The lack of humanity behind Tron: Ares, the latest entry in the cyberspace set adventure franchise, creates an incohesive film that never amounts to the sum of its parts. Ares stumbles into the same pitfall as the previous entries, in which the story is neither engaging or coherent, wasting the potential its element could’ve formed.

 

The only reason Tron and Tron: Legacy have maintained some cultural cache is that they’re enjoyable viewing experiences in spite of this ubiquitous narrative pitfall. In each case, the films become aware that their protagonist’s journey through the grid is tiresome and that the real juice of Tron is the aesthetic, soundscape and overall stimulation we get from being in the digital world. Putting it bluntly they commit to the vibe and sacrifice the story.

 

It’s a bold move antithetical to most Hollywood filmmaking playbooks, but the converted will always preach the importance of Tron’s Tron-ness. The plot can be expositional, nonsensical and all-in-all useless as long as watching the film is a stimulating experience.

 

Entering this one of a kind science fiction series Joachim Rønning was not bold enough to commit to the experiential nature of the franchise. Overall the Norwegian filmmaker prioritises a narrative in desperate need of disregard that too infrequently lets what we love about Tron come to the surface.

 

Eve Kim (Greta Lee still coasting off the success of Past Lives) and Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters in one of the whiniest performances ever put to film) are duelling CEOs of tech giants ENCOM and Dillinger Systems trying to find, “the permanence code,” a macguffin that will allow programs to exist in the real world forever (without it they can only last 29 minutes). We presume that Eve will use this for good not because the film shows us her intentions but because she’s the protagonist and her opposition is selling his digital manifestations (more realistically) as weapons to the US military.

 

This embarrassing lack of character is why I argue the lack of humanity is failing the film. Eve is a billionaire that’d replace you or I with ChatGPT in a second (though she’s never portrayed this way). Clearly in the rewriting process an underpaid screenwriter noticed this and thought up a dead sister subplot to paper over the cracks. 

 

And even though the script is aware of this issue (otherwise why even have there be a dead sister to begin with) they still get this information across in the most haphazard way. Ares (who spoiler alert falls in love with Eve) goes through ENCOM’s files and watches a montage of Eve’s sister dying of cancer. That’s it. The film makes no effort to show Eve grieving , it just gets ChatGPT to summarise her feelings for us. The character construction is laughable inhuman.

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Truthfully the film’s main character is Ares (or at least the film has more interest and even respect for him), an AI that doesn’t want to be dispensable. Considering the film assumes we’ll blindly empathise with tech oligarchs you’ll be shocked to know that Ares is just impossible to empathise with. The film’s rationale for Ares deserving life despite being ones and zeros is that he can feel his enjoyment of Depeche Mode. Again, that’s it.

 

His discovery of this feeling comes after Ares is put into the original Tron computer where we get a sequence that would be awful if not for Jeff Bridges’ innate charisma. Yes, Bridges appears again in the franchise as Flynn but this time he gets to play the hacker/coder as essentially Yoda. Through roughly five minutes of shared screentime Flynn somehow recognises the humanity of Ares and gives him the permanence code all while Jesse Wigutow’s script treats the original grid like Doctor Sleep treats the Shining hotel.

 

To drown out the expositional dialogue and boring character subplot is the art direction and score which undeniably slap. I could complain that Nine Inch Nail’s awesome score is overplayed because legitimately it vibrates your seat during every scene but without it you’d fall asleep. Equally the new look of the grid and all the digital gadgets are almost too committed to the neon and matte black aesthetic but I can’t lie and tell you I wasn’t thrilled every time they were on screen . 

 

The only moment you truly feel the film knows the power these elements have is the chase sequence through the grid where Ares chooses to go against his command and save Eve. For a brief second the audience is relieved from expository dialogue and are asked simply to indulge in the visual and audio feast that only riding a neon bike through a digital landscape toward a beacon of light with a techno Nine Inch Nails score can provide.

 

Apart from that glimmer the beauty and enjoyment of Tron is buried underneath an AI driven (and possibly written) script itching to be forgotten.