A One Mann’s Movies review of “Tron: Ares” (2025, 1.5*, 12A).
I was never a fan of “Tron”. Even the original Tron, which came out when I was a mere lad of 21, I thought was fatuous. Now, skipping “Tron: Legacy” from 2010, we come to the latest instalment, “Tron: Ares”. And my opinion of the franchise has not improved!
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Dillinger Systems, led by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), are focused on Military AI systems. They have designed the Ares system (named after the Greek God of war) which now has the ability to render AI soldiers in the real world. But these rendered individuals only have a 29 minute lifespan unless some additional ‘persistence code’ can be found. The hunt is on between Dillinger (the bad AI guys) and Encom (the good AI guys) led by Eve Kim (Greta Lee).
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Moderate violence, threat”.)
Talent:
Starring: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jeff Bridges, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson, Hasan Minhaj.
Directed by: Joachim Rønning.
Written by: Jesse Wigutow. (Based on a story by David DiGilio & Jesse Wigutow and characters created by Steven Lisberger & Bonnie MacBird.)
Running Time: 1h 59m.
Summary:
Positives:
- The laser-zapping Disney logo at the start was quite cool.
- The final reel of the film is at least quite exciting to watch.
Negatives:
- The Nine Inch Nails music is, to my ears, screechingly awful and constantly set to 11.
- The whole concept of the soldiers being created is incomprehensibly stupid. Just one of many nonsensical elements.
- Jared Leto – “Zero empathy detected”
Full Review of “Tron: Ares”:
Headache inducing.
As regular readers will know, I never walk out of a film. I’ll always try to stick it to the end to see if it improves (and to be fair, this one did… a tad.) But I was really contemplating it during this film. By the time we got to the opening titles, my eyes felt like they were burning out and my ears felt like they were bleeding.
Immediately after the cool, laser-based Disney logo, we get blasted with gaudy visuals and a Nine Inch Nails soundtrack that shook the seats and my nerve cells. I know Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have many fans, and I have said positive things about some of their other soundtracks. But this was just screeching noise to me.
I noticed by the way in the end titles that Reznor and Ross have cameos as the two F-35 fighter pilots.
The science is just nonsensical.
Regular readers will also know that films I can never get behind are those where the technical aspects of the plot don’t even attempt to align with any science. Of course, the concept of “Tron”, with living, breathing beings being sent into a digital realm, is ridiculous. But at least you have the concept of the brain running on electrical impulses: so ‘digitisation’ is at least in the right ballpark. Here, we have the concept of these programs being rendered as soldiers into the real world…. by frickin’ laser beams blasting away at… what?… Liquorice Jelly Beans? Solidified McGuffin juice? The Epstein Files? It makes no sense.
Then you get the forced timeout of the soldiers that comes in at a remarkably consistent 29 minutes. And all this is happening because there are a few lines of missing Fortran 77?! So Kim goes off to the Arctic (or somewhere) to the outpost of Flynn (Jeff Bridges) – who disappeared in 1989. And Kim is able to access this ‘persistence code’ and create a “Singing, Ringing Tree” (kids: ask your grandparents and watch them turn pale!). Why would the code even be there from 36 years earlier when these AI soldiers weren’t even conceived of! It is all such utter bollocks!
Stupid AI.
The one thing you can guarantee that will happen when the AI systems rise up and purge the planet of those irritating carbon-based lifeforms is that they won’t make any mistakes. In the middle of this film there is an army of drones that go out seeking to find and capture Kim. So, these things, leaving their red trails of impermeable McGuffin-juice, find Kim and surround her with the red bands but leave a helpful Kim-sized space above the road to allow her to slide through and escape. “OH COME ON” I cried.
Jared Leto is so dull.
There’s a moment in this film where a system says “Zero Empathy Detected” and I thought “Yep… sums up Jared Leto’s performance”. Because he maintains the same, serious, slightly smug expression on his face almost throughout the whole film. It is only during a car drive with Kim when he is talking animatedly about why Depeche Mode is his favourite music (as if!) that he shows even a flicker of life. I know he is supposed to be a featureless machine, but even Arnie Schwarzenegger managed to inject some life into his android.
What saved it from 1 star.
I was really heading for a 1 star rating for this one, since I found it nonsensical and dull. The only thing that saved it is that I found myself getting slightly more engaged with the finale battle.
Monkey?
At the time of writing, Ares has made a global box office of about $125 million (which is frankly more than I expected). But that is against a box office of $220 million, before the 2x multiplier for distribution and marketing. So this is a thumping Disney loss. This makes the post credit “monkey” – where a digitised Dillinger arrives in the control room of Ares, and some other uber-baddie materialises – seem more like hope for a sequel rather than likelihood.
Summary Thoughts:
Given it’s such a big-budget film it is remarkably tiresome. A film that I found overly brash, overly loud and overly stupid.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YShVEXb7-ic.
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