By Matthew Moorcroft

Unsure

• Directed by Joachim Rønning
• Starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jeff Bridges
• PG-13

Disney can’t seem to figure out what to do about Tron, huh? The 80s cult hit, which languished in mostly cinephile history books as a strange but important note in the development of VFX, became one of those films that persisted almost by chance. It’s vocal fandom, made up of mostly people who grew up on the original film and memories of it’s all digital world that was simply unlike anything else in cinemas, helped push Tron forward as one of Disney’s rare 80s experiments that actually stuck around. Strangely, this happened again with it’s big budgeted sequel Tron: Legacy, which while only doing modest numbers box office wise, has garnered a similar reception from it’s legion of fans and has grown in stature since it’s release in terms of appreciation critically (mostly helped by it’s director, Joseph Kosinski, growing into an acclaimed director of his own right).

And yet, despite all of that, Disney has always seemingly seen Tron as this strange, entirely niche property they can’t seem to get rid of and only turn to in times of crisis. After all, the original film was made during a time where Disney was desperately trying to shed it’s family friendly image, and the sequel itself was made in an attempt to regain the blockbuster market post-Pirates of the Caribbean and pre-Marvel and Star Wars. Now, we have Tron: Ares, which comes during a time where Disney is literally scrambling to have as many properties on screen as possible and throwing darts at a board, unsure about what audiences might actually want as Star Wars languishes in streaming hell and Marvel’s time is seemingly coming to an end. Disney is predictable, if anything.

With it’s heavy blacks and reds that characterize much of the visual style this time around, Tron: Ares certainly has style to spare. While the basic premise means there is much less of The Grid itself this time around, when we do return there it looks just as good as before. Advances in visual effects aren’t as drastic as before, so much of the cooler stuff is saved for the surprise practicality of the real world sequences, whose weight and tangibility give some level of believability to these digital creations. And it’s certainly an audio feast like before, thanks to the incredible work by Nine Inch Nails in the music department and the loud, roaring sound design that threatens to deafen you in ways a blockbuster film should.

But is that really enough anymore? Especially for Tron, a franchise whose visual and audio splendors are mostly masks for stories that are religious parables, fascinating philosophy, and an almost entirely alien world of our own? I’d argue no, and the biggest issue with Tron: Ares is unfournately in it’s very DNA and construction, something really isn’t fixed by normal means. Gone are the Buddhist and Christian analogues, and gone is the feeling of The Grid as a place where programs live and act like us, albeit with their own culture and society. Tron: Ares instead feels sterile and copy paste, with the digital frontier itself being populated by programs who cannot think and feel like humans. A far cry from prior films, but one that could work if Tron: Ares had anything actually interesting to say about the nature of AI and it’s growing intelligence, especially in the modern world.

Tron: Ares, in that regard, has very little to say at all, not just about AI, but anything in general. Whether this is by design or a symptom of it’s clearly troubled development behind the scenes is unclear, but the final result is a messy hodge podge of ideas and sequences that are cool or even great on paper – and sometimes in execution too – but when put together fails to form a cohesive whole. A duo of chase sequences in the middle of this are spectacular yes, but leading up to them is so rushed that you would think you skipped forward on the remote while in a theater.

This lack of cohesion also extends to the cast, which all feel like they have different ideas of what kind of movie they are in. Evan Peters and Jodie Turner-Smith get the assignment the best, leaning into their villainous personas with panache, all the while great actors like Greta Lee and Gillian Anderson struggle with a script that gives them no favors. And then there is Jared Leto, the obvious elephant in the room here, who is… well, he’s fine. Totally serviceable, mostly. Frankly it’s once again the script that lets him down here, weirdly enough, as Ares as character, while conceptually cool and having a great ticking clock gimmick, lacks any sort of clear personality himself compared to the sauve nature of Jeff Bridges in the original or even Garrett Hedlund more likable doofus take in Legacy. Honestly, a personal dislike of Leto aside, there just isn’t much to Ares as a character and it makes him less of a negative in his own film and more of a complete non factor, strangely enough.

And that’s kind of the gist of Tron: Ares in a nutshell. There just isn’t much under the hood here, which is a far cry from the ambiance of the original or the father/son religious parable of Legacy, or hell even the ambitious animation stylings of the supremely underrated Tron: Uprising. It’s a fun action flick at points and nothing more, and frankly for a series like Tron that just isn’t good enough at this point. I’m sure Tron will find it’s way back somehow – it always seems to at the end of the day – but as a return to The Grid, this was a mostly a pleasant diversion at best and a messy detour at worst.