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\u201cNo Going Back\u201d reads the Tron: Ares tagline. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Why couldn\u2019t Disney heed its own advice?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Greed. The answer\u2019s\u00a0most definitely greed – as well as the desperate desire to recycle an IP through cynical nostalgia-baiting to better generate interest in a franchise the House of Mouse wants to turn into a profit opportunity. All this despite the fact\u00a0Tron\u2019s cultural stock dried out in the 80s.<\/p>\n
So, 15 years after the underwhelming Tron: Legacy and 43 years since the original Tron, one of the first films to extensively use CGI, audiences are going back into The Grid\u2019s digital landscape for a third entry. Or rather, in a reversal of the established parameters, the computer programmes are coming into our world in\u00a0Joachim R\u00f8nning\u2019s Tron: Ares.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We start with a recap intro which gives audiences all the rushed backstory they need: intelligent life from inside the machine; Jeff Bridges\u2019 Kevin Flynn disappearing; his son Sam Flynn not returning; and the ongoing race for AI supremacy, which pits the original film’s ENCOM against newcomer Dillinger Systems. <\/p>\n
The former is led by game designer Eve Kim (Greta Lee), who sees AI as a tool for medical and environmental advances. The latter is headed by the circuit-board-tattooed tech bro Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who wants to create the hardware of the future and comes out with lines like \u201cMilitary AI is the future!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
No points for guessing who we\u2019re supposed to root for. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Both CEOs have access to the same revolutionary tech, a particle laser which allows them to 3D-print anything they design in the virtual world. Eve prints an orange tree; Julian materialises tanks and his \u201cultimate soldier\u201d Ares (Jared Leto). However, both lack Flynn\u2019s lost \u201cPermanence Code\u201d – the algorithmic key that allows their artificial creations to remain intact in the real world for more than 29 minutes. Without it, the printed creations crumble into pixilated dust when the clock runs out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The race is on to find the digital MacGuffin, with Dillinger\u2019s plans complicated by Ares, who decides to\u00a0abandon his role as \u201cdefender of The Grid\u201d. He starts to yearn for some sentient permanence of his own, having been mesmerized by some rain.<\/p>\n
Tron had a killer soundtrack with music pioneer Wendy Carlos\u2019 electro score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0belated sequel was essentially the backdrop for a new Daft Punk album.<\/p>\n
So kudos to Disney, as they\u2019re keeping consistent by replicating the same formula: Tron: Ares ends up as the vehicle for a new Nine Inch Nails project, and not a hell of a lot else. The score is the best part of this third adventure, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing a bone-crushing industrial soundtrack that dominates every frame of the movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond that and some gorgeously rendered orange ribbons carving out a cityscape in one light cycle chase scene, Tron: Ares is as agonizingly generic as it is a waste of time and resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everyone is underserved by a terrible script, whose\u00a0narrative drive is a limp\u00a0mashup of \u201cFrankenstein\u201d and \u201cPinocchio\u201d, and whose ideas on characterization could fit on a wafer-thin floppy disc. As for the dialogue, it sounds like it’s been sloppily ChatGPTed into existence. Somewhat fittingly.<\/p>\n
Pour one out for the overqualified women of Tron: Ares, who are the main victims here. \u00a0<\/p>\n