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Things are a bit (but only a bit<\/em>) more interesting in the digital world of Dillinger\u2019s servers where Ares and his second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith, also underutilized), are reborn over and over again after each of their failures to complete missions in the real world. The Grid mostly serves as a menacing backdrop as Ares \u2014 portrayed by Leto with an awkward flatness that\u2019s meant to charm, but fails \u2014 ponders the meaning of his existence. But the digital world is also where Tron: Ares <\/em>almost (but not quite) manages to articulate some interesting ideas about how AI companies have become more fixated on building sycophantic servants as opposed to actually developing products that could benefit the masses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That narrative energy is far less potent in the real world, where Ares becomes more of an unlikely hero as his encounters with Eve leave him increasingly convinced that he\u2019s on the wrong team. Lee and Leto have an inert chemistry that makes the movie\u2019s allusions to a budding romance feel like the wrong choice \u2014 especially given that their characters don\u2019t \/ can\u2019t spend all that much time together. And while both actors do a serviceable job of moving through Ares<\/em>\u2019 VFX-heavy set pieces on a series of very snazzy-looking Tron\u2122 <\/em>vehicles, on the whole, the movie\u2019s action is so bland that it seldom feels like anyone is really having fun here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
What\u2019s most baffling is that Disney obviously thinks that people might be hungry for another sequel after these, even though the studio clearly did not have the most confidence in Ares <\/em>itself. You get the sense from the way that Anderson\u2019s and Cameron Monaghan\u2019s characters are barely part of the story that Disney left quite a bit on the cutting-room floor \u2014 perhaps in hopes of streamlining things to make Ares <\/em>feel more like a reboot than a sequel that had to pick up the last feature\u2019s dangling threads. That might work for people new to this franchise who are coming in with low expectations, but for anyone familiar with what Tron <\/em>can be when it\u2019s cooking with heat, there isn\u2019t much here worth getting excited about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Tron: Ares <\/em>also stars Sarah Desjardins. The movie hits theaters on October 10th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nFollow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\n\n