Joachim Rønning's "Tron: Ares" is a film about two feuding tech billionaires who have very different intentions for the same revolutionary technology. Both are capable of rapidly 3D printing any digital design, and both are searching for the "stay code" that will allow their creations to last longer than 29 minutes before crumbling to dust. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (an overqualified Greta Lee) wants to use her particle laser to create orange trees out of thin air and otherwise replenish the vast environmental resources these modern tools usurp in the name of progress. Dillinger Systems CEO Julian Dillinger (a bratty Evan Peters) wants to use his particle laser to mass-produce Jared Leto. You'll never guess which of these characters is the villain.
A hard-hitting, propulsive, and broadly functional continuation of a franchise that, while fundamental to our visual conception of the computer age, has proven to have the same cultural staying power as a laser-printed light cycle, "Ares" seeks the same permanence as its characters. It's a film whose sole goal is to make "Tron" a renewable resource in its own right, rather than a brand to be exhumed from the half-dead Hollywood IP morgue whenever Disney feels the technological world has advanced so much that the Power Grid seems a place worth revisiting.
Director: Joachim Rønning
Writers: Jesse Wigutow, David DiGilio, Steven Lisberger
Stars: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters
At the very least, "Ares" might be relevant, engaging, and straightforward enough to pull that off. Moving away from the “biodigital jazz” of 2010’s “Tron: Legacy” in favor of a more programmatic approach (as you might expect after replacing a hyper-aesthete like Joseph Kosinski with the seasoned director of “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” and “Pirates of the Caribbean 5”), this safe but stylish sequel dons its franchise’s signature neon graphics to disguise a generic story that struggles to incorporate a few loose fragments of the “Tron” mythos.
Do you know, at least vaguely, that Jeff Bridges once played a cool guy named Flynn? Then you’ll have no trouble keeping up with Jesse Wigutow’s script for “Ares,” a formulaic tale of rogue AI and the race to the future that capitalizes on the fact that audiences no longer need the benefit of lore to appreciate the porosity between the real and virtual realms. Despite the internet, anyone old enough to understand "Inside Out" should be able to grasp the idea that Leto essentially plays an anthropomorphized antivirus that exists within ENCOM's data archives. Now that people's sucking into digital worlds has become commonplace, "Ares" remains relevant by inverting the dynamics of the previous "Tron" films; with the same glimmer of imminent, but not quite there yet, fantasy that animated its predecessors, Rønning's installment focuses on digital beings exerting their influence over our physical reality.
The Power Grid has gone out of fashion; downtown Vancouver has moved in. The thumping electronic fuzz of Daft Punk has been replaced by the crunchier industrial synths of Nine Inch Nails. Above all, the magic of ones and zeros has been replaced by the overly basic and cautious belief that technology is only as good (or as bad) as the programming we give it.
Like so many films about synthesizers, robots, and artificial intelligence, “Ares” is limited by the idea that every machine secretly aspires to be human, which is only interesting insofar as it reflects humanity’s seeming determination to be less human. Julian, a sniveling hacker sociopath in the mold of Mark Zuckerberg or Boris from “Goldeneye” (some archetypes are in desperate need of a firmware update), is so desperate to leave his legacy and impress his former CEO mother (Gillian Anderson) that he couldn’t care less about the consequences of his technology, or that it might not be nice to mock his new security program as “expendable.” He doesn’t realize that smelling a few raindrops and seeing a firefly land on his finger might be all it takes for a dead-eyed killer robot to start questioning its programming.
Replacing the video game setting of the previous “Tron” films with a vaguely roguelite story format, the script sends Ares, along with his less impressionable second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), out into the real world on a 29-minute race to capture Eve and retrieve the permanence code from the recesses of her memory. This quest turns into a fun motorcycle chase, as Rønning seamlessly blends the franchise’s synthwave aesthetic with the essence of a more realistic setting without having to develop a real-life aesthetic of his own.
(The streaks of orange light that streak through Vancouver resemble Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s nightmare, while subsequent action sequences look to parse that visual trickery into new forms.) One look at Eve's face is enough for Ares to realize he's on the wrong side of the fight, and so the rest of the story finds him allying with the ENCOM executive to safeguard the permanence code while Julian sends wave after wave of 3D-printed Athenas to kill them both.
Joachim Rønning's "Tron: Ares" is a film about two feuding tech billionaires who have very different intentions for the same revolutionary technology. Both are capable of rapidly 3D-printing anything they design in the digital world, and both are searching for the "permanence code" that will allow their creations to last longer than 29 minutes before turning to computer dust.
ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (an overqualified Greta Lee) wants to use her particle laser to create orange trees out of thin air, thereby replenishing the vast environmental resources these modern tools usurp in the name of progress. Dillinger Systems CEO Julian Dillinger (a bratty Evan Peters) wants to use his particle laser to mass-produce Jared Leto. You'll never guess which of these characters is the villain.
Joachim Rønning's "Tron: Ares" is a film about two feuding tech billionaires who have very different intentions for the same revolutionary technology. Both are capable of rapidly 3D printing anything they design in the digital world, and both are searching for the "permanence code" that will allow their creations to last more than 29 minutes before turning to computer dust. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (a uniquely skilled Greta Lee) wants to use her particle laser to create orange trees out of thin air and otherwise replenish the vast environmental resources these modern tools usurp in the name of progress. Dillinger Systems CEO Julian Dillinger (a spoiled Evan Peters) wants to use his particle laser to mass-produce Jared Leto. You'll never guess which of these characters is the villain.
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