Tron: Ares Review – Even Gillian Anderson Fails to Save This Mind-Bendingly Dull Sci-Fi Film

The matrix of pointlessness is reloaded in this mind-bendingly dull science fiction film, closer to a screensaver than an actual film. This is a third installment to the classic Tron film from the early 80s, a movie that was groundbreaking and courageously innovative for its day in a way that escapes this one and its predecessor Tron Legacy from 2010. The new Tron film nearly awakens just one time – when Evan Peters gets a slap in the face from Gillian Anderson portraying his mother, in an traditional bit of analogue reality. That's a piece of tough love you might feel like administering to all the producers 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.

Plot Overview 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, originally set up in the 1980s gaming period by genius trailblazer Kevin Flynn, portrayed by Jeff Bridges. This Dillinger (initially founded by Encom executive Ed Dillinger's role, acted by David Warner) is headed 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 virtual reality grid and then export them into the real world using a kind of three-dimensional printer.

The problem is that however fearsome, these things disintegrate 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 keep these things alive permanently, and even stores it on her person on a extremely basic USB drive. So the dreadful Julian Dillinger sets his attack dog on her: Ares the warrior, the humanoid uber-warrior which can leave the VR world for 29 minutes at a time but which, in the traditional way of robots, is starting to exhibit symptoms of not doing what he's told. Jodie Turner-Smith's performance plays Ares's deadpan second-in-command Athena's role and unfortunate Bridges has a wooden legacy appearance in sage-like white garments, like a budget Jor-El on Krypton.

Acting and Roles Analysis

And Ares himself – the protagonist of the title – is acted by Jared Leto with trendy lengthy locks, beard and subtly omniscient grin, touches that were perhaps created by typing the words “extremely annoying” into an artificial intelligence character generator. Nobody who recalls the 1990s television classic My So-Called Life will ever find it in their hearts to be totally rude about Mr Leto, and I was also quite amused by his broad (and widely misinterpreted) comic turn in Ridley Scott's film House of Gucci. But Jared Leto is consistently, unrelentingly terrible in this film, although he isn't helped by a limp plot point which is intended to allow him to show flashes of “compassion” for Greta Lee's character and delegate all the badass wickedness to Athena's character, thus making her slightly more engaging. It is meant to be adorable when Ares says how he adores 80s synth pop and that Depeche Mode are superior to Mozart.

Series Features and Final Impression

And in keeping with the brand-identity of the series, there are motorbikes from the virtual underworld which whizz about the place in long straight lines, conforming to the rectilinear design of classic video games (or indeed nightclubs); one even shoots out a lethal beam which cuts a police vehicle in half. But there is zero tension or jeopardy or emotional engagement throughout. This series currently appears about as urgently contemporary as an in-car CD player.