In retrospect, maybe it doesn’t seem all that weird that 1982’s TRON has turned into a nostalgia-coated franchise with a lot of barely-baked ideas about technology’s relationship to humanity (and very specifically NOT vice-versa). Primarily a nascent showcase for then-groundbreaking computer-generated imagery that was also cashing in on an also-then-new video game craze, TRON certainly struck a chord with young boys. They grew up to find a lavish sequel on their doorstep in 2010, the somehow even more mealymouthed but exponentially more gorgeous TRON: Legacy. That one was directed by Joseph Kosinski, and he brought what would come to be known as a sharp visual eye to the again state-of-the-art CGI, as well as an indelible score by Daft Punk. But despite the clamoring of nostalgic manchildren, nobody really seemed to like it very much. Nevertheless, TRON persisted, and now, another 15 years on, we have TRON: Ares, maybe the recent pinnacle of nobody-asked-for-this IP regurgitation. But wouldn’t you know it, despite a terabyte’s worth of caveats, it’s relatively the best one in the series.
Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) is the grandson of the guy who was (sort of) the bad guy in the first movie (played then by David Warner), and he runs the tech company/defense contractor named after his family. Dillinger has created a line of supersoldiers that exist in digital form and can basically be manifested physically via a special laser that allows matter to be transported back and forth from the digital realm to our world. His two special creatures are the titular Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith). The only catch is that their meatspace forms disintegrate after only 29 minutes.
Meanwhile, Eve Kim (Grace Lee), the current CEO of Dillinger rival ENCOM, the company formed by good guy Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges from the OG TRON), has miraculously discovered the “Permanence Code” in ENCOM’s ancient servers, which will enable Dillinger’s Pew-Pew clones to survive permanently in our space. Naturally, Dillinger sends Ares and Athena after her, but what he doesn’t know is that Ares, though relatively newly created, has already begun to experience an existential crisis and may or may not be the most loyal soldier.
Let’s be blunt: this is stupid. These movies are stupid. The franchise is riddled with formula and cliche, and there isn’t a single original element in this latest iteration, up to an including Eve’s drive to create new digital life in response to her sister’s untimely death from cancer. The script is built upon expository gibberish, with the characters bouncing from one place to another chasing one piece of software or hardware or whatever they need in order to get to the next action scene. Contemporary discussions about the usefulness/ethics of A.I. have permeated this movie not an iota; Ares has absolutely nothing of value to say on the subject. It also stars Jared Leto (who, it must be said, is very good at playing a guy who may or may not have a soul, but whose IRL reputation may prevent any number of viewers from giving a shit about that).
What TRON: Ares also is, though, is an audiovisually resplendent chase film. Upgrading from Kosinski’s sharp neon architecture in TRON: Legacy, director Joachim Rønning opts for a more Nolan-esque approach, and almost completely abandons the “digital” spaces of the previous films. Here the technology of TRON exists in a modern metropolis, with towering red-outlined battleships colliding with skyscrapers and futuristic motorcycles that leave laser trails that turn into dangerous plexiglass walls. As these largely unstoppable war machines plow their way through any conceivable real-world obstacle, Ares and Athena start to resemble Jim Cameron’s Terminators, in function if not quite in form, and the collision of this sort of video game imagery with a recognizable reality — especially because, for once, this sort of thing isn’t played for a goof — is pretty exciting to watch. And it doesn’t hurt that the score this time around is courtesy of Nine Inch Nails; this sort of thing goes down very smoothly when the bass is vibrating your rib cage this hard. All of which is to say, asking for an artistic agenda from something like this is a fool’s errand. There’s no good reason that what might as well be a stupid video game shouldn’t first be content to later be turned into a great ride.
DIRECTOR: Joachim Rønning; CAST: Jared Leto, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeff Bridges, Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson; DISTRIBUTOR: Walt Disney Pictures; IN THEATERS: October 10; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 59 min.
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