The best thing about TRON: Ares is the third act. It's stylish, it's gorgeous, and it has some excellent action and spectacle. The worst thing about TRON: Ares is that the third act play out before you actually get to another third act. This film peaks at about the 80-minute mark, but then has another 40 minutes that you have to sit through.
Written by Jesse Wigutow, the big draw here is the idea that the avatars and creations we previously saw in the online world, aka The Grid, are somehow going to enter into our own world. There are a couple of competing CEOs (Eve Kim, played by Greta Lee, and Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters) trying to figure out how to turn the programs into physical realities that can permanently reside on our side of the monitor, and a cyber-warrior named Ares (Jared Leto) starts to dream of a life in a more human world.
Directed by Joachim Rønning, who has previously been handed the reins of some other big Disney franchise instalments, there's plenty to enjoy here for fans of the property. It's a gorgeous film, which is obvious from the very start, but a lot of the visuals work so well because they blend with, and update, the classic designs established in the very first film in this series (which will be 45 years old next year). There's also another fantastic soundtrack, this time from Nine Inch Nails, delivering something that both complements and contrasts with the Daft Punk tracks from the previous film. The main ideas are explained clearly enough, and a couple of action set-pieces are well-choreographed and as gorgeous as anything else in the film.
Sadly, the performances aren't as strong as they could be. I accept that this isn't a film to rush to if wanting to sample some powerhouse acting performances, but I hoped that the main players would be able to rise above some of the cheesy dialogue. They can't. Leto wanders around in a state of curiosity, seemingly content enough as he's allowed to play some kind of cyber-Jesus while he weighs up the humans, and both Lee and Peters are completely wasted in their main roles. They're just in the film to be opposing forces making use of Ares and co. between them, but it's a shame that they're not given many decent moments. Peters fares a bit better (baddies tend to have a bit more fun), but neither will be surprised to find this feature quickly forgotten whenever others run through their filmography highlights. The same can be said of Gillian Anderson, arguably even more disappointingly wasted than Lee or Peters. The only one who almost bulldozes their way through to a better place is Jodie Turner-Smith, playing another cyber-warrior named Athena, aiming for cracks in every scene like a lightcycle aiming to crash through the border of the main game area.
It's a testament to everything set up in that first film that the subsequent Tron movies have had such a great template to work with, from the main characters to the basic design of the computer world, and a thread of continuity running through them that allows everything to be kept simplistic enough in the plotting while allowing for more time to be spent on the details and world-building.
If you like time spent in this world then you'll find enough to like here. It's a film for those who have had a love of the property for decades already, a love so strong that it can help you to overlook Leto giving a very standard Leto performance. Some newcomers might have fun with the spectacle, but it's really just text-to-speech preaching to the cyber-choir.
6/10
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