Joachim Rønning’s “Tron: Ares” is a movie about two warring tech billionaires who have very different intentions for the same revolutionary tech. Both of them are capable of rapidly 3D-printing anything they’re able to design in the digital world, and both of them are in pursuit of the “permanence code” that will allow their creations to last for more than 29 minutes before crumbling into computer dust. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (a severely overqualified Greta Lee) wants to use her particle laser to create orange trees out of thin air and otherwise replenish the massive environmental resources that such modern tools usurp in the name of progress. Dillinger Systems CEO Julian Dillinger (a bratty Evan Peters) wants to use his particle laser to mass produce Jared Leto. You’ll never guess which one of these characters is the villain.
A loud, propulsive, and broadly functional continuation of a franchise that — while formative to our visual conception of the computer age — has displayed all the cultural staying power of a laser-printed lightbike, “Ares” is in pursuit of the same permanence as its characters. It’s a film whose only goal is to make “Tron” into a renewable resource in its own right, as opposed to a brand that has to be exhumed from the morgue of half-dead Hollywood IP whenever Disney feels like the tech world has advanced to the point that the Grid seems like a place worth revisiting. If nothing else, “Ares” might just be relevant, palatable, and undemanding enough to pull that off.
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Pulling back from the “bio-digital jazz” of 2010’s “Tron: Legacy” in favor of a more programmatic approach (as you might expect would result from replacing a hyper-aesthete like Joseph Kosinski with the studio-tested director of “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” and “Pirates of the Caribbean 5”), this safe but stylish follow-up costumes itself in the signature neon graphics of its franchise in order to disguise a generic story that strains to accommodate a few stray bits of the “Tron” mythos. Are you at least dimly aware of the fact that Jeff Bridges once played a cool dude named Flynn? Then you’ll have no trouble following the beats of Jesse Wigutow’s script for “Ares,” a plug-and-play story about rogue AI and the race for the future which seizes on the fact that audiences no longer need the benefit of lore to appreciate the porousness between real and virtual realms.
The internet notwithstanding, anyone old enough to understand “Inside Out” should be able to wrap their head around the idea that Leto is essentially playing an anthropomorphized piece of anti-virus software who exists within ENCOM’s data files. Now that people getting sucked into digital worlds has become the stuff of everyday life, “Ares” stays current by inverting the dynamic of the previous “Tron” films; with the same glimmer of soon but not quite yet fantasy that animated its predecessors, Rønning’s installment focuses on digital beings exerting their influence upon our physical reality.
The Grid is out, downtown Vancouver is in. Daft Punk’s chunky electro fuzz has been replaced by Nine Inch Nails’ crunchier industrial synths. Most of all, the wonder of ones and zeroes has been swapped for the too-basic cautionary belief that technology is only as good (or as bad) as the programming we choose to give it.
Like so many films about synths, robots, and artificial intelligence, “Ares” is terminally limited by the idea that every machine secretly aspires to be human, which is only interesting so far as it reflects humanity’s seeming determination to become less so. A sniveling hacker sociopath in the mold of Mark Zuckerberg or Boris from “Goldeneye” (some archetypes are desperately in need of a firmware update), Julian is so desperate to make good on his legacy and impress his ex-CEO mom (Gillian Anderson) that he doesn’t care about the consequences of his technology, or that it might not be nice to taunt his new security program as “expendable.” He doesn’t realize that smelling a few rain drops and watching a firefly land on his finger might be all it takes for a dead-eyed murderbot to start questioning its programming.
Supplanting the video game setting of the previous “Tron” movies in favor of a vaguely roguelite story format, the script dispatches Ares — along with his less impressionable second-in-command Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) — to the real world on a 29-minute dash to capture Eve and retrieve the permanence code from the recesses of her memory. That hunt makes for a fun motorcycle chase, as Rønning confidently melds the franchise’s synthwave aesthetic into the stuff of a more realistic setpiece without having to develop a look of his own. (The ribbons of orange light that carve through Vancouver resemble nothing so much as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ultimate fever dream, while later action sequences aspire to twist that one visual trick into new shapes.) One glimpse at Eve’s face is enough for Ares to realize that he’s on the wrong side of the fight, and so the rest of the story finds him teaming up with the ENCOM executive to safeguard the permanence code as Julian sends wave after wave of 3D-printed Athenas to kill them both.
It’s easy to appreciate why Eve has that effect on Ares. Lee is so gifted and complete an actress that she can’t help but feel completely zip-tied by a character as underwritten as the one she plays here (Eve is motivated by the memory of her dead sister, but the movie completely fails to square the fragility of life with the “permanence” of the code she left behind), but there’s still value in casting a singular performer in a role that amounts to an AI Google summary of a human being. Namely: We accept that she’s able to sell Ares on the existence of the ineffable. He’s never met anyone who clearly had more to them than he could see on the surface, and that goes a long way in a world that’s otherwise populated by the likes of Julian Dillinger and Athena (to say nothing of Hasan Minaj’s two-line role as Eve’s business partner, or Arturo Castro’s comic relief as a guy who’s really into breakfast burritos).
On the other hand, Leto’s performance works because he’s so utterly believable as a soulless ghoul that it’s easy to buy into the happy-to-be-here warmth of his emergent humanity. Sure, the movie’s idea of “emergent humanity” is limited to Ares’ deep appreciation for Depeche Mode (who the security program rightly appraises as being superior to Mozart), but these days that’s more humanity than a lot of people could ever hope to muster.
Of course, the only musicians that really matter to “Ares” are Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and while the score they created for this film isn’t quite as memorable as the one that Daft Punk set to “Legacy,” its sleek but sinister electro grime plays an equally pivotal role in giving this sequel its own sense of violent self-identity. The songs are cranked up loud enough to give every scene its own haptic response (watching “Ares” in body-vibrating Dolby is the closest you can get to 4DX without getting water splashed in your face), and the music is forceful in a way that allows even the most plug-and-play action beats to thrum with purpose. In a way that convinces your body — if not your mind — that the “Tron” franchise actually wants to be alive, and not just simply refuse to die. It’s the most convincingly human thing about a semi-decent sequel that was only programmed to serve its property’s continued survival, even as it preaches that impermanence is more of a feature than a bug.
Grade: C+
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures will release “Tron: Ares” in theaters on Friday, October 10.
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