TRON ARES REVIEW: JARED LETO SEQUEL NOT WORTH THE WAIT
Long gaps between franchise films can go either way. In the successful camp, there are things like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which released 10 years after the last installment and changed the beloved cinematic universe forever (for better or worse, depending on the fan you ask). On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a near universally derided sequel that’s widely regarded as a cash grab and proof the iconic hero should be left to rest in peace.
Tron, and its latest sequel, Tron: Ares, doesn’t fumble the bag quite as badly as Indy, but it lands decidedly closer to that end of the spectrum.
Tron: Ares Shows Its Long Gestation (& Not in a Good Way)
The first Tron film, released in 1982, was a surprise cult classic after underperforming both critically and commercially at the box office. The resurgence of appreciation for its cyberpunk, futuristic aesthetic (and its undeniable influence on other sci-fi classics like The Matrix) and for Jeff Bridges led to the 2010 sequel Tron: Legacy being greenlit over 20 years later. Legacy was at least mostly entertaining and cleverly utilized de-aging technology (one of the first major Hollywood releases to do so in a prominent, plot-critical way) to double the dose of Bridges. It had a simple, relatively straightforward story and didn’t require a huge amount of exposition to fill in the gaps between what had happened in the decades between the events of the first movie and the sequel. Tron: Ares, unfortunately, has too much exposition and too little Jeff Bridges.
The tortured production history behind Ares is well known. After the relative success of Legacy, Disney announced that the franchise would continue with a direct sequel to the second movie. For various reasons, the production was delayed and then shelved, and didn’t see much movement until Jared Leto signed on in 2017. Even then, it took a whopping eight years to release, and by this point, the story had been rejiggered substantially — leaving the resulting film completely overwrought. From the jump, the movie seems overly self-conscious of the longer than anticipated wait between sequels, with an exposition-heavy and sensorily overstimulating opening sequence that rushes through years of in-universe history to introduce new characters (including a descendant of an existing character) and catch us up on what’s happened in the intervening time.
It doesn’t really work, and it’s a bad sign for what’s to come for the rest of the film, which has some interesting ideas and character work but doesn’t give enough time for any of it to breathe. The overstuffed narrative mimics the frenetic pace of the movie’s first act, which comes off as confusing and unenjoyable to watch rather than the smooth and cool futuristic vibe it’s aiming for.
Tron: Ares’ New Characters Have Potential, But They Don’t Achieve It
No spoilers, but this movie is clearly aiming to position the franchise to continue. To do that, it needs to make viewers care about the characters introduced here who are presumably holding the reins to take the series into its future. It doesn’t.
Jared Leto, less controversial at the time of his initial casting than he is now, gives a fine performance as Ares, a Depeche Mode-obsessed AI program created by cybertech genius billionaire manchild Julian Dillinger (an abrasive Evan Peters) to safeguard his company’s server. Ares has a Pinocchio sort of storyline (which is irritatingly called out in the script — one of several times the writing seems to insinuate it thinks the viewers are not clever enough to pick up on obvious subtext) that doesn’t break any kind of new ground. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that Ares looks like a now 53-year-old Jared Leto, eye wrinkles and all, begging the question of why Julian would design a perfect, virtually unstoppable super soldier and choose to have him look like a middle-aged dude (especially when the perpetually stunning Jodie Turner-Smith's Athena, a fellow program and Ares’ second in command, is literally right there).
Greta Lee is a fantastic actress but seems slightly miscast as Eve Kim, the CEO of ENCOM after Sam Flynn’s resignation after the events of Tron: Legacy. The movie hurries through a lot of attempted character building for Eve — including introducing and promptly killing off her younger sister and co-CEO — and the rush job makes it difficult to connect with her journey to uncover original TRON creator Kevin Flynn's permanence code in any meaningful way. Her motivations are thin and the split between Lee and Leto as deuteragonists doesn’t give us enough time to truly care about either of them.
Peters turns in a reliable performance as a one-note villain with distinct Elon Musk vibes, while Gillian Anderson seems unnecessarily stuffed into the narrative as Julian’s mom (and predecessor CEO) Elisabeth Dillinger, who is well aware of how much a dummy her son is. It’s a decided waste of Anderson’s talent, but at the very least, her frustrations with Julian’s poor decision-making yield some of the movie’s more genuinely funny scenes. Arturo Castro and Hasan Minhaj, as Eve's ENCOM colleagues, also provide some moments of comic relief but largely don't have much to do.
Yes, Tron: Ares Looks Cool & Has Some Fun Action Sequences
OK, let’s table the character and story issues for now. The real question on your mind is: Does it look good? Mostly yes. The new sequel leans into the neat video game visuals for some genuinely impressive action sequences, which are especially strong when we’re inside the Grid (Dillinger’s virtual world). But what was once novel and groundbreaking in 1982 (and hell, even 2010) is not that unique and special here, and the movie seems to know that. Instead of innovation, it goes a “more, bigger, louder” route. (Perhaps I’m just getting old, but some of the more bombastic sequences hurt my ears and made my teeth rattle in an unpleasant — and more critically, distracting — way.)
To be clear, I loved Tron: Legacy when it came out. It had an entertaining story and visually impressive style that was unique at the time — a great blend of retro-futurism that called back to the original while also doing something new. Tron: Ares, on the other hand, feels derivative and lacks basic elements that made Legacy work, like chemistry between the leads (Garrett Hedlund's Sam Flynn and Olivia Wilde's Quorra had it; Eve and Ares, while a very different kind of relationship, do not). The movie leaves off with an obvious tease at the next installment, but I left the theater less than enthused about sitting through another one.
2025-10-08T04:11:30Z