The Third Foray into a Digital Space – Anthony Jalen Herring

I have an interesting simile to describe the Tron franchise. I would say it’s like that one friend that you haven’t seen in years, but whenever you see them, you play catch-up and just enjoy each other’s company. There’s some awkwardness from being apart for so long, but there’s this level of comfort throughout your time together.

Now, why would I describe Tron like that? Well, this series has a tendency of popping up every blue moon and then disappearing for God-knows-how long. The original film–aptly titled Tron––hit theaters all the way back in 1982, changing the game in regard to computer-generated effects in cinema. Its sequel, Tron: Legacy, arrived in 2010, acting as a narrative continuation of the original, whilst pushing the boundaries of special effects (and complete with a dazzling score from Daft Punk).

But when the world needed Tron most, it vanished.

There were plans to develop a sequel to Legacy not long after its release, but said plans fell through. The years went on, and it wasn’t until the late 2010s/early 2020s that this sequel would be reborn as Tron: Ares. Instead of being a narrative continuation of its predecessor, Ares instead opted to tell its own story with a brand-new set of characters (whilst having some threads to previous films).

As a whole, I think that Tron: Ares is…decent. Better than the original film for sure, but not reaching the same heights as Legacy.

The story of Ares is set fifteen years after Legacy, with Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), grandson of Ed Dillinger (the villain of the original film), enacting a plan to create advanced A.I. soldiers for the military. The head of these soldiers is the titular Ares (Jared Leto), who slowly becomes sentient and goes on his own mission to become “permanent”. The reason behind his shift is that he grows attached to Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the new CEO of fictional tech giant Encom, and seeks out the “Permanance Code” in order to achieve his goals. Said Code was created by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a former protagonist of the series who sacrificed himself to save his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) at the end of Legacy.

As interesting as this story might sound, it’s not executed to its fullest potential. What made the first two films unique was that it dealt with characters from the real world being pulled into this virtual world dubbed the “Grid,” in which there are two: the 1982 Encom Grid, and the Kevin-created Legacy Grid. On both Grids lived beings called programs who lived their lives and actually believed in us humans as god-like figures called “Users.” Now, while I understand that Ares wanted to take the Grid and use it a method to bring programs to the real world–a natural progression of the series–it didn’t do it enough. Sure, we see two new Grids–Julian Dillinger’s model and an updated Encom model–along with programs like Ares and his second-in-command Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) making the leap to the real world, but I wanted more, you know what I mean? I wanted to see something truly insane like whole armies and machines make the jump while people like Eve and her friends desperately trying to hold things back, but we only got a handful of motorcycles and jets–or, in this case, “Light Cycles” and “Light Jets”–do so. And sure, what we got is fun (especially with how oppressively grim Julian’s Grid is and how much Athena wanted to beat Ares to fulfill her programming), but it was ultimately disappointing.

Now, on the other hand, I am of the opinion that Tron is a franchise in which the stories themselves don’t really matter much. What really matters are the feelings that the groundbreaking special effects and overall world that the films transport you to, and let’s face it: Ares does work on that front, to an extent. Hard to deny the entertainment on display on this third visit to the Grid.

The Tron series is not only saddled with serviceable stories, but also serviceable characters. None of them are particularly three dimensional but given just enough to make you not write them off entirely. (My favorites in particular are Kevin and Quorra (Olivia Wilde), the latter being introduced in Legacy.)

With Ares, the tradition continues! The characters here are all fairly one-note, with even the title character’s arc–which is meant to be an emotional reckoning with his programming–not exactly hitting you in the feels. It doesn’t help that Jared Leto’s performance is pretty…standard, for lack of a better word. Even when Ares is becoming increasingly human and cracking poorly timed jokes, Leto delivers everything so awkwardly. (And yes, I understand that the character is an A.I., but if you’re going to gain more emotions, you’re supposed to, you know, gain more emotions.) In a way, I wish the film focused more on Athena, as I felt that Jodie Turner-Smith’s villainous performance was more enjoyable to watch. Sure, her arc probably would’ve involved her becoming far more heinous as the film went on, but you best believe that I would’ve been engaged!

(And on that note, I also would’ve taken Sam and Quorra as the main characters as well. The way their story ended in Legacy was rather bittersweet but offered an interesting route for their journey to take. Alas, we may never know.)

One thing that differentiates Ares from Legacy is how often it calls back to the original film, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

While its predecessor built off the original–and that film’s Grid–in rather fascinating ways, Ares simply uses the 1982 Grid as fan service and not much else. (This pains me to say as I was intrigued to see how the old Grid would be handled.) Now, the Grid itself is actually recreated rather beautifully, perfectly evoking the visual style that made the original film such a cult classic (even including the minor Bit character, who was Kevin Flynn’s sidekick). However, the Grid’s presence in the story is ultimately just a way to shoehorn in Kevin and not actually explain why he’s in there, which makes things even more confusing the longer you think about it.

Walk with me a bit. Kevin dies at the end of Legacy by reabsorbing his avatar, Clu 2.0, into himself and exploding. Now, you’d think that there would be remnants of his code on his Grid, and this would be the model in which we meet him again. However, by using the ’82 Grid, it just raises questions.

Why would Kevin even make a copy of himself on that Grid if he would go on to create his own? The ’82 Grid is meant to be a museum piece and nothing more.
Why does Kevin look like present-day Jeff Bridges if he supposedly archived this Grid back in the ’80s? When he made Clu 2.0 back then, the avatar looked like ’80s era Kevin, so why not this….”Remnant-Flynn”?
What even is the point of Remnant-Flynn? Like, why is he there? To be a guardian of the ’82 Grid?

I would ask more questions, but in the immortal words of the great Austin Powers, “Oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed.”

If you’d like to read my shorter review on Letterboxd, you can click on the link down below. Thank you for reading!

My letterboxd review of tron: ares