★½ (1½ out of 4)
Remember that quaint time when we all thought computers would take over our lives? Now that our fears about artificial intelligence have scarily materialized, is there anything new and provocative left to say about it? The answer is surely, more than ever. But to go by “TRON: Aries,” now outside the Grid and occupying theaters, not a damn thing.
“TRON,” derived from elecTRONic, had the tech bro gamer universe on fire with “TRON” (1982) and “TRON: Legacy” (2010). If you never caught the spark, these epics had something to do with Jeff Bridges getting trapped inside a computer server. What I recall most now are pioneering visuals and sensational scores by trans music pioneer Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk. Cool stuff.
The only thing cool about “TRON: Ares” is the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“One Battle After Another”), aka Nine Inch Nails, who bring a sonic momentum that the script by Jesse Wigutow only wishes it could match. Under the listless direction of Joachim Rønning, the cast acts accordingly. “TRON” OG Bridges is in and out, much like most of the audience, I’m thinking.
That leaves Jared Leto to seize the star spot as a computer program named Ares. How does anyone, especially this “Dallas Buyers Club” Oscar winner, play an artificial life form? Leto does and looks good doing it. I can’t vouch for the other things he‘s doing.
It seems Leto takes commands from Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the head of Dillinger Systems who’s had it with the tired idea of zapping humans into the guts of a computer. This dude wants to beam computer programs into the human world. It’s instant immortality. The mind boggles that it took the brains at Disney 15 years to come up with that plot reversal.
Anyway, Dillinger soon finds that his evil plan is not as easy to execute as he thought. First off, that digital-to-human scheme only lasts for 29 minutes in the real world and then, poof, everything evaporates like a primitive TikTok video.
The soundtrack is very cool, otherwise this TRON' sequel is hobbled by a dubious superpower to lure in large audiences and then bore them breathless.
What’s a villain to do? If you’re Dillinger (love than gangster name association), you go on the attack against goody-goody ENCOM, whose principled CEO Eve Kim is played by “Past Lives” luminary Greta Lee in what constitutes the most spectacular waste of talent in any movie this year. The thing is that ENCOM knows how to keep computer programs in the human world for, like, permanently.
And so “TRON: Ares” becomes one battle after another between Eve and Aries, with his formidable second-in-command Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) at the ready along with Dillinger’s mom Elisabeth, played by a never-to-be-trifled-with Gillian Anderson. Eve, being on the side of the empath angels, wants Ares to evolve beyond the demands of his programming and become more—all together now—human. You could see that twist coming from outer space.
That’s a hell of a lot of plot and it weighs down the movie like a two-ton anchor. Since “TRON: Ares” is mostly set outside the Grid, which at least has eye-popping visuals going for it, we’re stuck in a drab and dreary real world that’s no fun at all and has no agency except the dubious superpower to lure in large audiences and then bore them breathless.