Revisiting the Tron franchise in the era of A.I. and virtual reality is actually not a bad idea. Tron is one of the best examples of a movie that envisioned a future which in many ways came to pass. Sure, we can’t be digitized into a computer program where we race around in light cycles, but virtual realities have become a thing and artificial intelligence -though not of nearly the same variety- is top of mind. Disney, which produced the original movie in 1982, already tried to bring it back in 2010 with Tron: Legacy -which did about as poorly in that time as the original film had in its (and it appears that the pattern is continuing).
But a key problem with Tron: Legacy that is also present through much of Tron: Ares is that the fantastical world of this series’ universe is no longer rendered with novelty. Digital effects, the very thing that made Tron groundbreaking in 1982, are what makes it a touch stale today. For as revolutionary as those effects were, they were also primitive in a way that gives Tron to this day an aesthetic charm. Original director Steven Lisberger came from animation and it shows in the way his Grid is realized through the computer animation around live-action figures (it has more in common technically with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? than any visual effects extravaganza today). But in this film as in Tron: Legacy, the world of the Grid and the real world have almost no aesthetic difference. The lack of tangibility in the digital world was a feature not a bug -and both Legacy and Ares in trying to make that world look and feel real render it far less interesting and unique. It could be any other constructed backdrop of a VFX blockbuster.
Tron: Legacy however did have a somewhat compelling new story to offset this (and its own somewhat flawed digital effects experiments) -which is more than can be said for this latest revival of the cult series. It finds ENCOM, the video game and tech development company founded by Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn in the prior films under the control of Eve Kim (Greta Lee) following the death of her sister and partner. Its rival corporation Dillinger Systems is led by the maniacal and ruthless Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), grandson of the first film’s villain. Both companies are racing towards perfecting a new technology that materializes digital creations in the real world, ENCOM for the betterment of humanity, Dillinger for capitalism and the military industrial complex. Eve however, unlocking an old code from Flynn, gets there first, so Dillinger attempts to hunt her down and steal the code for himself -doing so through his own digital creations and primarily a Master Control Program compelled by its own sentience called Ares, played by Jared Leto.
The film is directed by Joachim Rønning, who already has a bad Pirates of the Caribbean and Maleficent movie to his name, and his generic lack of a vision is quite palpable in the staleness of the movie's assembly -which stands out starkly against the ambition the story appears to be aiming for. With its focus on the sentience and autonomy of artificial intelligence, a conspiracy revolving around a major technological breakthrough, and at one point the incidental reappearance of the franchise legacy character to assist the non-human protagonist, essentially what this movie is trying to be is Tron’s version of Blade Runner 2049 (down to the poor box office performance it would seem); and to this end it even nabs one of that film’s stars -albeit the worst one.
Leto is not just a problematic casting choice because he is a problematic individual with several credible allegations of sexual assault and toxic workplace behaviour, but because he is neither a box office draw, regardless of what major studios seem to believe, nor a particularly good actor -at least not in his current state. Ares being a broadly emotionless A.I. of a character doesn't help matters and sure enough, Leto's presence throughout the film is completely devoid of charisma -all he can offer being a gruff, vaguely important-sounding voice. This tenor fit well for that limited part in Blade Runner but is entirely off-putting as a standard sci-fi-action hero whom we're meant to on some level relate with. The character who does occupy that space is Eve, and Lee is more compelling a focal point, but she is written very blandly -the tragedy of her sister's death so secondary it is ridiculous, and her action beats given her tech genius role so blisteringly arbitrary it comes off as awkward. Peters fits his part like a glove but fails to make an impression in what could have been the film's most cogent satirical swipe at real-life tech oligarchs -saddled with Gillian Anderson as a scolding mother and quite literally in the shadow of his grandfather -David Warner's villain of the original film- through notable scenes. Then there is Jodie Turner-Smith, flailing as the true believer program who takes on the antagonist role after Ares turns coat. Another character with some potential but such poor construction -had a few too many bugs in her code.
All of these figures interact predominantly in the real world, the first time one of these Tron movies has spent the bulk of its time off-Grid. In fairness, the Grid of Dillinger's cyberspace is incredibly boring in its angular red and black aesthetics and monotonous atmosphere -lacking in any of the character or characters of the prior films. A sequence where Eve is brought there is perhaps unsurprisingly cut very short, Rønning seemingly totally uninterested in the space -the irony being that he brings the traditional gladiatorial matches and light cycle chases to a real world that is just as much digitally fabricated as the Grid. But here there is the novelty of actual people and infrastructure that can be impacted by these actions. It’s not entirely ineffectual, and there is a rule in place that the Dillinger creations disintegrate after twenty-nine minutes -which becomes less easy to take seriously the more and more elaborate the set-pieces become (there is no way the digital figures are covering so much ground in less than a half hour), but it is all just empty in impact.
Perhaps the thought is this can be offset by the critical sequence for Ares where he is uploaded into Flynn’s original long-abandoned grid, wherein is centred the nexus of Ares’ incredibly thin Pinocchio arc. Here is where the movie takes the chance to bathe in nostalgia, Ares being far more blatant in its lega-sequel tropes than the other film literally subtitled Legacy. But at the very least the sequence reprises the visual distinctiveness of the original, from the gray skin tones and corny suits against a minimalist backdrop to the retro computer graphic light cycle -these things undercut however by Ares pointing out their nostalgic charm as though hoping the audience will take the hint in their response. It’s also where of course Jeff Bridges comes back as some nebulous digital echo of Flynn, there only to provide a sense of gravitas in the franchise’s history by facilitating Ares’ journey.
That part of the movie is the only space to visually evoke two dimensions, but thematically it is the case for the movie writ large. Amid all these other shortcomings, the biggest problem with Tron: Ares is its utter cowardice to say anything meaningful on the very relevant subject of tech companies and technological advancement in late-stage capitalism. It makes a few amorphous suggestions, like that Dillinger selling his technology to the military (which he intentionally misleads them on) is the wrongful use of such a thing; and there is generally no problem in identifying the bad company with brazenly evil intentions -though strictly apolitical in nature. But our protagonists represent a wealthy company too, Eve’s business partner Ajay (Hasan Minhaj) is seen giving one of those grand convention presentations way more for the stockholders than consumers. Eve is presented as more grounded, explicitly noble in her intentions (she brings up the scientific and energy benefits of her technology with the same fervour of disingenuous A.I. entrepreneurs), but it feels like a P.R. face boiling its commentary down to a difference between good and bad companies, with the distinctions being searingly opaque. Dillinger is okay with killing people -when one side is defined by that extreme the other needs no scrutiny. It reads like a film doing whatever it can to appease tech giants, poised to see themselves, however undeservedly, as the underdogs descended from Flynn. In 1982, he actually was an underdog -but so was Bill Gates. It’s hard to frame Bill Gates as the hero today.
Lost in everything else, it’s kind of funny that this is the first Tron movie not to actually feature Tron the character -Bruce Boxleitner was not invited back this time around. That perhaps says something about how far this movie has strayed from the series’ origins, how cynical its branding is. The one thing it has in common with its predecessors is that it looks set to be a financial failure, though unlike the first, and even the second movie strangely enough, I don’t think it has a chance of becoming a cult classic to sustain the franchise through another reboot ten years down the line. One can’t know for sure, but Tron is probably dead with this film, and though it is not a particularly sad occasion, it is a shame nothing engaging or relevant was made from a concept that is very much engaging and relevant in our own world.
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