thinking about how we are so used to having AI presented as a threat in film. The AI gets so intelligent it tries to attack us as it sees us as the threat (the premise of Terminator). Here the opposite is presented. The AI is told to follow its programming (which will hurt people) and it rebels from that directive. There are interesting ideas here. Are they presented in the most engaging manner? Likely not. But there is something to chew on. 

So I didn't hate Tron: Ares (a film which does not feature the character Tron) but rec
ommend it mostly if you can see it on a big screen, in 3D. 

Tron: Ares

Starring: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges 

Director: Joachim Rønning

Writer: Jesse Wigutow