Tron: Ares 2025
I first watched Tron: Legacy last year and thought it did a good job of delivering dazzling visuals and a tight story, improving some on the original. Tron: Ares is a step backwards in too many ways. This movie has almost nothing to do with Legacy with a new young leadership team at Encom and new bad guys from a rival company, none of which is that interesting. While some of the movie takes place in The Grid, most of it takes place in the real world (well, Vancouver) because programs from The Grid can now be 3D printed and activated in the real world. That makes for some neat things like light cycles racing downtown, but also takes away the biggest thing that Tron has going for it, which is this cool computer world. The movie stars Jared Leto as one of those programs, but he is about the only big star other than a few minutes of Jeff Bridges and an almost unrecongizable Gillian Anderson as the mother of the CEO of the rival software company. It is still neat to watch, but it feels very conventional and lacks much of a spark. I had heard Leto was terrible and while he and the character aren't great, they are passable. It feels a lot like re-heated Marvel leftovers with the big tech companies, unstoppable robots, and destruction of buildings. It has been 15 years since Legacy so maybe it didn't make sense to do a direct sequel of that movie, but this soft reboot is disappointing, not because it is bad, but because it can't live up to expectations. There are still good visuals and a decent story and action all to a cool soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails, so it still has a lot going for it. I think it barely misses a B for me, so it will have to settle for a B-.
Written: 14 Oct 2025