Daft Punk > NIN
Disney doubles down on its commitment to ultra-’80s, be-neoned video game thrillers with killer scores.
Tron: Ares
Director: Joachim Rønning • Writer: Jesse Wigutow
Starring: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Jeff Bridges
USA • 1hr 59mins
Opens Hong Kong October 9 • IIA
Grade: C+
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fine with Nine Inch Nails, and even more fine with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross using their own names for film scores (Soul is spectacular, Challengers maybe more so). But Daft Punk’s soundtrack to Disney’s last feeble attempt to create a Tron-based franchise with Tron: Legacy, was just a teensy bit better. The enjoyment gap isn’t as wide as the one between that film and Tron: Ares, though. You know, when Jared Leto is the least of your problems you’re in serious trouble.
In case you forgot or, more likely, were’t alive for the now-cult favourite Tron back in 1982, this all started when a video arcade operator and one-time tech giant ENCOM (think EA or Capcom) software engineer, Kevin Flynn (always Jeff Bridges, including in the uncanny valley version) tried to hack into ENCOM servers to prove his old boss Ed Dillinger was stealing his work. He gets into it with ENCOM’s Master Control security software and so breaks out another engineer’s Tron programme to fight it, but alas, they all get sucked into “The Grid” when an experimental laser (laser, eyes!) digitises their asses. Then they ride around on light cycles. It’s a whole look. A full 28 years later, Tron: Legacy picks up with Flynn missing, his son Sam running afoul of ENCOM’s board (never, ever fuck with a tech billionaire’s stock price) and also getting sucked into the Grid, where he has to battle Clu, Flynn’s original, now sentient hacking programme. There’s more light cycle riding and then everyone spills into the real world in Flynn’s old arcade. Deep breath. Now, another 15 years has gone by and we find that Sam left ENCOM in the hands of CEO sisters Eve and Tess Kim (Greta Lee and Selene Yun), who were on a hunt for Flynn’s mythic Permanence Code (wild guess as to what that means) until Tess’s tragic death. Now Eve is determined to finish her sister’s work. While she’s trying to make the world a better place, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), CEO of rival tech behemoth Dillinger Systems is looking for it too. It’s the final piece of the puzzle that will bring his new security software from the digital world to the real one. Currently, his super-smart Ares (Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) programmes only hold physical form for 29 minutes.
That’s really all there is to Tron: Ares, which is just a brightly coloured series of chase scenes on a clock, mixed in with a lot of hokum about creating things – orange trees, futuristic helicopters, soldiers – out of nothing (not how matter works) and the race to patenting that technology. Or I guess that’s what the race is to, because neither Joachim Rønning nor writer Jesse Wigutow seem all that interested in delving into the hot button subject of AI on any meaningful level in Ares. There’s lots of gaming, a touch of robotics, advanced software (duh), but AI not so much. Odd considering how timely it is, and that the first film did hinge on the evolution of the original Master Control into a virtural intelligence. It’s almost as if Steven Lisberger wrote Disney a cheque back in the day they chose not to cash.
Which renders Ares a run-of-the-mill sci-fi actioner wallowing in the kind of fan service Disney has mastered by ensuring there are light cycles, murder discs, and all the core Tron toys, and dredging up the spectre of the Dillingers; it’s not “Somehow Palpatine’s returned” but it’s close. Along for the ride (and talk about cashing a cheque) is Gillian Anderson as Julian’s mother Elisabeth, puttin’ on her British so you know she’s sophisticated as well as scheming. She’s the conscience of Dillinger Systems, the one trying to maintain stock prices and keep Julian’s ethics on track. Naturally, he’s all about fat military contracts, whereas Eve is about bettering humanity. This blatantly fantastical conflict plays out when Ares defies his code, decides he’s tired of disintegrating every half hour and teams up with Eve to find the Permanence Code he’s supposed to be stealing from her. She gets sucked into Ares’ Grid – which is all volcanic reds as trippily captured by David Fincher’s cinematography boo Jeff Cronenweth (Gone Girl, Fight Club) – and he into Flynn’s 8-bit Grid before all is said and done.
The inherent silliness of Ares would be forgivable if it weren’t so … inert, something that, for all its flaws, Legacy was not. There’s a bizarre low energy permeating the film that not even Nine Inch Nails’ industrial rumble can shake, and which clashes with its heightened Grid visuals. Like the original did in ’82, Tron: Ares lays out some considerable CGI (though Tron was disqualifed from a VFX Oscar nod because it used computers, tee hee hee), all a step up from Disney wonk Rønning’s work on his only other solo feature, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and on co-directed tentpole Pirates of the Caribbean:Dead Men Tell No Tales. Ares is a premium slice of corporate (and one day AI-powered?) filmmaking, constantly probing the narrative and trying to find slots for its various comic, emotional and action beats and doing an … okay job? But not okay enough to birth a Tron 4, no matter how hard it sequel-baits.
What little juice Tron: Ares does have comes from a cast – yes, including Leto – that does its best with dull, sometimes confounding material. To Wigutow’s credit Ares does sound like an AI scraping information and spitting it back out as conversation, and Leto is just rigid enough to make it land, even if he’d be better in a more supporting role (why is he a leading man?). There’s an element of hilarious whiplash whenever the story cuts back to Ares and Grid Jesus Flynn’s inevitable meeting, because they’re so mellow and horseshit philosophical you have wonder where they’re hiding the weed. Elsewhere, it’s hard for Turner-Smith to come across as anything except fabulous so she’s exempt from comment, but Lee’s Jennifer Tilly impression is just distracting. It diminishes her benevolent CEO vibe and just makes her seem like an idiot compared with Peters’ aggressive scenery chewing that makes Julian childish, ruthless, petty and rapacious. You know. Authentic.