🔗 Share this article

The framework of futility is revisited in this mind-bendingly dull science fiction film, closer to a screensaver than an real cinematic experience. This is a third installment to the classic Tron film from 1982, a movie that was mould-breaking and courageously innovative for its time in a way that escapes this film and its forerunner Tron Legacy from the previous decade. The new Tron film almost awakens just once – when Evan Peters gets a smack in the face from Gillian Anderson's character playing his mum, in an traditional bit of analogue reality. This is 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 respected Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith being made to look so lifeless.

Plot Overview of Tron: Ares

The scenario now is that an malicious artificial intelligence company with the unsubtly gangster-ish name of Dillinger Corp has become a competitor to the VR company Encom Inc, originally set up in the 1980s gaming period by brilliant innovator Kevin Flynn's character, played by Jeff Bridges. This Dillinger (initially founded by Encom's executive Ed Dillinger, acted by David Warner) is led by the founder’s annoyingly geeky grandson Julian (Evan Peters), who has a ambitious scheme to design and create lucrative items such as indestructible soldiers and tanks in the VR world and then transfer them into actual reality using a sort of three-dimensional printer.

The issue is that however fearsome, these things disintegrate after twenty-nine minutes. But Encom's current CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has discovered the MacGuffin-y “permanence code” which can maintain these entities for ever, and even stores it on her person on a extremely basic flashdrive. So the ghastly Julian sets his attack dog on her: Ares the warrior, the humanoid uber-warrior which can exit the virtual realm for twenty-nine minutes at a time but which, in the time-honoured way of androids, is starting to exhibit symptoms of not doing what he's told. Jodie Turner-Smith portrays Ares's stoic deputy Athena's role and unfortunate Bridges has a wooden legacy appearance in wise white robes, like a Poundshop Jor-El on Krypton's setting.

Acting and Roles Analysis

And Ares himself – the protagonist of the title – is acted by Jared Leto with hipsterish long hair, facial hair and faintly all-knowing smile, details that were perhaps created by inputting the words “incredibly irritating” into an artificial intelligence character generator. No one who recalls the 90s TV classic My So-Called Life series will always find it in their hearts to be completely harsh about Mr Leto, and I was incidentally very entertained by his expansive (and widely misinterpreted) comic turn in Ridley Scott's movie House of Gucci. But Leto is consistently, persistently awful in this film, although he isn't helped by a limp plot point which is intended to allow him to display glimpses of “compassion” for Greta Lee's character and delegate all the villainous actions to Athena's character, thus making her marginally more interesting. It is meant to be adorable when Ares says how he adores 80s synth pop and that Depeche Mode band are better than Mozart.

Franchise Elements and Final Impression

Consistent with the franchise identity of the series, there are motorbikes from the virtual underworld which whizz about the place in linear paths, conforming to the rectilinear design of classic video games (or indeed nightclubs); one even shoots out a lethal beam which cuts 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.