Tron: Ares Is Too Pure For This World

If you dislike spectacle for the sake of spectacle, you won’t like Tron: Ares. The propulsive new sequel, coming 15 years after Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy, and 43 years after the 1982 classic that started it all, is a very particular kind of modern cinematic beast. Director Joachim Rønning aims to please longtime fans. He aims to do something new with the franchise. And, it seems, Tron: Ares has a mind of its own, striving to be a modern blockbuster for normies that has something deep to say about artificial intelligence and our need to value the finite nature of life. Technically, the movie accomplishes all of these things, and it does so while being an in-your-face, action-packed thrill ride that doesn’t have a lot of time for nuance.

At one point in the movie, the titular AI Ares (Jared Leto) debates with another AI, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), about the difference between their directives and their purpose. Tron: Ares clearly has one directive: to put as much slick Tron-action on the screen as possible, while not worrying the audience too much with how or why it's happening. Does the film have a higher purpose beyond this? Did it need one?

Depending on how you answer those questions will certainly determine how much you enjoy Tron: Ares. If you can dig a movie that sets out a very clear goal, and then efficiently carries out that goal, then Tron: Ares will have you smiling ear-to-ear. If you decide to run a diagnostic on the movie and scan it for errors, you’re going to have a harder time.

Some years after the events of Legacy (a film which is referenced more than you might think) the programming/gaming world is essentially dominated by two companies, the famous Encom, and the rival company, Dillinger, which is run by the heirs of Edward Dillinger (David Warner), the slimy programmer from the original film. Evan Peters plays Julian Dillinger like the character is Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network, fused with a straight-up Bond villain. Gillian Anderson plays his long-suffering mother, a character who is mostly there to remind us that evil can maybe skip a generation, a notion that vaguely plays into the themes of the film. After all, Ares is a creation of Dillinger, not of the “good guys” at Encom.

Instead of bringing back Gareth Headland as Sam Flynn or Bruce Boxleitner as Alan Bradley, the opening montage of Ares tells us that Encom was taken over not by hostile interests but by the kindly Kim sisters, Eve and Tess. Eve Kim, as played by Greta Lee, is essentially the movie’s human hero, a person who is trying to carry on her late sister’s legacy, and also grappling with her own sense of what it means to be alive. Eve doesn’t have a direct analog in any of the previous Tron films, save for maybe Alan Bradley, insofar as she’s classically nerdy, but confident, and kind. Lee’s performance is also refreshingly straightforward, and although she does embody some cliches found in stories about gaming, the story of Ares doesn’t feel the need to portray her as an all-around badass. Yes, in an extremely memorable scene, Eve races on a light cycle through Center City, but it’s not like she’s automatically good at everything. She’s cool and relatable without having to make jokes constantly.

Meanwhile, if there’s one character who possesses God-mode powers in the videogame action of Tron: Ares, it’s Leto’s Ares himself. While you’re rarely concerned if Ares is going to lose, Leto’s performance is serviceably charming. He gives Ares a slightly autism-coded personality that feels like if Data from Star Trek was dropped into one of the better Marvel movies. Ares is quippy without meaning to be, naively charming, and impossible not to like. Giving him a kind of nostalgia for the 1980s might seem a bit on-the-nose to some, but, in most of the ways that count, this very specific sort of nostalgia works. That said, if you’re looking for Easter egg lines from the classic Tron, most are given to Arturo Castro’s Seth, one of Eve’s loyal colleagues, who, along with Sarah Desjardins and Hasan Minhaj, makes the accidental case for a workplace spinoff sitcom TV series about dorky and sweet Encom office workers.

But let’s face it, we’re not really coming to Tron: Ares for the characters. Yes, Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn remains Dude-ishly galvanizing, but it’s not like this movie is some kind of perfect distillation of the human condition, no matter how many times Ares quotes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The soul-searching AI premise might power the movie, but the visual and sonic dreamscape is the name of the game. And on these points, Ares is beyond simply fun; it's a technical masterclass in how a modern popcorn movie should be made. While the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack might seem inferior to Daft Punk's 2010 Legacy beats in isolation, hearing the music with the film is nothing short of fantastic.

Very often, the music blends so perfectly with a chase sequence or a fight scene that you have to wonder how other sci-fi movies with a cyberpunk angle will be able to top this particular combination. The fusion of the music, combined with importing many Tron tropes to the real world, creates an overall effect of asking a question nobody ever asked: what if Blade Runner 2049 was a dance party and was also very optimistic and colorful?

Hardcore Tron fans (yes, we exist) will almost certainly love the experience of watching Tron: Ares. Even if you rank this your third favorite in the series, it’s still a solid Tron movie, and that alone feels like a cause for celebration. Unlike the more ponderous moments of Legacy, Tron: Ares is content to tell a familiar story of a weaponized AI who develops a conscience and tries to be more than its programming directives.

Ares checks all the Tron trope boxes, and then some, and even manages to take some of the gaming concepts from the original film into innovative, real-world situations, making those ideas brand new. It's less formal about the different meta-games with the Tron world, but the visual references to the 1982 movie more or less take care of themselves. The action scenes rarely seem like fan service, partly because the color palette has been noticeably inverted to favor the reds of the baddies, rather than the blue of the Encom programs. If you’re looking for a further exploration of the various Programs who live on the Grid, Ares sidesteps that idea to explore its more central question: How could a digital AI retain a physical form in the real world?

The answer to this question may not be satisfactory to some. But, metaphorically, Ares pulls this trick off admirably. With a runtime of nearly exactly two hours, Ares isn’t here for a long time and is very content with giving you a good time. Just make sure to deactivate your cynicism programming before entering this game grid.

Tron: Ares is out in theaters everywhere on October 10.