Permanence or Irrelevance?

Tron: Ares, the third film in the TronDisney's high-tech "man in the wrong world" film crafted hang-drawn designs with cutting-edge CGI effects to create something unlike anyone had seen before, and then launched a franchise that, well, has stuggled to live up to expectations ever since. series, finally came to stream services just a little while back. I meant to review it day-and-date on its release, but, honestly, after watching it I forgot the film existed. It’s like a blank void came up inside of my head, and the film erased itself from my memory. Of course, I also meant to review the film when it first hit theaters because it’s a Tron film and you expect the spectacle to be enough to carry the movie. And yet it came and went in my area faster than I could attend it, and it’s pretty clear that it’s lack of staying power, and the inability to stick around in hearts, minds, or physically, is all connected.

To put it bluntly, Tron: Ares is not a good movie. It’s about as corporate and soulless as many of the characters in the film. This is a movie about people transitioning back and forth between the Grid (well, a version of it anyway) and the real world, but both sides feel just as stilted and empty as the other. If this is supposed to be the culmination of storylines started in the previous two movies, and the expected, hopeful launch for a new trilogy of films (spoilers: that is clearly never going to happen), Tron: Ares fails on every front. Tron: Ares, frankly, fails at even being simply a watchable movie.

Things start off decently enough, and that’s largely because the film goes with what works best: its Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. For the first thirty minutes or so we’re treated to a basic rundown of where the world is at since the last film, Tron: Legacy. It’s pretty blunt storytelling, but it’s carried by good jams that make it feel more like a music video than a movie. That would sound like a knock against the movie, and it kind of is, but Tron: Ares is really at its best when it gets out of its own way and allows us to enjoy cool visuals scored by NIN’s music. Once that runs out, the film pretty much dies a slow, painful death.

The problems come in once the story starts. Tron: Ares is focused on two people. One is Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the current CEO of ENCOM. She’s been working on trying to dig out permanence code, a specific bit of programming that will let constructs from the Grid (not just vehicles and weapons but also the denizens of the Grid) exist in the real world for more than 29 minutes. Currently, all attempts at making Grid-based creations exist in the real world crumble and fall apart after that 29 minute cutoff. Eve thinks previous CEO Kevin Flynn has a backup of the permanence code somewhere, she just has to find it.

Also looking for that permanence code is Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the head of rival corporation Dillinger Systems. Julian wants the permanence code for his own tech, specifically so he can sell weapons, arms, and soldiers to the U.S. military, and he’ll do anything to get that code. He creates the agent program Ares (Jared Leto) to function as his right-hand bot, and then starts sending Ares on missions out into the real world. Almost instantly, though, Ares starts to think and feel on his own, realizing he’s more than just a bot. And once Julian gives him an order to kill Eve so he can get the permanence code from her, Ares finds himself at odds with his user. Will Ares kill Eve, or will he (obviously) turn against the hand controlling him and become a free agent of the Grid? I think we clearly know the answer…

There are a number of issues with Tron: Ares, all of which come down to the fact that this film starts as a direct sequel to Tron: Legacy before spending 15 years in development hell. It went through multiple story revisions, with the Ares character going from a minor role as an antagonist for the sequel’s original heroes and growing into the lead for the film (mostly because Jared Leto was attached to the role and he wanted it to be bigger and bigger). Over time the film lost all of the creativity it could have had, getting sanded down, rewritten, focus tested, and sanded down again until whatever this film could have been was lost in an empty, soulless movie.

It’s ironic, in a way, because a film all about a program learning to love life and feel things ended up as soulless as Tron: Ares. It’s a rote, tedious, expected movie going through the motions of being an adventure when, at every turn, it uses shortcuts and obvious plot beats to get the story moving. Eve finds the permanence code almost instantly, not because she’s earned it but because the film needs it to happen. Ares becomes introspective and good not because he’s spent time in the real world and has slowly learned what it’s like to be human but simply by seeing the world once and saying, “hey, this is interesting.” Julian is the bad guy because his Grid is red. It’s just so basic and uninspired.

Even that could potentially be forgivable, at least at a basic level, if the action and special effects stood up. Spectacle can, at a certain point, help to paper over a cheap script if the spectacle is good enough. Unfortunately for Tron: Ares, all the good movies of pure, action spectacle were featured in the trailers for the film. Truly that’s not hyperbole. Every time something cool happened on screen, I thought to myself, “that was in the trailers.” That’s about four minutes of decent action and special effects, stretched out in a two hour movie. The rest of the time what we get are scenes of the characters talking to each other in bland sets or in front of green screens. It’s very empty, very slow, and not at all thrilling.

The weirdest part is that for a film about the Grid, ostensibly what all these Tron movies are about, very little of the film actually takes place in the Grid. Most of it is spent outside the Grid, or over in one room of Dillinger’s off-brand grid, watching people talk at each other about permanence. That word gets tossed around a lot. Permanence. We hear about it endlessly while nothing of value happens around the people talking. All of it despite the fact that we’re in a Tron movie and we should be seeing cool shit going on. Nothing cool ever really happens in this film and it drains all the fun out.

Now, credit where it’s due, there is one neat sequence where Ares ends up in the classic Grid, a backup copy that has a backup of Kevin Flynn in it. A small bit of this was featured in the trailers, but there’s more to the sequence and it’s pretty cool seeing a modern Tron character in the classic setting. I would have loved to see more of this setting explored but, even here, most of the time is taken up with two characters standing around, talking in a room. It’s a neat room, but it feels like the film is only scratching at the surface of what could have been done here.

What it really feels like, deep down, is that Disney spent a lot of money on rewrites over the years, and then put even more money towards the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack (which really is the highlight of the film and the only thing that makes it truly bearable), and then realized “crap, this film is going to cost so much money to make.” So they tried to cheap out, keep costs down, and have the film largely be talking in rooms away from special effects or anything cool. Somehow, even then, that still led to a film that cost $220 Mil to make and you have to wonder why? None of that money is on screen, not really. This feels like a cheap, off-brand version of Tron, like something Dillinger would make in-universe.

But as far as living up to the legacy (some might say the Tron: Legacy) of the franchise, this film fails on just about every level. Disney was probably right to advertise this film on the few cool sequences in it and the power of Nine Inch Nail’s soundtrack. Long after this film fades from memory (which it’s actively trying to do now), NIN’s soundtrack will live on. Hell, they just won a Grammy for this soundtrack, which is almost unheard of for a soundtrack to a film that outright bombs.

Tron: Ares is a bomb. It made only $140 Mil during its theatrical run and pretty well squashed any chance of future Tron films any time soon (if ever again). But we did get a killer soundtrack out of it. I didn’t enjoy the film but, man, Nine Inch Nails really killed it.