Posted in: Disney, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: Tron: Ares

TRON: Ares Review: Another Gorgeous Misfire In A Troubled Franchise

TRON: Ares feels less like a movie and more like a very long and boring but occasionally visually stunning Nine Inch Nails music video.

TRON: Ares might have visual and audio spectacle, but everything else is so dull and boring that you'd be better off watching a visualizer of the OST.

Director: Joachim Rønning
Summary: A highly sophisticated Program, Ares, is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission.

TRON: Ares Goes For Style Over Substance, And It Shows

The TRON franchise is peculiar in that history has repeated itself twice, and in some ways, it may do so again. The first film was a financial and critical disappointment at the time, but it went on to earn a cult following and a dedicated fanbase. A fanbase so dedicated that Disney greenlit a sequel in 2005, which went on to be a financial and critical disappointment, but also went on to earn a dedicated cult following. A third film has been in development for at least a decade, and we know that pieces of the script, written in 2011, are featured in TRON: Ares. Maybe that's why elements of this film feel weirdly dated despite how hard it works to say something about AI. The problem is TRON: Ares has nothing to say, no characters worth investing in, and aside from a banger soundtrack and some excellent visuals, it doesn't bring anything to the table that TRON: Legacy didn't twenty years ago. 

TRON as a franchise was ahead of its time in many ways, and while there were some truly innovative things in the sequel, TRON: Ares feels like it is trying to catch up instead of forging the path forward. This might have something to do with the extended production timeline this film has had. The idea of sentient AI and its potential implications for the real world going forward is a conversation that has shifted considerably in the last couple of years. Do we need some sort of statement over the ethics of AI in a TRON movie? No, not really, but if you're going to be a movie with very little substance, you need to work twice as hard on everything else.

The extremely weak script does this film no favors. Ares (Jared Leto) is uninteresting in every way as we watch him go through the same "AI discovers the real world" journey we have seen a million times over. Leto signed on to this film around 2017, so you have to admire his dedication; however, he is a void as far as charisma and presence. Greta Lee doesn't come out much better as the movie flips wildly from her being a competent badass to having almost no agency over any of her actions. She is trying to accomplish something her sister was unable to, which is her primary motivation, and it makes Eve's place within the story very clunky. We're supposed to be invested in her safety since the second and third acts are essentially extended chase scenes with her as the target, but the film has done nothing to make us care about any of these people.

The villains only fare a little better in TRON: Ares because they are at least given some scenery to chew on. Jodie Turner-Smith is playing another AI like Ares, and while he can barely emote, she looks like she's about to eat someone whole. So we can't use the excuse that they are AI, so they can't emote because Turner-Smith is out here chewing enough scenery that she might be glowing red. Evan Peters is also running around as a manic version of a tech bro, and he nails that "might have done a line or might have stayed up all night coding" aura that many tech bros seem to have. He doesn't get as much scenery to chew on like Turner-Smith, but you believe that he's this arrogant nepo baby who thinks he can get away with anything, does anything, and then sits there with a surprised Pikachu face when it all blows up in his face.

An Empty Visual And Audio Spectacle

Visually, TRON: Ares is quite spectacular, but the lack of time spent in the grid really makes everything feel less special. The idea of bringing the world of AI to the real world is all fine and dandy, but it just means you have a bunch of brightly colored things running around boring-looking cities. There are some very cool scenes, visually, including a lightbike chase and when Ares goes on a heist in the grid. However, the real world really washes out the spectacle of it all. TRON has always been a little goofy, but on the grid, nothing looks goofy. When you have Leto standing there in his red suit, surrounded by people wearing normal clothes in a normal room [see image above], it really takes away from what could have been. It's pretty, but the first two movies were much prettier.

The music was always going to be a big thing in TRON: Ares. While the second film may have gained a cult following over the years, one thing people have agreed on since nearly the beginning is that the music by Daft Punk was incredible. So, when Disney announced that Nine Inch Nails would be doing the music, not Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross under their government names, as they have in other movie soundtracks, but NIN specifically, everyone had incredibly high expectations. The good news is the music is pretty damn good. The bad news is that it's not as good as TRON: Legacy, but that bar is high enough that you might need supplemental oxygen. The sound design with the music might annoy people in big theaters as well. It's very music-heavy, which is intentional; however, if you're someone who occasionally has trouble hearing dialogue, you might want to wait to see this with subtitles.

TRON: Ares feels less like a movie and more like a very long and boring but occasionally visually stunning Nine Inch Nails music video. If that sounds like something you'd be into, then see it on the biggest screen possible with a warning that it might give you vertigo if you're sensitive to that sort of thing [note: this is the third, maybe fourth, time a film ever gave me vertigo with previous films being The Walk, Everest, and Interstellar so this is not a common thing]. TRON: Legacy felt like it was made by people who loved the world and the story and wanted to explore it further. TRON: Ares feels more like something that was thought up in a boardroom by executives. They know there is potential there, even if the last two entries stumbled. At the time of this writing, TRON: Ares is repeating history with middling critical reviews, but the box office looks like it could be big. It's a shame that the most cynical TRON movie appears to be the only one that will be a financial success.

TRON: Ares

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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5/10

TRON: Ares might have visual and audio spectacle, but everything else is so dull and boring that you'd be better off watching a visualizer of the OST.

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