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Hot out of the cinema, I’ve just seen Tron: Ares. In a nutshell, it’s not good.
Context
I love the original Tron! I mean, I was a child of the 80s, how can I not love it? Going inside a computer, cool special effects, Jeff Bridges, David Warner, it was friggin’ awesome. I didn’t have a frizzby, I had a disc!
Moving on to 2010, and I like Tron: Legacy. I thought it was a solid sequel, a good story, Bridges again, cool SFX and a killer soundtrack. In fact, probably one of my most favourite soundtracks of all time. It might not be your taste in music, but it’s probably the most recognisable score in cinema history.
I watched Legacy again this week, in preparation for Ares today.
Tron: Ares stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jeff Bridges, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson, Hasan Minhaj, and Arturo Castro. Joachim Rønning directs and writes, alongside David DiGilion and Jesse Wigutow, who wrote the story.
The Story
At the end of Tron: Legacy, Sam Flynn leaves the grid with Quorra, and we assume that Flynn kills CLU in the grid. Well, none of that matters now. We start with ‘the grid’ speech by Flynn from Legacy, but it’s wrong. I know the opening of that speech, because it’s on the Legacy soundtrack. In Ares, the speech is the same, but with different words. #annoying
There is a series of badly CG newscasters who explain that Sam left, Eve (Lee) took over Encom, Julian Dillinger (Peters) has taken over Dillinger Systems as he’s the grandson of Dillinger (Warner from the original).
Of course, Sam retired; he had Quorra with him, and he probably read this new script and bailed. I would leave to spend time with Quorra. #AIdoll
A step up from an inflatable doll
Dillinger (Peters) has a way of 3D printing programmes and machines for use for the military. The downside is that they can only live in the real world for 29 minutes. Why? So the story can unfold. There is no mention of Cillian Murphy as Dillinger from Legacy, but then, he was uncredited.
Ares is the new Master Control Program, and he can be ‘printed’ in the real world and be a soldier. However, when he appears back inside the grid, it turns out he’s developed feelings, well, emotions. He starts to see Dillinger as the bad guy, and wants to get into the real world, and last longer than 30 minutes. #don’tweall
In the meantime, Eve has cracked the ’30 minute’ limit and puts it on a USB stick for safekeeping. In a digital age of the cloud, wireless transfers and emails, the safest place for the most incredible discovery known to man is a USB stick.
Who’s the Bad Guy?
At first, Ares is the bad guy, but then Dillinger is, and then Athena is. Athena (Turner-Smith) is Ares’s second in command. When she learns that Ares is not following orders, and then she’s the bad guy. They take the black female lead and make her evil. #boldstratedgy
The rest of the movie is about Dillinger trying to get the ‘last longer than 30 minutes’ code. He commands a printed Ares and Athena to get it from Eve on light cycles. This made me laugh, because where is Dillinger’s secret lab, about an hour outside the city.
Anyway, they are about to get the USB stick, when another of Dillinger’s henchmen manages to put Eve in the grid, via a portable scanning laser. Think of the original laser that encoded Flynn into the grid, you know the one? It was the size of a small building. Well, it’s portable now, and wireless, I guess. #technology
The second and third acts are all jumping in and out of the grid, all after the code. It’s all very predictable, the way it all pans out.
Bridges and Anderson are also in the movie.
The Cast
Lee is good as Eve, but Eve is dull as dishwater. If you thought Sam Flynn was a personality vacuum, wait until you meet Eve. She’s not so much the main protagonist; she’s more like the narrator.
She spends most of her time running away from something, looking scared, and that’s her. When she does talk, she’s explaining the plot. The only good thing about her is, she is very easy on the eye.
Lucky bike!
Leto’s character is very bland, robotic, and emotionless. In Tron: Ares, he plays the same type of character. #seewhatIdidthere
Honestly, Ares is pretty lacklustre. He doesn’t have any emotions, even though he’s ‘developed’ them. Fine, they are new to him, but they could show, now and then. Think Vision from Age of Ultron, but dull.
For me, Turner-Smith is a red flag. And that’s not because of race, but because she chose to play roles like Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry VIII. She was also in The Acolyte, as a lesbian space witch, and did it badly. #thepowerofmany
Bridges turns up in an ’80s backup version of the grid, which was odd. Does that mean there were two Flynn’s, one from Legacy and one in a backup on an 80s hard drive?
Side note: Ares ends up in the 80s grid, and I noticed that the opening graphics were ‘wrong’. At first, I thought this was bad CG, but then I realised it was well thought-out ’80s-style’ camerawork. Credit where credit is due.
Seeing Bridges as old, and I mean, really old, was sad, though.
Anderson is also in Tron: Ares.
The Music
I’m not all that familiar with NIN, I have heard of them, but that’s about it. The soundtrack for Ares is good, pumping (as the kids say) and carries the movie well. However, it’s certainly not Legacy, which I am now listening to as I write this review.
As I said, Legacy is probably the most distinctive soundtrack in cinema history. Tron: Ares soundtrack is good, but just not as good. Weirdly, on the walk home from the cinema, I found myself humming the theme of Legacy. Make of that what you will.
Annoyances
The story for Ares is a mess, overly complex, and each scene is predictable. There isn’t an easy flow to the movie; it just seems to go from one scene to another. All to an end goal, like any other movie, but this movie just seems to exist; that’s it.
Tron, and then Legacy, had a story that followed each other. Ares isn’t really a ‘Tron’ movie, as it doesn’t really continue the story, see the opening, but there is also no Tron.
Who’s not in Tron: Ares? Bruce Boxleitner, you know, Tron! I just read on the IMDb, that he’s not in the movie, but is ‘encouraging fans to still support the movie’. I guess he’s under some form of contract, so he can’t completely say what he feels.
Sir Not Appearing In This Film
Sadly, the scene with Bridges doesn’t work; he’s there as a token gesture. Weirdly, if they had brought back Boxleitner, or a stand-in as a CG Tron, it might have had a better ending.
The 30-minute thing was really stupid! It’s only there to help the plot along, and to make sure people in peril are going to be OK. About 3 or 4 times, people who should have been killed are saved by the 30-minute rule.
Overall
Tron: Ares is a cash-in, milking the cow, flogging another dead horse. As I said, Tron and Legacy told a solid story and ended nicely. Tron: Ares clearly is a ‘we need to make more money’, so they threw something together.
If you love the first two, I would say stay away from this one. It’s not really a third movie; there’s no Tron in it, it’s just a story about the digital world and the real world trying to mix. If you took Tron of the title, it might have worked better, to be honest. Like how if Mission: Impossible 2 wasn’t an M:I movie, you might have just enjoyed a decent action flick.
The direction is mixed. Some of the scenes are good, with great production and effects, but then there are a lot of scenes that don’t work. Some of the action scenes are annoyingly directed, so you cannot see the action.
It’s over-stylised in places as well, like it’s trying too hard to be like Legacy. Kosinski is a great director and really knows his stuff, which is why I think Legacy worked. If you’re just trying to make a carbon copy, you’d better be damn good. Sadly, Ronning is not that good.
You can’t just tilt the camera 90 degrees and hope it looks cool. After a while, it got annoying. The same as the close-ups of Lee, as I said, he’s hot, but there are a lot of close-ups of her, mostly looking scared.
Like with most Hollywood movies, Tron: Ares is pretty, with a good soundtrack, but overall, a mess of a story. I say mess, that’s a bit harsh, it’s just not that interesting. All the way through, the ‘memberberries remind you that you’re watching a ‘Tron’ movie, but that’s about it. #cashcow
I’m giving Tron: Ares a generous 1 out of 5 stars. As I said, the production is amazing, the music is good, but the cast have dull characters to play with and there is very little engagement with them. I might watch this again, when it’s on streaming, but I’m not in a hurry.
Tron: Ares is now in the cinemas.
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