Tron: Ares Review – Despite Gillian Anderson Fails to Rescue This Mind-Bendingly Dull Sci-Fi Movie

The matrix of pointlessness is revisited in this mind-bendingly dull sci-fi movie, closer to a screensaver than an actual film. It's a threequel to the original movie Tron from 1982, a film that was groundbreaking and courageously innovative for its time in a way that eludes this one and its predecessor Tron Legacy from 2010. The new Tron film nearly comes to life just one time – when Evan Peters gets a smack in the face from Gillian Anderson's character portraying his mum, in an old-fashioned bit of analogue reality. That's a piece of tough love you might feel like handing out to every producer involved in this film, and it's unfortunate to see the estimable Greta Lee's role and Jodie Turner-Smith's character being made to look so lifeless.

Story Summary of Tron: Ares

The situation currently is that an evil AI corporation with the obviously criminal name of Dillinger Corp has become a rival to the VR company Encom, originally set up in the 80s arcade-game era by brilliant innovator Kevin Flynn's character, portrayed by Jeff Bridges. This Dillinger (originally set up by Encom's executive Ed Dillinger, played by David Warner) is led by the founder’s odiously nerdish grandson's character Julian (Evan Peters), who has a ambitious scheme to develop and produce profitable things such as invincible troops and tanks in the VR world and then transfer them into actual reality using a kind of 3D printer.

The problem is that however fearsome, these things crumble into dust after twenty-nine minutes. But Encom's current CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has uncovered the MacGuffin-y “permanence algorithm” which can maintain these entities permanently, and even keeps it on her person on a extremely basic flashdrive. So the dreadful Julian sets his attack dog on her: Ares the warrior, the superhuman fighter which can leave the VR world for twenty-nine minutes at a time but which, in the time-honoured way of robots, is beginning to show signs of not doing what he's told. Jodie Turner-Smith plays Ares's stoic deputy Athena and poor Jeff Bridges has a leaden legacy cameo in sage-like white garments, like a Poundshop Jor-El on Krypton.

Acting and Roles Breakdown

And Ares himself – the hero of the film's name – is acted by Jared Leto with trendy lengthy locks, facial hair and subtly omniscient grin, details that were perhaps created by inputting the words “extremely annoying” into an AI human creation programme. No one who recalls the 90s TV classic My So-Called Life series will ever find it in their hearts to be totally rude about Mr Leto, and I was incidentally very entertained by his broad (and widely misinterpreted) humorous performance in Ridley Scott's film House of Gucci. But Jared Leto is consistently, unrelentingly terrible here, although his performance isn't aided by a limp plot point which is supposed to allow him to show flashes of “empathy” for Greta Lee's character and subcontract all the villainous actions to Athena's character, thus making her slightly more engaging. It is meant to be adorable when Ares the character says how he loves 80s synth pop and that Depeche Mode band are better than Mozart's compositions.

Series Features and Overall Impact

Consistent with the franchise identity of the series, there are motorcycles from the virtual underworld which whizz about the place in long straight lines, adhering to the angular layout of classic video games (or indeed nightclubs); a single bike even shoots out a lethal beam which slices a cop car in half. But there is zero tension or jeopardy or emotional engagement throughout. This series now looks as relevant as an in-car CD player.