by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson, Jodie Turner-Smith
Intro:
… an audiovisual marvel propping up an embarrassingly weak script.
It makes an unfortunate amount of sense why a new Tron feature is now making it to cinemas. The original’s digitized aesthetic not only served as a key foundation for modern Hollywood’s CGI-laden release schedule, but its themes of humanising technology and how much creator and creation mirror each other, along with its iconic villain in the A.I. Master Control Program [MCP], have only grown in relevance in the decades since. And now that A.I. use in the mainstream is a hot button both within and without the film industry (and the MCP’s plan to assimilate everything it can get its digital mitts on just keeps on resembling Disney’s own business model)… sure, why not step back into the Grid?
As pure cinematic spectacle, this film is kind of amazing. Director Joachim Rønning’s sense of scale and grandeur has continued to show signs of consistent upgrading, as right from the inside-out news footage montage that opens the film, the visuals start stunning and stay there throughout. The integration of Programs from the Grid into the real world (a central aspect of the film’s plot) shows ILM continuing to cook on all burners, and the action scenes, whether it’s the IRL Light Cycle chases or weapons combat akin to lethal ribbon dancing, are beautiful to behold. Scott Rogers and his stunt team bring the same passion to the throwdowns here that they did to John Wick: Chapter 4.
The soundtrack just amps up the visceral sensations afforded by all this, with Nine Inch Nails (yeah, it’s not just credited to Reznor/Ross here, this is a full band effort, complete with lyrics) bringing real Quake energy with a lot of pulsing electronics and monumental walls of sub-bass. It provides a more modern polish to the synthscape legacy of Wendy Carlos’ work on the original, and it fits in with that film’s overall aesthetic in much the same way as the newfangled visual effects.
However, this film also runs into the same problem as Tron: Legacy, even if it avoids that film’s legendarily bad de-aging effects: The script is ridiculously flat. In actuality, it might even be worse than Legacy, as at least that had Jeff Bridges as a tech guru by way of The Dude, along with (eventually) showing some decent father-son drama.
Here, pretty much every character falls short. Jared Leto as Ares fails to convince as either an Unreal Engine Pinocchio or as a real boy, as if writer Jesse Wigutow watched Patrick Bateman describe Genesis’ catalogue and thought normal human expression peaked at that very moment. Greta Lee, as much as the better action beats gravitate towards her, is ultimately just a weak attempt to present the ‘good guy with a corporation’ to balance out the remarkably bland Dillinger dynasty (Evan Peters fails to make an impression, and Gillian Anderson is flat-out wasted). Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena is as unconvincing as Leto, especially disappointing because of her character’s genuine potential for following protocols and discovering ‘human’ sensory experience.
And as for Jeff Bridges returning as Kevin Flynn… well, the jury is still out on whether that’s actually what happened here, as the dialogue and the delivery from his glorified cameo barely resemble the same character from the original or even Legacy. Producer Justin Springer, in an attempt to explain why Flynn returned while Flynn Jr. and Quorra didn’t, said to SFX Magazine that “To just throw cameos in, where it’s a parade of people that we love from this franchise, I just feel like it’s fan service that doesn’t serve the story.” Mission accomplished.
It is tempting to chalk all this up to a film being made with video game logic, beyond just having a character respawning as an actual narrative element. Big flashy visuals, cool fight scenes and weaponry, but the story and characters exist just to string those set pieces together. But that in itself goes against the core philosophy of Tron, straying even more so than Legacy. Aside from how influential the original was for the viability of CGI in American cinema, its ability to create emotional attachment and even a sense of spiritual awe between Users and Programs was just as influential on the video game industry. Much like how, without Tron, there’d be no Toy Story (and indeed, no Pixar as we now know it), there’d also be no Mass Effect or Undertale or many other games that took pride in how much a well-written story and compelling characters can further draw players into these digital landscapes. Whether flesh-and-blood, comprised of code, or entirely fictional, personal connection is still important.
By contrast, along with saying astonishingly little about modern A.I. concerns (to the point of almost adding fuel to the fire in the process of making it), there’s a noticeable amount of narrative dissonance on display for a film all about artificial intelligence aspiring to a human existence. It tries to link in with the original’s philosophical approach to sentient code (and as much as we bash Bridges’ presence here, his statements on the true nature of ‘permanence’ is the only time when the film’s themes truly take hold), but between the bland characterisation, the not-even-trying attempts at speaking to the human condition, and a finale that basically amounts to ‘genocide is okay when we do it’, it just devolves into a pile of corrupted ideas.
Tron: Ares is an audiovisual marvel propping up an embarrassingly weak script. Even with all of the grievances listed above, it is a testament to the technical chops and conviction of all behind-the-scenes hands that this film is as entertaining as it is. If you’re willing to glance past the storytelling issues and two-dimensional characters, it makes for a decent excuse to indulge in two hours of CGI finesse and Nine Inch Nails pumped in through hefty cinema speakers. But with the sequel baiting that the film ends with, only time will tell if surface-level gratification will provide sufficient bandwidth to carry this franchise forward.
