Tron: Ares Review – Even Gillian Anderson's Efforts Fails to Save This Incredibly Boringly Complex Science Fiction Movie

The framework of pointlessness is revisited in this tediously complex science fiction movie, closer to a screensaver than an real cinematic experience. This is a third installment to the original movie Tron from 1982, a movie that was groundbreaking and courageously innovative for its time in a way that escapes this film and its predecessor Tron Legacy from 2010. Tron: Ares almost awakens just once – when Evan Peters gets a slap in the face from Gillian Anderson's character portraying his mother, in an old-fashioned bit of real-world action. That's a piece of tough love you might want to handing out to all the producers engaged in this movie, and it's sad to see the estimable Greta Lee's role and Jodie Turner-Smith's character being made to look so uninspired.

Story Summary of Tron: Ares

The situation now is that an malicious artificial intelligence company with the obviously criminal name of Dillinger Corp has become a rival to the VR company Encom, first established in the 1980s gaming period by brilliant innovator Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. This corporation (initially founded by Encom executive Ed Dillinger, played by David Warner) is led by the founder's annoyingly geeky grandson's character Julian (Evan Peters), who has a ambitious scheme to develop and produce lucrative items such as indestructible soldiers and tanks in the virtual reality grid and then export them into actual reality using a sort of three-dimensional printer.

The problem is that however fearsome, these things disintegrate after 29 minutes. But Encom's current CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has discovered the MacGuffin-y “permanence code” which can maintain these entities permanently, and even stores it on her person on a very low-tech flashdrive. So the dreadful Julian sets his attack dog on her: Ares the warrior, the superhuman fighter which can exit the virtual realm for twenty-nine minutes at a time but which, in the time-honoured way of robots, is beginning to show signs of not doing what he is commanded. Jodie Turner-Smith plays Ares's stoic deputy Athena and poor Jeff Bridges has a wooden legacy appearance in wise white robes, like a budget Jor-El on Krypton's setting.

Acting and Roles Breakdown

And Ares himself – the hero of the film's name – is played by Jared Leto with trendy lengthy locks, facial hair and faintly all-knowing smile, touches that were perhaps designed by typing the words “extremely annoying” into an artificial intelligence character generator. No one who remembers the 90s TV classic My So-Called Life will ever find it in their hearts to be totally rude about Jared Leto, and I was incidentally very entertained by his expansive (and critically misunderstood) humorous performance in Ridley Scott's movie House of Gucci. But Leto is consistently, unrelentingly awful in this film, although he isn't helped by a weak storyline which is intended to allow him to show flashes of “empathy” for Greta Lee's character and subcontract all the badass wickedness to Athena's character, thus making her slightly more engaging. It is supposed to be adorable when Ares the character says how he loves 1980s electronic music and that Depeche Mode are superior to Mozart's compositions.

Franchise Elements and Overall Impact

And in keeping with the brand-identity of the franchise, there are motorbikes from the VR netherworld which whizz about the place in linear paths, conforming to the angular layout of antique arcade games (or indeed nightclubs); a single bike even emits a lethal beam which slices a police vehicle in half. But there is no drama or jeopardy or human interest anywhere. This franchise now looks about as urgently contemporary as an automobile CD system.