Tron: Ares

The digital world is once again putting the real world at risk, and this time, we’re not talking about the billionaire-funded fascist white American Christian bigots in the manosphere, tradwife, and wellness influencer circles recruiting all the dumb eager white kids from the suburbs and small towns into becoming Nazis, no! This time, we’re talking about some digital ninjas, but instead of the trouble happening in the digital world, it’s happening in the real world! Also, there’s Light Cycles!

Tron: Ares is the third film in the inexplicably long-running Tron franchise. It’s a series where the best you can really say about it, is that most people are probably at least somewhat aware of its existence.

Tron: Ares continues a story that began in the first film, Tron, back in 1982. That film is, again, at least in theory, a somewhat vaguely well-recalled film that mostly took place in a digital world where the good guys wore blue and the bad guys wore red… ahem… It is a film that, at the time, was considered to generally be a visual delight, but otherwise had absolutely nothing else to offer, and its only real legacy is a small niche fandom of big time weirdos, even by fandom standards, but hey… at least it had two really awesome video games at the local arcade.

Tron: Ares is also a kind of side-sequel that features events that aren’t quite connected to, but take place in the same world as, and follows the events of, the second installment in the franchise, Tron: Legacy. A decades-past-its-sell-date flop of a sequel from back in 2010, one that no one asked for or wanted, it was dull dud of a film. Despite some weirdly over-inflated expectations, Tron: Legacy mostly proved that Hollywood was nowhere near ready to showcase its face de-aging CGI effects at the time, but hey… at least it had a good soundtrack.

Now, 43 years after the first film, and 15 years after the second one, here we are with the third film in the series… Tron: Ares. Why Disney decided to take a third bite from this rotten apple of a franchise, to sink an astounding amount of money into this twice-proven loser, this time with the added dead-weight bonus of casting one of the least brightly shining “stars” in the entire Hollywood sky, Jared Leto, as their lead, I have no idea.

I don’t get the entire thought-process here.

In a nutshell, Tron: Ares is a film that dares to answer the question of “Why are they still making Tron films?” with “Eat shit. Fuck you.” What could possibly go wrong?

(Spoiler)

Everything.

In 2025, two massive tech corporations, ENCOM and Dillinger Systems, are in a race to bring digital constructs into reality. Dillinger Systems is led by an obvious little nepo-baby weasel, Julian Dillinger, who is the grandson of former ENCOM executive Ed Dillinger, who was the main bad guy from the first film, both in the real world and the digital world. ENCOM, meanwhile, is led by Eve Kim. She’s a cool CEO. She rides a motorcycle.

As the film opens, Julian Dillinger is busying showing off his brand new laser teleporter-machine to a bunch of old men in business suit and old men in military uniforms. This is the machine that has been responsible for sending people into the digital world ever since the first film. But this time, Julian thinks there’s a military application. He uses the laser like a 3D printer make a tank, and also a guy named Ares. Ares is a Master Control Program (MCP), a plank of wood in fetish gear that Julian describes to the gathering of old men as the perfect, expendable, and easily replaceable super-soldier for tomorrow’s battlefields.

Unfortunately for Julian, but luckily unbeknownst to the gaggle of ugly old men with their half-mast murder-boners for hoarding wealth and killing the planet, the laser teleporter-machine is only capable of making digital constructs that last for 29 minutes. After 29 minutes, they destabilize back into dust.

Doubly unfortunately for Julian, Ares is already beginning to show signs of being helpless before the wonder and beauty of nature, driven to experience emotions as he is entranced by the falling rain and a bug. He also notices Julian's indifference to his survival, so sharp-eyed viewers out there might suspect that a face turn lies in the future of Ares’ character arc. After the big demonstration, and after Ares has de-materialized, Julian's mother makes him feel like a big stupid baby over his inability to fix the limited lifespans of the digital construct.

Meanwhile, Eve Kim and her assistant, Seth Flores, are visiting a remote research station in Alaska. The station was set up by Kevin Flynn (the hero of the first film, played by Jeff Bridges) decades ago, and they believe that his computers hold the "permanence code" needed to break the 29-minute barrier. After finding the code, they transfer a digital orange tree into the real world, where it lasts indefinitely, even failing to freeze in the frigid weather. Whereas Julian only sees these digital constructs as weapons, Eve wants to feed people digital food.

During all of this, Julian uses Ares and his squad of street luge ninjas to attack ENCOM's in the digital world, looking for the permanence code. ENCOM’s street luge ninjas attack the invading Dillinger street luge ninjas, and their fighting styles are all basically like “but what if kung fu had more parkour?” And the whole time, as all these fetish gear ninjas are busy fighting each other in the digital world, all I can think about is how, meanwhile, in the real world, there’s someone out there like, “why the fuck can’t I log on to my email!”

Ares manages to download Eve's personal data file, which was their target, but as he and the other Dillinger ninjas are escaping, one of them is hurt. But because he is changing, against his programming, Ares tries to save the hurt ninja. But from the real world, Julian hits Ctrl-alt-delete, and pulls Ares out, leaving the poor ninja behind to die, as he drops a bomb in the digital world, taking ENCOM's servers off-line in the real world.

After examining Eve’s personal file and seeing that her recently passed sister was working on Flynn’s old work, Julian is waiting for Eve and Seth when they return to ENCOM, believing them to have the permanence code. Eve is forced to flee, with Ares and his second-in-command Athena chasing her through the Los Angeles city streets on Light Cycles. Eve manages to steal Athena‘s Light Cycle, but eventually, Ares manages to run her down, so she destroys the drive containing the code. But as Ares is about to destabilize, he sees that Eve feels bad for him, and then, at the last moment, Julian digitizes Eve, and sends her into the digital world.

Now that Eve is trapped in the digital world, Julian knows that he can get the permanence code from her by taking her “identity disc,” otherwise known as her Tron frisbee, even though doing this will kill her. He sends Ares after her.

But Ares has plans of his own. He tells Athena that Julian is "indisposed" and tries to get Eve to share the permanence code with him in exchange for his help getting her out of the digital world and back to the real one. Athena starts to get suspicious of Ares' behavior, after all, Julian has been “indisposed”: for a long time, and she begins to wonder, just how long does this ”pooping” that she has read about take? (At least, I assume this is her thought process.) Athena finally decides that Ares is malfunctioning, and there’s a big digital world chase.

Eventually, Ares and Eve are able to return to the real world, and they race for ENCOM headquarters. En route to ENCOM headquarters, Eve and Ares chit chat about dead sisters and Depeche Mode, and Eve realizes a copy of the code might be stored in a weird life-size diorama of Kevin Flynn's original office at ENCOM HQ. But unbeknownst to them, Athena and some redshirts have been sent in pursuit. All of this begs the question: 29 minutes from the San Gabriels to downtown LA? In LA traffic? Sure, buddy. Sure.

After that, things get cray-cray.

Julian’s real world mom is killed by Julian’s digital world children. Jeff Bridges gamely makes some time in his schedule for a day or two of quick CGI work and a presumably huge paycheck. Ares gains his permanence and sets about just frisbee-golfing the fuck out the bad guys, as the bad guys are trying to redline the hell out of LA using those classic giant floating red Tron tanks shaped like Ms. And I love that, during all of this, people are still driving around in downtown LA. What, you didn’t see the giant red M attacking downtown, man?

In the end, everyone learns a little bit about themselves… and each other.

The cops raid Dillinger headquarters, but before they can get Julian, he uses his laser teleporter-machine to escape, sending himself into the digital world. Eve has decided to use the Permanence Code to make the world a better place, but first, she builds another weird life-size diorama in her office at the top of ENCOM tower, but this time its of the Alaska facility, including the orange tree. Ares, meanwhile, has decided to walk the earth like Caine in Kung Fu. He sends Eve a postcard about his plans to find Flynn's son, Sam, and his companion, Quorra, who were the main characters in the second film Tron: Legacy.

Then, as Julian explores the damaged Dillenger servers in the digital world, he is transformed by an identity disc that once belonged to his grandfather's program, the evil Sark (the digital world villain in the first film).

Surprising absolutely no one, except for a handful of doofuses at Disney who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions involving this much money, Tron: Ares is an undeniable big time box office flop, grossing only $142 million worldwide on a production budget somewhere between $180–220 million, and ultimately losing the studio somewhere near $140 million. And while, usually box office is never a good metric with which to measure quality, this time it is… Tron: Ares is terrible. It looks good, sure, but it’s terrible. Even worse, it’s boring. In that way, Tron: Ares kind of reminds me of the Joseph Kosinski directed, Tom Cruise starring sci-fi flick Oblivion, a film that looks good, and I really want to like, and think is all around cool and cool-looking, but ultimately, undeniably, is boring as shit.

That’s Tron: Ares.

In a franchise with a distinctive aesthetic that is now as irrevocably out-of-date as the aesthetics of the Steampunk and Cyberpunk genres, that is known for its inert storyline no one has ever been invested in, where the only reason it has had more of a cultural impact than Avatar is the Light Cycles, I really liked how the studios apparently decided that the vaguely handsome guy they cast as the lead in the last film was the problem. He was just your basic zoolander-ian “model, idiot,” too, the latest in a long line of vaguely handsome white guys that Hollywood regularly digs up and works really hard at turning into a big time movie star—I’m looking at you, Austin Butler—only for them to turn out to be yet another vaguely handsome, forgettable dud (otherwise known as “pulling an Orlando Bloom”). And I can’t get over how they not only removed him from the film with a single throw away line during the pre-credits infodump, but then they replaced him with mother fucking Jared Leto, an actor who only seems to get work when a role might call for Johnny Depp, but the studios wanted someone slightly less creepy and unlikable.

It’s just an absolute clusterfuck of bad ideas, like a Frankenstein’s Monster of Hollywood Execs saying “hold my beer” and then giving notes. This film isn’t just “end result” bad either, it’s “initial decisions” bad, it’s “subsequent decisions” bad.

It’s just… bad.

This film did get one thing right though…

The in-world bad guys in this film are GenAI and billionaire tech bros, and in a meta-textual sense, the film accurately reflects this by being really flashy, and also really fucking stupid. What’s really funny is that Eve is also a bad guy too, as she‘s a billionaire tech bro piece of shit flying private and making the world shittier too, and while I know its just a movie, the idea that her weird digital oranges are being produced without any cost to the planet is ludicrous, and the idea that her “good” use of the Permanence Code will be the only way that it’s ever used is an even more ludicrous idea, which is a perfect representation of the whole god damn problem when it comes to these asswipe tech bros and billionaires, their lack of concern for the impact, or what the ramifications of future applications might be, because all that matters to them is the fortune and glory now. So, Eve is just a different shade of shitty asshole from Julian. Even funnier, this is true of every human character in this film. They’re all variations of tech bro human garbage making the world worse off, just in the hopes of making money. It’s like we’re watching a movie where the heroes, the “good” Nazis, are fighting the bad guys, the “bad” Nazis, because the “good” Nazis want to use Chlorine gas to make plastics and pesticides, while the “bad” Nazis want to use it as a chemical weapon.

Go “good” Nazis… I guess?

The film tries to address this unavoidable truth by having Julian, in the beginning of the film, in his demonstration to the old men in suits and ties and the old men in military uniforms, do the usual “if I don’t do it, some will else will” self-justifying bullshit that you always hear from these environment-destroying, plagiarist, anti-labor, wealthy leech scumbags, the dipshits in hoodies and suits without ties who push these useless “tools“ meant for the stupid and the lazy, things like GenAI/AI Assistants. Julian says: “The question isn’t whether or not the car should be built. The car is being built right now. The question is, who’s holding the keys?” This is basically just a conman’s way of saying: “somebody is going to shot you in the face, so it might as well be me that makes money off of it, right?”

But that said, I did like how, what with its 29 minute disintegration limit, that much like GenAI and all the other AI Assistants stupid people are suddenly glomming onto, the tech Julian is showing off here is defective, incapable of doing what’s being promised. That at least, was great. I also liked how, again, much like Gen AI and other AI Assistants, it only has one real use… harming people and/or the world. And also, it’s beloved by stupid people and dangerous greedy old men.

So I appreciated that bit of clear-eyed depiction.

As for the Tron franchise itself, I’ve always felt like the idea of having your identity/soul/life force irrevocably entangled with your chief throwing weapon was a huge design flaw. I mean, what if you throw it and it doesn’t come back? What if you throw it in battle, and then just have to stand there and watch it just… sail off over some digital cliff?

I don’t think this is all that unreasonable a question to ask either, because, for a summer, many years ago, the neighborhood kids and I all obsessively played Tron. This meant that on foot or on BMXs, we ran around our block and the parks and in the forested gullies where the storm water run-offs were, while carrying frisbees, which we would then throw at each other, probably while shouting “Tron!” It was a pretty safe game because none of us could throw a frisbee with any accuracy. And we played this game every single day, maybe a whole week, or however long it took until finally every frisbee in the neighborhood had been thrown up on to the roofs of the various houses. If we had been Trons, we’d all be dead now.

But I digress…

This is the very definition of a non-event of a film, something nobody asked for and nobody wanted, and yet it was pushed like a huge deal, instead of a strange big time all-in gamble by the studio in a game that is clearly rigged against them. That it ends with the audacity to threaten us with a potential 4th film in a franchise, as if there are huge swaths of people out there who are not only like “Yes! Sark is back!” but are also like “Yes! Finally, we’ll get to see what happened to Sam and Quorra!” as if the idea of a film starring Jared Leto AND Olivia Wilde is gonna get butts in seats like it’s god damn Titanic 2: The 2nd to Last Temptation of Christ: Lets Get Biblical On This Shit, is simply flabbergasting! What world are these people living in where Tron is popular? I just don’t understand why they’re doing it. How many times does this unwanted wet fart of franchise have to underperform at the box office before they walk away forever, or at the very least, regulate the IP to just making cheap cartoons from now on?

But even worse?

It’s the sure knowledge that it will happen. It may take a decade or two, but they’re gonna make that god damn 4th Tron movie whether we want it or not.

May God have mercy on all our souls.