Movie Review - TRON: ARES
If you like the visuals of TRON: ARES, you will probably get your money's worth. If you don't, you're in for a long two hours.

One of the most baffling things about Disney as a company is their commitment to making TRON a load-bearing franchise on the same level as Frozen, Marvel Studios, or Star Wars. The idea is cool, the aesthetic is cool, but now, with two movies before this one, a TV show, tons of park tie-ins, and it being a recurring factor in Kingdom Hearts, it feels a little strange for what was a cool-looking but otherwise fine science fiction movie from the 80s. TRON: ARES is just more TRON, which just means another threadbare plot in a science fiction movie without anything to say but some cool visuals and a great score.
Let's just get some of the weird things out of the way before we get into the merits of the movie. Jared Leto is the lead, and he has been in some weird situations both on and off set that have led to some discomfort among past costars. For some reason Disney also decided to do a marketing tie-in with Grok, the AI that famously declared itself MechaHitler a few months back which is just baffling since the person who owns it and is altering the knowledge base Grok pulls from is actively involved in culture wars attacking Disney.
Anyway on to the movie itself, it's not great unless you really like the world of TRON. This movie does not shy away from going into The Grid, which is good because it's really the only interesting thing in the film. Modern effects make The Grid look cool while maintaining its unique visual style, it just would have been nice to be there a little while longer. The other positive of the movie is the score, which is just phenomenal. Nine Inch Nails really hit it out of the park with this one.
On the other hand, the story is nonsensical. My recollection of TRON: Legacy is basically just the plot of The Grid in Kingdom Hearts 3DS but didn't they successfully pull Quorra out into the real world in that movie? Now the entire MacGuffin is this line of code that can allow programs to exist in the real world for longer than 29 minutes? It's just a little strange that so much of the movie is about this thing that wasn't an issue 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, like Captain America: Brave New World earlier this year, this movie seems entirely allergic to trying to tell a story that in any way references current events or makes a point about modern political dilemmas. Generative AI use is a political issue now and this is a movie profoundly about the ethical use of creating things with artificial intelligence, bringing them to life, and what makes them human. None of these are touched in any meaningful way beyond what you'd find in an Intro to Philosophy class, and even then if this script's interpretation of what it means to be human was used for a final exam, that person would fail. The fact that Evan Peters' CEO villain is so cartoonishly dumb and evil makes everything done in the movie feel disconnected from reality in a way that good science fiction shouldn't.
I realize that saying "this movie wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but I had very low expectations for TRON: ARES, and it met them. Is it enough to warrant a trip to the theater for the average viewer? Probably not, but if you like the aesthetic or the general idea of TRON, you'll probably enjoy this movie enough.
★★