Tron: Ares Review - A Dazzling Digital Dream
There’s a point, somewhere deep within Tron: Ares, where the images and sounds stop resembling a movie and start to feel like pure energy. It’s not entirely clear what’s happening on screen – lasers, bikes, holograms, gravity-defying flips – but the spectacle has a pulse, and that pulse is unmistakably Tron. If 1982’s Tron imagined what the inside of a computer might look like, and 2010’s Tron: Legacy gave that idea a Daft Punk-infused heartbeat, Ares takes the concept to its logical extreme: a war of color, sound, and motion, waged between the digital and the human, the created and the creator.
This is the third entry in a series that has never quite known whether it’s a cult curiosity or a corporate tentpole, and that paradox defines Ares as well. Director Joachim Ronning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) takes over the Grid with a style that’s both reverent and restless. The tagline may read “No Going Back,” but everything about this movie is built on the tension between nostalgia and evolution.
Like the best moments of Tron: Legacy, this one looks and sounds astonishing. Seen in IMAX, Ares became a sensory experience: a ballet of neon and steel, framed by the moody hum of Nine Inch Nails’ score. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross step into the musical legacy left by Daft Punk and make it their own – layering industrial dread with waves of analog synth. Their soundscape is both brutal and hypnotic, pulsing in sync with the film’s imagery. For two hours, it’s easy to lose yourself in the rhythm of light and circuitry.
But what of the story? Like its predecessors, Tron: Ares wrestles with the question of what it means to be real in a world ruled by the digital – and like its predecessors, it only occasionally bothers to present an answer. The screenplay by Jesse Wigutow (with a story co-credited to David DiGilio) tries to merge the philosophical musings of the original with the high-speed spectacle of a modern blockbuster. The result is ambitious, often exciting, and occasionally exhausting.
The setup is pure sci-fi myth. Two rival tech conglomerates – Encom and Dillinger – are locked in a corporate arms race, after something called the “Permanence Code,” a piece of lost digital DNA created decades ago by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, the one consistent face of this franchise returning once again to lend the series its fragile soul). Whoever controls it can make artificial creations that don’t fade into ash after 29 minutes. For Encom’s genius CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee), that means a new era of healing and abundance; for Dillinger’s CEO (Evan Peters), it’s a weapon.
Caught between these two worlds is Ares, an artificial intelligence brought to life – and to servitude – under Dillinger’s control. Jared Leto plays him with a mix of physical grace and existential melancholy. His Ares is both god and slave, executing orders with lethal precision while secretly yearning to be more than a program. When he begins to dream of autonomy, the movie transforms into a tragic cybernetic parable. Ares wants to experience life, but his creator sees him only as a tool.
It’s tempting to call Tron: Ares a “Pinocchio story,” and the film practically invites the comparison by basing itself around an artificial being’s longing to become real. Yet Ronning isn’t interested in sentimentality. His Ares isn’t an innocent – he’s a soldier built to destroy, and his rebellion carries the weight of a myth. Leto plays him less as a naïve child and more as a weary fallen angel. The more human he becomes, the more he understands suffering.
The human element comes, fittingly, from Greta Lee. As Eve, she’s the film’s conscience – a brilliant engineer who sees the line between human and machine not as a barrier but a bridge. Lee gives the movie its emotional grounding, and much like the partnership between Flynn and Tron carried the 1982 original, her partnership with Ares carries this one. Her performance has the same humane intelligence that made her stand out in Past Lives, and she brings warmth to a movie otherwise wrapped in glass and neon. When she faces off against Ares, it isn’t with weapons but with compassion. She’s the one person who sees him not as a threat, but as a reflection.
And then, of course, there’s Jeff Bridges. His Kevin Flynn – older, calmer, and now something of a digital ghost – appears late in the film, but his presence gives Ares its heart. “Fascinating,” he says with that half-smile that can melt any amount of CGI. It’s a small moment, but it reminds us what Tron has always been about: curiosity. Bridges remains the anchor for a series that might otherwise drift into abstraction.
Visually, the film is a feast. The light cycle chases are dazzling, especially one that races through the streets of downtown Vancouver, blending digital and physical worlds until they’re indistinguishable. But Ronning’s maximalist approach can also be overwhelming. There’s so much going on – hovercraft battles, laser duels, chase sequences – that the human drama often gets buried under the spectacle.
For longtime fans, the callbacks are frequent enough: the glowing identity discs, the light trails, even the sound design. There are also flaws – many of them. The dialogue sometimes collapses under the weight of its techno-babble, and the editing can feel breathless. But even at its most incoherent, Tron: Ares never stops reaching for transcendence. That makes it, in its own way, beautiful.
When it works, Tron: Ares is what cinema was made for: light projected onto darkness, searching for meaning. When it doesn’t, it’s still a hell of a show. Whether it’s destined to inspire another generation of fans or simply flicker out like its own creations, only time will tell. Tron: Ares isn’t perfect, but as Flynn would say, the thing about perfection is that it is unknowable, impossible, and also right in front of us, all the time. In a year crowded with sequels and reboots, few have dared to look and sound this electric – or this alive.