Tron: Ares (2025 | US | 119 minutes | Joachim Rønning)
Tron: Ares takes place roughly 15 years after its predecessor Tron: Legacy, which happens to coincide with the years in which each film was released (2025 & 2010 respectively). It seems to invite a sense of connection between the world they created in the film and the one we live in. We’re told Flynn’s son Sam stepped back from the business and in his place twin sisters Eve (Greta Lee) and Tess Kim continued the pioneering spirit at the helm of Encom with aspirations of creating an unlimited food source, medicine for all and scores of other altruistic endeavors. In opposition, Julian (Evan Peters), the grandson of Tron‘s original baddy Ed Dillinger, is dead set on using advancement in technology for war mongering. The lynchpin of his entirely evil plan being Ares (Jared Leto), a battle-ready program re-constituted in the real world and ready to carry out any of Dillinger’s commands.
Accomplishing any of these goals comes down to finding the “permanence code” which solves the problem of re-constituted objects disintegrating after a mere 29 minutes (including Ares, but Dillinger just makes another and another and another). Whether they’re living things or metal war machines it all comes from the same material and created layer by layer by an enormous 3D printer. This fantastical tech is based on Flynn’s accidental discovery in the original Tron where a big laser digitized living beings and converted them into programs stored in a computer.
Basically the storyline is a battle for the soul of humanity… will it offer war at the click of a button, or humanity’s salvation? It’s all up to who gets there first: the megalomaniac Julian Dillinger or the remaining Kim sister, Eve. The latter took over the obsessive mantle of saving the world from her twin sister and best friend who had recently passed away from cancer. Slowly throughout the film, Ares discovers his own sense of humanity and Julian loses his.
There are a lot of things in Tron: Ares that make it tough for me to say I enjoyed it. While most folks watching any one of the Tron films would say you just have to enjoy it for what it is and don’t get caught up in the impossibility… for some reason this one made it more difficult than the others to suspend my disbelief. Maybe because Ares is set in the real world where the other two were inside a computer? I don’t know. That being said, the effects were really fun, the red motorcycles looked entirely real and super cool to ride on and the glowing outfits were just as skintight and rad as ever.
Jared Leto was an interesting choice for the role of Ares. It seems that the film wouldn’t have even made it to the big screen if it weren’t for him so I can’t bag on him too much, but I feel like there’s a lot of great options out there who’d portray the killer with a heart of gold character just as well, if not better, than our dear Jared. His severe cheekbones offer a solid visual for a bad guy and his soft voice lends itself to a more gentle, curious and empathetic character, all of which he performed adequately for Ares’ ups and downs. To be fair playing a character with nearly no personality is sort of his thing, so he was in his comfort zone.
Lets get to the highlights of the film, ie the lead female characters Eve Kim portrayed by Greta Lee and Aries’ fellow deadly program Athena performed by Jodi Turner-Smith. Both added a richness to a plot that was lacking (I wouldn’t have noticed how annoying the plot holes were if the storyline was better) simply by the way they delivered their lines and played off the energy of the other characters. Turner-Smith was especially captivating despite having less screen time than both Lee and Leto. There was a sequence near the end of the movie involving water where even the hyper-focused Athena began to feel the smallest spark of emotional realization… it was one of the most affecting moments in the film. There were two such seemingly small but emotionally impactful sequences involving water in the screenplay. This is not at all surprising coming from director Joachim Rønning who has an affinity for metaphors and storytelling with water at the epicenter.
There were nostalgic throwbacks in abundance throughout the one-hundred and nineteen minute run time. Glowing squares representing bits that digitized-Eve ran her hand through like water, Aries entering Flynn’s old closed loop network aesthetically replicating the original in all its grainy glory and the new, possibly improved but probably not, personality disks now even more deadly than before (they added sharp triangular edges to the baddy disks) to name a few. I wanted to like it, I promise I did. The original remains one of my favorite junk food movies. Ares is ok, but sadly it stirred nothing close to the excitement I had when I heard there would be a third installment in the franchise. It’s worth going to see (especially in IMAX) as long as you don’t go in with high expectations and simply ready for great visuals and a fun thrillride.
Tron: Ares arrives in theaters this Friday 10/10