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Tron famously fights for the users… but critics aren’t fighting for Tron: Ares. The third installment in Disney’s 40-year-old video-game franchise brings the world of the Grid into our reality, with Jared Leto<\/strong> playing a security computer program who gets in touch with his inner humanity thanks to his time outside of the computer box. Greta Lee<\/strong> plays a programmer-turned-executive in the mold of Kevin Flynn, Tron’s flagship character, portrayed by Jeff Bridges<\/strong>. The Crazy Heart Oscar winner also returns for an extended Ares cameo that specifically hearkens back to the 1982 original.<\/p>\n Tron: Ares represents the latest attempt by the Mouse House to make Tron a viable franchise at the box office after the first film and its follow-up, 2010’s Tron: Legacy, failed to load commercially. But it’s looking like critics are ready to declare game over on the series; Ares currently has a 61 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and holds a 49 on Metacritic.<\/p>\n More from Gold Derby<\/strong><\/p>\n There is one flawless victory of a review: RogerEbert.com’s Matt Zoller Seitz<\/strong> gives the film a perfect four-star rating<\/a>, raving: “Tron: Ares is spectacularly designed, swiftly paced, thoughtfully written and directed within an inch of its neon-hued life.”<\/p>\n “The sum total is a rave of a movie that acts as its own hallucinogen,” Seitz continues. “And that is best experienced on a huge screen with a state-of-the-art sound system.\u00a0If they\u2019d played it again right after I saw it for the first time, I would have gladly stayed in my seat.”<\/p>\n Other critics were ready to leave the theater, though. Writing in Screen Daily, Tim Grierson<\/strong> says<\/a> that Ares almost gets by “on style points,” but the “uninspired story” eventually catches up with Leto’s lightcyle. “In the early going,\u00a0Tron: Ares\u00a0is such a visual and sonic pleasure that it only slowly becomes apparent that Jesse Wigutow\u2019s screenplay shamelessly recycles musty sci-fi tropes,” Grierson adds. “for all the creativity on display in\u00a0Tron: Ares, it\u2019s in service of a story with scant signs of life.”<\/p>\n While Rolling Stone’s David Fear<\/strong> acknowledges<\/a> that Ares has “a few things going for it,” but not enough to fully recommend. “This is still a\u00a0Tron\u00a0movie beholden to a mythology that is ridiculously complicated at best and WTF-nonsensical at worst. And if you\u2019re not invested in the overarching narrative of tech-industry intrigue, dystopian digital landscapes, and several terrabytes worth of sci-fi clich\u00e9s mashed together by now, this will not get you on board.”<\/p>\n Writing in The Wrap, William Bibbiani<\/strong><\/a> hits Ares with one of its lowest scores. “The movie … completely sucks,” he writes, going on to slam the latest Tron as a “hack job” that lets down its predecessors. “They were, whatever their other flaws, films with ideas,” he notes of Tron and Tron: Legacy. “Tron: Ares has no ideas. Instead, it has plot. Lots and lots of tedious plot.”<\/p>\n To quote Bridges from another cult favorite: “That’s just like your opinion, man.”<\/p>\n Best of Gold Derby<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Gold Derby’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n