Tron: Ares Review: Radically Empty Spectacle… But At Least It’s Very Pretty

Walt Disney Studios felt some light embarrassment about the 1982 original, with distinct hope that the franchise would earn some cool points with a shiny, modern sequel. However, then said sequel ended up leaving theaters with the reputation of being somewhat of a boondoggle, with solid earnings at the worldwide box office colored by the film’s major budget and heaps of criticism about the attempt to digitally de-age star Jeff Bridges.

My expectations for more big screen action from the Tron franchise was graded “pessimistic” for nearly a decade and a half – but being someone who has long been charmed by the original and impressed by the eye-popping style and action of Legacy, that isn’t how I would describe my ultimate anticipation for director Joachim Rønning’s Tron: Ares. As long as public information about the project has existed, I have hoped that it would be another exciting adventure taking characters in and out of the wild, biodigital jazz-filled world of The Grid. (And its certainly the case that technology has only become a more significant part of all our lives in the last 15 years, creating plenty of opportunity for commentary about the modern world.)

Jared Leto stands out as being terrifically miscast in the movie’s subtitular role.

Gillian Anderson plays Julian’s mother, who exists in the story to scold her son about his amoral behavior going after Eve, but her impact amounts to simply reminding the audience that what Julian is doing is wrong.)

Between the one-dimensional storytelling and rote use of a basic plot device on which everything hinges, Jesse Wigutow’s screenplay is never able to properly establish any stakes or interesting dynamics. Even with comedic talents in the cast like Arturo Castro (playing Eve’s friend/colleague) and Hasan Minhaj (as ENCOM’s CTO), the whole film is additionally humorless, and little progress is made in creating emotional relationships between the characters.

Jared Leto puts in a clunker of a performance playing a very vital role.

This is particularly damaging to the film where Ares’ arc is concerned. The character is designed by Julian Dillinger and introduced as the ultimate expendable soldier… but he goes against his programming as soon as he registers a single person that doesn’t see him as disposable, and he begins to seek being something more than code in the real world.

Putting aside that Jared Leto’s look, with long hair and a beard, is wholly ill-fitting for the part, the actor simply doesn’t deliver what Ares needs to express in any given scene – be it repressed awe at seeing real rain for the first time, or later his inability to put into words what he feels when listening to the music of Depeche Mode. The emotional journey the plot demands is not offered in Leto’s performance, and it’s a major problem that bigly holds the movie back.

With the history of Tron including groundbreaking visual effects and standout franchise development (there is a strong argument to be made that Tron: Legacy kickstarted the modern age of legacyquels), Tron: Ares is a movie that feels like it could have been much “more” but settles for being less. Its disinterest in making any kind of statement or expressing any kind of opinion makes it feel like its cultural impact won’t go beyond the spectacle that it presents on the big screen – though I suppose I certainly can be thankful that we got a new Nine Inch Nails album out of it.