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Review by E.C.McMullen Jr. |
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TRON ARES- 2025USA Release: Oct. 10, 2025 Paradox, Sean Bailey Productions, Walt Disney Pictures Rated: USA: PG |
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15 years after TRON LEGACY and 43 years after TRON, I saw the second theatrical sequel, TRON ARES.
Directed by Joachim Rønning (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL), who brings more experience as a director than either Steve Lisberger or Joseph Kosinski had when they helmed their own TRONS (Steve and Joseph were both green first timers, neither of whom had any experience at directing actors or a crew). The writer this time around is David DiGilio, who likewise has more experience writing than the writers of either of the previous TRONS.
Through a long opening credit sequence the audience was treated to a noisy, nearly incoherent NIN sound track that jousted with, and sometimes defeated, the dialogue audio track of various reporters throughout the years telling us news about the rise and fall and rise again of a 50 year old arcade gaming company called ENCOM.
It wasn't that the Nine Inch Nails sound track is bad at all. It's that the sound track and Sound Effects, and talking were all badly mixed to mash.
With the first TRON, arcade video games is what brings the money into ENCOM, but through their new CEO, Ed Dillinger, they are opening their umbrella to other ventures including their crown jewel, a laser that turns physical analogue matter (like, say, an orange), and rapidly take it apart and digitize it, store it in memory and, at a later time and using the raw material it broke apart, perfectly reconstitute the orange.
In TRON we saw that Ed Dillinger was not in charge of ENCOM but a puppet of the massive computer, known as Master Control Program (MCP). An Artificial Intelligence that secretly achieved awareness and sentience some time ago, and moved around the human pieces on the company's board to put a puppet in control of ENCOM. That was Ed. Ed is a living, breathing human slave to MCP and even he didn't know the depth of his control. MCP also controlled an Dillinger Avatar that it called Sark. The villain within the computer, and it brutally controlled the avatar version of Dillinger as well.
The opening credit newsreels fold the clunky TRON LEGACY into canon and here we are today.
The Dillinger family is back and now in charge of Dillinger Systems. The company, despite decades of scandals, betrayals, and outright treason toward the U.S. government, is putting on a private prototype show for assorted Pentagon high ranking officials and other high mucky-mucks.
Ed Dillinger's grandson, Julian (Evan Peters: INVASION [TV], AMERICAN HORROR STORY [TV], X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, THE LAZARUS EFFECT, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, X: MEN: DARK PHOENIX, WANDA VISION [TV]), an inhumanely uncompassionate narcissist squared (a common weakness among Tech-Bros), hosts the event and to no one's astonishment, shows how ENCOM's latest hardware and software can create war weapons and self-aware, sentient human life forms out of raw material in seconds.
You would think this alone would be jaw-drop astonishing but the military brass are only marginally impressed and politely applaud. Julian needs to put in the extra effort to brush over decades of his grandfather's corporate betrayal (I guess. Why else weren't the military flabbergasted - and more than a little fearful - that Julian has the capacity to create endless obedient, self-aware and sentient humans out of raw material?).
Dillinger Systems has competition, of course, in the form of good guys like Ajay Singh (Hasan Minhaj: HAUNTED MANSION [2023]) and the head of the rival company, Eve Kim (Greta Lee: MONEY MONSTER, WAYWARD PINES [TV], GEMINI, CHANCE [TV]).
That rival company being, of course, video game manufacturer, ENCOM (???).
Wait! What?
A Game manufacturer is the chief rival to a Weapons manufacturer?
The face-palm problem here is that ENCOM can't possibly be competition to Dillinger Systems any more than Minecraft was a competitive threat to the traitorous U.S. Defense Contractor, Raytheon.
Julian thinks nothing of risking the fate of his entire corporation just to hack into ENCOM and wreck their showcase for their latest games coming out next year. Julian's Mother, Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson: THE X-FILES [TV], CLOSURE, X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE, SHADOW DANCER, ROOM ON THE BROOM, I'LL FOLLOW YOU DOWN, ROBOT OVERLORDS, HANNIBAL [TV], AMERICAN GODS [TV], CROOKED HOUSE, UFO, THE PALE BLUE EYE), huffs, puffs, and fumes over her only son's insanely stupid recklessness, and that's the totality of her character.
What a waste of Anderson's talent.
At this point the movie is a high tech cross between Jersey Shore and The Kardashians so a MacGuffin is thrown in. Anything the computer creates from that matter transfer tech (which we originally saw in TRON), will disintegrate in 29 minutes. So Eve and Julian are both looking for the fabled "Permanence Code" that Kevin Flynn wrote then hid ... somewhere.
Seth: "What does the Permanence Code do?"
Eve: "Without the Permanence Code, anything the matter
digitizer recreates will disintegrate in 29 minutes."
Seth: "But wait! Sam Flynn re-digitized back into our world, and he didn't disintegrate."
Eve: "Yes, but -"
Seth: "He brought back computer avatar Quora as a real human and she didn't disintegrate."
Eve: "Well, yes, but -"
Seth: "In fact, Kevin Flynn came back and he never disintegrated, either!"
Eve: "That's because Kevin invented the Permanence code!"
Seth: "In 29 minutes?!?"
So Eve, with the help of her friend and flunky, Seth (Arturo Castro: GHOST STORY CLUB [TV], THE TERMINAL LIST), goes off-grid to find the Permanence Code. Julian apparently knows Eve well enough to know that's exactly why she's disappeared from public scrutiny. Now Julian wants that code for himself so his fantastic inventions won't disintegrate in the real world and he can keep using laser 3D printing instead of regular manufacturing.
He's not only willing to steal the code from Eve, he wants her murdered while he's robbing her, and in the most obvious and public ways with as many witnesses as possible, even right in front of cops with all of their body cameras, leaving no doubt that he's behind the attacks on American cities, and the deaths of who knows how many people in addition to Eve.
Whew! That's a long sentence. Lemme catch my virtual breath.
Okay -
To underline that: Julian wants the world to know that he murdered Eve and however many others in collateral damage it takes to steal the Permanence code from her.
Julian is convinced that he is wealthy, connected, and smart enough to get away with it. His upset Mother threatens to tell the board on him ("You just wait 'till I tell the board on you, little mister!") and cannot believe she raised such a psychotic, but surely there were warnings long before this moment.
Julian quickly becomes so cartoonishly evil that suspension of disbelief is drop-kicked to the shit can. He might as well have a huge waxed mustache so he can twirl the ends while he cackles in crapulent corruption.
And while we're on the subject, it's my website and I'll alliterate if I want to!
From this point onward, its cool visuals and zero depth.
Just one set piece chase scene after the next until the end. Its all targeted at Eve, who has the Permanence Code, and Ares (Jared Leto: SWITCHBACK, URBAN LEGEND, AMERICAN PSYCHO, PANIC ROOM, MR. NOBODY, SUICIDE SQUAD, BLADE RUNNER 2049, THE LITTLE THINGS, MORBIUS, HAUNTED MANSION [2023]), Julian's disobedient MCP slave, who wants the Permanence Code so he can leave the computer and become a real boy. Athena (Jodi-Turner Smith: TRUE BLOOD [TV], THE NEON DEMON, THE LAST SHIP [TV], NIGHTFLYERS [TV], WHITE NOISE [2022]), Julian's new super obedient MCP slave who is determined to obey Julian's poorly worded directive to the letter, is the driving force.
TRIVIA Genre fans have already noticed that TRON ARES has two actors who share a scene together, Jared Leto (Ares) and Cameron Monaghan (Caius), also share a DC comics heritage of Leto as The Joker (SUICIDE SQUAD) and Monaghan as Jerome Valeska - the proto-Joker on the hit TV series, Gotham. |
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger's THE TERMINATOR, Athena will not stop - though she has to go to the digital Ladies Room every 29 minutes to refresh.
The trailer shows Jeff Bridges (KING KONG, WINTER KILLS, TRON [all], JAGGED EDGE, THE MORNING AFTER, THE FISHER KING, THE VANISHING, IRON MAN, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE) in his Gandalf the White robe, but I'll let you watch and discover how the movie gets there.
TRON ARES would be a noisy neon colored drag if it wasn't for the genuine sense of humor holding much (but not enough) of it together: If only there was more of it.
I'm not saying TRON ARES should be a comedy, but everyone from Hitchcock to Whedon knew how to find humor in the grimmest of moments.
Leto works most of the humor here as Ares is the voice of discovery, existing in packets of 29 minutes of reality and both confused by, and desirous of human compassion and humanity. Like Jeff Bridges in STARMAN. But with all of the spastic action clutter all around him, any potential insights crumble into philoso-babble, poorly grafted on and wedged into the many cracks.
Because this subject is harped on, we were talking afterwards as to why Ares and Athena needed to be human at all. Humans need to eat, breathe, and have bathroom time. If you're gonna keep bouncing that basketball off of our backboard faces, we're bound to start asking WTF questions long before your two hour movie is over.
Despite those copious missteps, TRON ARES is far more entertaining that TRON LEGACY and after 15 years of inflation and in modern dollars, its production cost less than half of what it took to make LEGACY.
By the end, TRON ARES down time is that its a 90 minute movie padded out with an extra 30 minutes that takes the story nowhere. Though it doesn't have all the promise of the original TRON, TRON never fulfilled most of its promise anyway.
So if you are a TRON fan who has been dealing with up to 43 years of the diminishing returns of an outstanding concept wrapped in a mediocre storyline, anyway (and you never saw a far superior, THE MATRIX), you might have a fun ride with TRON ARES.
This review copyright 2025 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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For Those who scroll...
The Muddled-Mousehead Corporate Culture of Millennial Disney
One major issue that millennial Disney-culture keeps smashing its mouse-muddled face into and Will Not Learn Ever, is that it thinks its smarter than its own audience, which it clearly is not.
I'm talking computers.
What was excusable in 1982 and an audience that largely had no common knowledge or daily use with computers, is inexusable 28years later with TRON LEGACY in 2010. It's beyond pathetic 15 years after that.
We've been in a computer age far too long, with first person shooter video War Games consistenly being best sellers for more than two decades. Children were born and raised in it, and from computers to consoles to mini computer smart phones, they have an immediate understanding of what makes a realistic war game and what makes a fantasy or futuristic one.
When a coproration discovers that it is being overrun with an attack that breached its security and is destroying its system, valuable seconds aren't wasted pondering how to defeat it while the destruction spreads, the physical kill switch is immediately thrown and the computer is shut down.
Period. The attack is stopped in its tracks and everyone is aware of that from decades of this happening in real life.
But not in TRON ARES. No, the expensive computer techs see the rapid, wanton destruction and sit there, surprised, flustered, and entirely incapable of stopping it.
Sheesh!
It's mind-boggling that the wheezy old farts in charge of Disney Do Not Get that their audience, though not full of coders and script kiddies, still possess that basic understanding of how computers work, having been directly affected by it throughout their lives.
What's more, home computer sales are largely driven by games. Even those who prefer fantasy games know that if their magic elves from Computer world entered the Real world they'd have to work with Real world physics - separate from Computer world. So when that happens in TRON ARES it needed SOME kind of explanation (the briefer the better) so it wouldn't immediately bomb like 2015's mega-flop, PIXELS (which, in fact, did attempt an explanation of how a giant Pac-Man could exist in reality).
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
The machines that exist in the computer world of TRON, nearly all of them anti-gravity units and made of light (in the movie franchise's logic) instead of physical materials, could not work in the real world.
But if your story accepts that Dillinger Systems has created anti-gravity technology, it would be based on the known advances of the day, other companies would be working on it. Dillinger Systems would not hold back on being first out the door with a product, getting first sales equals first funding to improve their anti-grave tech, putting them so far ahead of everyone else. It would be such a staggering leap forward, that it'd make the opening scene of the company's ground-based hardware pointless.
There wouldn't be ancient jet aircraft in the sky and ancient ground-base only police cars. You would have a THE FIFTH ELEMENT technology and the society to go with it.
Why wouldn't your futuristic tank fly instead of dealing with ground based obstacles? What's the selling point of an anti-grav tank being tough enough to go Through a wall instead of Over it?
The idea that Dillinger Systems, who can hire and fire Julian at will, would allow their CEO to sit on such a massively profitable goldmine of technology, while it peddles something as absurdly mundane as laser 3D printed ground-based Supersoldiers and tanks and personal winged craft?
If you've watched the trailer then you already know what I'm talking about.
Done right, without the fantasy, it would have been both entertaining and amusing to see a Rogue computer assassin, made to exist in our world, attempting to bring anti-grav flying machines from a computer image generating existence into reality, only to see them fail, fall over, crash, or sit there silent like a giant paperweight: utterly useless. We'd watch an increasingly frustrated assassin, largely unaware of real world physics, set its sights lower and lower until it finally has a piece of military hardware that will work.
That hardware would be, of course, the only machine(s) that were actually designed and built for the real world - the machinery that Julian showcased at the beginning of the movie.