Tron: Ares is the third film in a franchise that is now 43 years old. Photo: Disney.
No form of media has perhaps evolved more since the turn of the century than video games.
What started as dots on a black screen in the 1950s has now become a $350 billion industry fuelled by life-like graphics, incredible immersion, and new ways to tell complex stories.
The gaming industry has become so popular that it has even become the subject matter of stories in more traditional media like books, TV and movies. One of the first examples of this was 1982’s Tron.
While a bit dated by today’s standards, the original film told the story of a software designer dragged into the computer grid of a security software. He is then forced to play ‘real versions’ of the games he created.
Tron has always been a cult property, never quite cracking into the mainstream. Its 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy, is beloved by many but not the masses. So, when Disney decided to jump back into the Tron well in 2025, some were eager, while many others were left confused.
This leads to Tron: Ares, the franchise’s newest film.
This movie is annoying. That’s the best way to explain it.
On one hand, you have the bright red and blue colours that make the Tron world so much fun to look at. It’s backed by an incredible Nine Inch Nails soundtrack that rivals that of even Daft Punk in Tron: Legacy.
The Grid, in concept, remains a feast for the senses, and the idea of a computer world coexisting with our real one hasn’t been convincingly conveyed since the first Matrix.
The issue with Tron: Ares is literally everything else.
The newest Tron film contains one of the most forgettable casts of any film I’ve ever seen. Aside from Jared Leto, whom you’d probably rather forget, you would be forgiven for forgetting who was actually in this movie.
This is a cast that boasts Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges, yet all of them are underused or hamming it up to 11.
The supporting cast is also dreadful. I could not and would not be able to tell you a single character’s name.
If there was a gun to my head, I may as well just start praying because that’s how forgettable this whole thing really is.
The story is also just painstakingly average.
I’ll do my best to wrap it up in two sentences: Two companies are seeking Kevin Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges from the original two films) code to essentially 3D print objects from their respective programs into the real world without them disintegrating after 30 minutes of existence.
One company wants to print soldiers and tanks for the military (booooo), while the other wants to print food and medicine (yaaaayyy). As a result, the evil company sends soldiers from the grid to capture the code, and now we have Tron-like stuff in the real world.
That was three sentences, I’m sorry. 🙁
The issue with this story wraps back to the first complaint I made. Nobody cares about these characters. No one is as interesting as Kevin Flynn from the first Tron or his son from the second one.
Jared Leto is also so unlikeable (as a person and in the film) that there’s zero chance anyone will actually support anything he says or does.
Despite the visuals and audio being incredible, it doesn’t do it any better than what was seen in 2010’s Tron: Legacy. The A/V isn’t bad by any stretch, but it’s also not better than what’s in a movie that’s 15 years old.
The story being in the real world also hurts the entire experience. It’s the same complaint people have about the Transformers movies. We don’t care about transforming robots living in the real world and how they affect humans; we care about the transforming robots!
It’s the same thing here. We don’t care about stuff being 3D printed from the computer world and whether it’s sold to the military; we care about the computer world itself and how bloody cool it looks!
Ultimately, Tron: Ares was about as ‘mid’ as an average person would expect. If you’re a fan of OG Tron, then you might have some fun. But, if you’re a fan of Tron: Legacy, don’t expect a continuation of that film’s story or even much acknowledgment that it existed.
Tron: Ares is now showing in cinemas across the country.
