When a science-fiction or fantasy franchise decides to relocate the action of the series to a contemporary setting a few entries in, it almost never works. Sure, 'Star Trek: The Voyage Home' is one of the best Star Trek films and 'Enchanted' works a treat, but in practically every other case, it feels like a serious misstep, especially when the original conceit of the series is a protagonist entering an alternate world. The minute that journey is switched, something is lost and there had better be a very good dramatic or thematic reason for doing it.
This is the misstep that, despite its impressive visuals and pertinent social commentary, ultimately takes down 'Tron: Ares' at the knees. The third entry in the bonkers sci-fi franchise that keeps spluttering back into life, it leaves the world of The Grid behind and imagines what might happen if computer programs, granted sentience thanks to artificial intelligence, tried to immigrate to the human world. It's not to say that the idea doesn't have merit, especially with AI now a very real and unsettling part of our daily lives, but it quickly becomes clear that the 'Tron' franchise might not have been the best vehicle.
Set around a decade after the events of 'Tron: Legacy', 'Ares' finds Kevin Flynn's company ENCON now in the hands of Eve Kim (Greta Lee, 'Past Lives'), who had initially taken over the company with her twin sister before her untimely death. Eve is searching for a permanence code in Flynn's archives that will allow the company to recreate organisms and objects developed in The Grid in the real world. At this stage, nothing has remained past 29 minutes. Her rival, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, TV's 'Mare of Easttown') is also searching for the code, and tasks his new Master Control program Ares (Jared Leto, 'Morbius') to track down Eve and the code, bringing Ares into the human world. However, exposed to an environment beyond Dillinger's own oppressive Grid, Ares starts to dream of a permeance of his own, and joins with Eve to both stop Dillinger and his second-in-command program Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith, 'After Yang') and to find a way to make his corporeality permanent.
While calling Steven Lisberger's groundbreaking 1982 original 'Tron' a "great" film might be a stretch, it certainly has a tremendous amount of charm, and despite weakness in its writing, Joseph Kosinski's 2010 sequel 'Tron: Legacy' is an aesthetic wonder that grows in reputation. In both cases, the films reach for something akin to space opera, relying on standard tropes and imbuing them with enormous sincerity. Joachim Rønning's 'Tron: Ares' lacks either of those films' romanticism or classical quality. The essential iconography is there, but I found myself missing the lyricism we've come to associate with these films, even if that lyricism was always flawed. The Tron films are so self-consciously goofy, but it isn't that 'Ares' takes itself too seriously by comparison. It's that it has no discernible personality of its own.
'TRON: ARES' TRAILER
There are three essential ideas at play here. One is that of warring tech corporations battling to grasp world-changing technologies. This isn't a new idea, but its certainly one that feels very present today. What's ultimately reductive is that writer Jesse Witugow reduces these competing companies into binaries of "good" (ENCOM) and "bad" (Dillinger), meaning that the ethical questions of what these companies are pursuing are hardly asked, certainly for ENCOM. Perhaps it was too much to expect Disney to have anything to say about the dangers of tech companies dominating the course of human development, but such a simplistic approach feels very out of date, especially when the wheels of those questions were already in motion from the previous films.
The second idea is that of an artificial intelligence seeking autonomy and sentience. Again, something we've seen before and again, something that feels immediate, but again, it's not an idea that is sufficiently unpacked. It was probably also a stretch to expect Disney to deliver an inventive metaphor for the plight of refugees and immigrants under its current administration, but the opportunity was certainly there. Like a well-constructed algorithm, Ares responds and acts in all the ways we expect, only robbed of any colour in the charisma-vacuum of Jared Leto's performance. It's really a significant misstep to cast Leto, especially considering the calibre of the rest of the cast. He adds nothing to the film or the character, and his attempts to execute the clunky (and very Disney) humour emphasise how ill-fitted he is to this series. Yes, he was unexpectedly effective in 'Blade Runner 2049' (2017), but that is a film of extreme emotional repression. He certainly feels inhuman in 'Tron: Ares', but even the other programs still feel like they have some sort of humanity to them.
The third idea at play, and the most interesting one, is that of the inherent inhumanity of computer intelligence, its inability to think beyond its directive. While Ares is thunderously dull, Athena presents a more interesting conundrum. When asked to complete a task, she does so without compromise, and here we have the fear of technology extending beyond the control of its creator, not because it can think for itself, but because it is incapable of considering anything other than what it's told. Jodie Turner-Smith gives a far more nuanced performance, where her certainty emerges as the key antagonistic force of the film. The problem is, we've also seen this before, in this same series. 'Tron: Legacy' grapples with this same question, on a much bigger scale, with Flynn's Grid-based doppelgänger CLU committing genocide in order to fulfil his creator's directive of crafting a perfect system. As strong as Turner-Smith is in this film, it's hard not to feel that we've been here before.
All of this links to the central problem of 'Tron: Ares', that being its lack of any distinct flavour. The previous films weren't exactly profound, but they offered singular sensory experiences for audiences at the time, and this accounts for their permeance. Despite many imitators, they still feel distinct, and much of this is because they're almost entirely set within The Grid. The vast majority of 'Ares' is set in our world, and what we see of within the film's Grids (with the exception of one neat surprise) is mostly uninspired. The Grid we see most often is Dillenger's, not Flynn's, and it looks pretty much the same as Flynn's, except... red. We might see the beloved light cycles gliding down city streets, but the charm of 'Tron' is the digital worlds it takes us to. Maybe within a highly imaginative digital space, these derivative questions might feel less so, as they do in the other films; a new canvas to see the familiar drama play across. When it's just a city in the United States filled with recognisable skyscrapers, it doesn't feel as special, especially when the laws of gravity still apply.
The previous films weren't exactly profound, but they offered singular sensory experiences for audiences at the time, and this accounts for their permeance. Despite many imitators, they still feel distinct, and much of this is because they're almost entirely set within The Grid.
And when it comes to action, there's simply not a lot. There's a lot (and I mean, a lot) of driving in this film, and despite the presence of legendary cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, Joachim Rønning is not Joseph Kosinski and lacks the necessary visual flair and inventiveness to make these repetitive sequences work. The film is handsome-looking enough, but the framing is uninspired and the rhythm lacks any kind of propulsion. It never feels like we're moving towards something, and when we come to the big climax, it all feels so... well, small. It's hard to get excited about a single Recognizer lethargically floating slowly through a city.
One aspect of the Tron films that usually comes to save the day are their scores, with Wendy Carlos' original an inventive and radical composition, and Daft Punk's score for 'Legacy' achieving legendary status from the moment anyone heard it. The idea that their magnificent score would be followed up with a new composition from Nine Inch Nails sounded like a match made in heaven, but while the score on its own is great, the film itself doesn't really know what to do with it. The music more pulses away in the background, rather than driving the dramatic action the way Carlos and Daft Punk were allowed to. I'm sure this score will be fondly remembered, but I suspect more so as its own entity, rather than as an integral aspect of the film.
There's certainly a suggestion that 'Tron: Ares' is laying the groundwork for future entries, but I just can't see that happening. For one, Disney have had such trouble making heads or tails of this franchise that it's a genuine surprise they made a third film at all. For another, this series has never been a box office hit, and that was with the novelty of the first and the excellent marketing and breathtaking aesthetics of the second. There's very little about 'Tron: Ares' to get excited about, and even the moments built directly to appeal to fans lack any kind of energy (especially the inevitable appearance from Jeff Bridges as Flynn). I don't see a world where the response to this films convinces the cripplingly risk-averse Disney to take this any further.
What it needed was a bold swing, a clear vision and fundamental understanding of what brings us to these films in the first place, none of which this film has. Watching 'Tron: Ares', I thought a lot about another recent entry to a beloved sci-fi franchise that brought its central premise to a world recognisably our own. 'Alien: Earth', Noah Hawley's FX series, felt like a disaster in the making, but succeeded by grounding the decision to bring the Xenomorph to Earth in a strong dramatic and thematic conceit. In fact, 'Alien: Earth' and 'Tron: Ares' share many of the same concerns, especially the governance of tech corporations and the moral uncertainty of artificial intelligence. Where one succeeds and the other fails is in their proximity to the core of what makes their franchises distinct. When I come to a 'Tron' film, I don't want to watch people driving around recognisable streets or blowing up buildings. I want to be taken to another world; a digital world of light and sound, where the complications of human fallibility collide with machine certainty. Take away that mythical journey into the digital, and it hardly feels like 'Tron' at all.