🔗 Share this article

The matrix of futility is revisited in this tediously complex sci-fi movie, more a screensaver than an actual film. It's a third installment to the original movie Tron from the early 80s, a film that was mould-breaking and courageously innovative for its time in a way that escapes this film and its predecessor Tron Legacy from the previous decade. The new Tron film nearly comes to life just once – when Evan Peters' character gets a slap in the face from Gillian Anderson playing his mother, in an old-fashioned bit of analogue reality. This is a piece of tough love you might feel like administering to every producer engaged in this movie, and it's sad to see the estimable Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith's character being made to look so lifeless.

Story Summary of Tron: Ares

The situation currently is that an evil AI corporation with the unsubtly gangster-ish name of Dillinger Corp has become a rival to the VR company Encom Inc, first established in the 80s arcade-game era by genius trailblazer Kevin Flynn's character, played by Jeff Bridges. This Dillinger (originally set up by Encom's executive Ed Dillinger's role, acted by David Warner) is led by the founder’s annoyingly geeky grandson Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who has a ambitious scheme to design and create profitable things such as invincible troops and armored vehicles in the VR world and then export them into the real world using a kind of 3D printer.

The problem is that however fearsome, these things crumble into dust after twenty-nine minutes. But Encom's present chief executive Eve Kim's character (Greta Lee) has uncovered the plot-driving “permanence algorithm” which can maintain these entities for ever, and even stores it on her person on a extremely basic flashdrive. So the ghastly Julian Dillinger sets his attack dog on her: Ares, the superhuman fighter which can leave the VR world for twenty-nine minutes at a time but which, in the time-honoured way of androids, is starting to exhibit symptoms of not doing what he's told. Jodie Turner-Smith's performance plays Ares's stoic deputy Athena and unfortunate Jeff Bridges has a wooden legacy appearance in wise white robes, like a Poundshop Jor-El on Krypton.

Acting and Roles Breakdown

Moreover, Ares – the hero of the title – is acted by Jared Leto with hipsterish long hair, beard and faintly all-knowing smile, touches that were possibly created by typing the words “incredibly irritating” into an artificial intelligence character generator. Nobody who recalls the 90s TV classic My So-Called Life will always find it in their hearts to be totally rude about Jared Leto, and I was incidentally quite amused by his expansive (and widely misinterpreted) comic turn in Ridley Scott's movie House of Gucci. But Jared Leto is unremittingly, persistently terrible in this film, although his performance isn't aided by a weak storyline which is intended to allow him to show flashes of “compassion” for Eve Kim's role and delegate all the villainous actions to Athena's character, thus making her marginally more interesting. It is supposed to be adorable when Ares says how he adores 80s synth pop and that Depeche Mode band are better than Mozart's compositions.

Series Features and Overall Impact

Consistent with the brand-identity of the franchise, there are motorbikes from the VR netherworld which speed around the place in linear paths, conforming to the angular layout of classic video games (or even nightclubs); a single bike even shoots out a lethal beam which slices a cop car in half. But there is no drama or jeopardy or emotional engagement anywhere. This franchise currently appears about as urgently contemporary as an in-car CD player.