Disney / Buena Vista
Let’s get the difficult part out of the way, because I don’t think ignoring it makes sense. Jared Leto is at best a bizarre human being, and at worst is allegedly a sexual predator. It’s sad that his name is forever attached to a sci-fi franchise I have a lot of affinity for.
The early news about Tron: Ares was all bad.
It was so bad, in fact, that I didn’t see this film in the theater. This is something I now regret. It is visually spectacular.
Even if I didn’t like the story, it would have been worth seeing in the theater. The visuals are amazing and the score is absolutely magnificent. It was a movie designed for the theater.
I watched the film on a very large TV, but I truly wish I had surround sound in my office to fully experience this film the way it was meant to be heard.
The story isn’t particularly inspired on the surface, which is why reviews and buzz weren’t positive, at all.
However, it’s a layered story and you have to look beyond the surface to really appreciate it. I watched it with my 19 year old son and when we were done he was very positive. He really enjoyed it, and so did I. It has philosophical depth and is a thinking person’s film. It’s important to appreciate that going in.
The story features Tron themes from the beginning.
We have good ENCOM, evil Dillinger Systems and… The Grid… or Grids. ENCOM and Dillinger both seem to have their own. Ares is an advanced AI military program from Dillinger that can take physical form in the real world. Any transition from digital to physical can last 29 minutes and then the program de-reses back to the Dillinger Systems grid.
During one of his journeys to the physical world Ares begins to experience emotions and with that and the understanding that he was built to be expendable, he decides he wants to be a real boy. (The Pinocchio vibes are unmistakable)
In order to become a real boy, the “Permanence Code” must be discovered.
With this strand of code, the AI bots can exist in perpetuity on Earth.
Evil Dillinger Systems wants to create chaos, so the world has no choice but to turn to his defense program to keep them safe. However Ares begins to see the error of this philosophy and switches sides to defend humanity from the evil Dillinger bots.
The magnificent Jodie Turner Smith leads the Dillinger army after Ares defection. She plays a perfect automaton, working endlessly to execute her directive from Dillinger, even to the extreme. This closely echoes Clu’s arc in Tron: Legacy. If you aren’t familiar with her, I encourage you to watch The Agency on Paramount +. She’s great in Tron: Ares, but she has so much more to work with in The Agency and she is absolutely wonderful in it.
Encom is led by CEO Eve Kim, played by the talented Greta Lee.
If you watch The Morning Show on Apple TV, you’ve seen her before. She plays the idealistic Encom CEO at war with the Musk-ish demagogue Tech Bro who leads Dillinger Systems, Julian Dillinger.
Dillinger is played by Evan Peters. He gives an excellent performance, which I say, because I didn’t even realize he played Quicksilver in X Men: Days of Future Past. He’s unrecognizable in Ares and Future Past is a film I’ve seen 25x at least. I was shocked when I realized who played the role.
I love Gillian Anderson. Dana Scully and I had a very powerful relationship when I was younger and she’s in Tron:Ares as Dillinger’s mom.
Unfortunately, she’s the worst part of the film. Her delivery screams, “what am I doing here?” It feels very much like she mailed her performance in. Thankfully, her role is small and she doesn’t distract from the finely crafted overarching story.
Jeff Bridges appears briefly as a blue tinged force ghost… no… wait… wrong franchise. He’s a blue tinged ghost in the machine, dispensing wisdom at a key moment. It was nice to see him, but he was definitely inserted for fan service more than an important plot driver. Well, maybe a little bit of both.
The script is solid, not spectacular, but the subtext is powerful. What if we could program food digitally that can then substantiate in the physical world permanently. Could we then bring a food printer to the most food insecure places on Earth and feed the people? That sounds wonderful. In an era of uncertainty and fear, it’s nice to think about something so positive. Ares, if nothing else, is an optimistic parable.
One of the incredible visual effects was the technology of grid weapons making their way into the real world. The light based contrails come to life and there are a variety of other interactions that transition grid reality into our reality. The visual effects technology has advanced so much you don’t even question the possibility of it. It makes the action sequences incredibly fun to experience.
Let’s take a moment and mention Nine Inch Nails.
They are responsible for the entire soundtrack and the soundtrack is special. One of the great things about Tron Legacy was the soundtrack and Daft Punk did the whole thing. I mean, it’s not Queen’s Flash Gordon and Highlander soundtracks, but what is really? I literally haven’t listened to an entire movie soundtrack since Queen’s “A Kind of Magic” (Highlander), but I seriously might listen to the Ares soundtrack later. It’s that good!
I already mentioned the effects, but they bear repeating. They are excellent. Color is almost a character in the Tron movies and the colors in Ares are so vibrant they leap off the screen and assault your senses in the best way. The visual nature of the film takes a good story and turns into a really fun film. It’s an ode to comprehensive film making. Story, effects, sound, light and music combine as a recipe of fun that’s more thought provoking and more enjoyable than you would expect.
The one criticism I have, aside from casting Jared Leto, is why were we missing Garrett Hedlund’s Sam Flynn? Has too much time gone by and he is too old for the role? Why not introduce his daughter or something as Encom CEO. It’s not that Greta Lee wasn’t great, she totally was, but it’s the Flynn family company without a Flynn.
Maybe Garrett Hedlund wasn’t available because of his commitments to Tulsa King, but aside from a couple of super oblique mentions and one potentially interesting reference that could point to the next Tron film, his absence was conspicuous for me.
I hope the disappointing performance of this film in the box office doesn’t stop us from getting more Tron. Ares was way better than expected. Take the time and watch it, especially if the negative buzz drove you away when it originally came out. If you enjoy the Tron universe you’ll enjoy this film.
Extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
