The sophisticated program Ares is sent from the digital world to the real world on a dangerous mission with potential both-world-changing consequences.
Welcome back to the Tron universe, Disney’s way of trying to stay relevant in an ever-evolving tech world, over decades of advancements, and still looking ahead to potential sci-fi reality-warping futures. The aging-but-still-super-cool OG hacker, programmer, and gamer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) even makes the inevitable scene-stealing cameo in this new Tron, so make sure your Identity Disc is fully charged and lets dive into this!
So to start off with fairly quickly we’re treated to a montage of rapid background explanations – Sam Flynn went missing awhile ago and the Kim sisters have taken over ENCOM and all its wild AI potentiality; the rival Dillinger systems former CEO Elisabeth Dillinger (Gillian Anderson) has turned the empire over to her highly ambitious son, Julian (Evan Peters); now the two titan systems are in a race to find the thing called the Permanence Code first.
Despite demonstrating amazing tech with lasers and 3D printers and putting on one hell of a show for their board of directors, mainly starring the avatar Master Control that Julian dubbed “Ares” (Jared Leto), there is a fatal flaw staring Dillinger in the face – the time limit. His constructs, as cool as Ares and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) and their rides and weapons and all that stuff are, they all come with a time limit of 29 minutes. Once that time limit is up, the light cycles, the amazing laser guns with super special effects, even Ares and Athena and the avatars themselves, fall screaming into a pile of ash and data scraps. Hence the hunt for the Permanence Code, which in theory does exactly what it sounds like it does – make things from the various digital worlds have permanency here in the real world.
Except Eve Kim (Greta Lee), still grey-faced from the death of her beloved sister, has already come out to the snow-capped hidden boonies, to find Flynn Sr.’s unplugged hideout and hopefully, where he hid the Permanence Code. Between her and Seth’s (Arturo Castro) diligent efforts, not only is the Permanence Code located, it’s tried and tested via an orange tree, another callback to the original Tron, where the first thing printed from the digital world to the real world, was an orange. And the Code works, it totally works, which means Eve is now totally on the run, from everything Dillinger can throw at her, but perhaps especially, Ares himself!
From there, things kind of devolve into the light-cycle chase scenes and black-and-neon-laden action sequences that Tron is known for. Ares is out in the real world talking almost sympathetically to Eve, and having conversations with the digital copy of OG Flynn about Mozart vs. Depeche Mode inside the Grid, and almost inevitably, rebelling against Julian Dillinger, who’s gone quite power-mad at this point.
The role of Ares for Jared Leto, the restraint of power and still the quiet insistence of uniqueness, seems a much better fit than some of his previous ones. It seemed an entire waste to cast the incredible Cameron Monaghan as the avatar Caius and use him for all of one whole scene. The special effects all Tron films are known for is of course here in abundance, especially towards the end, when legions of warrior programs come out with their weapons trailing Light Ribbons everywhere, and when Athena pilots an entire Recognizer spaceship out in the real world to go catch Eve. The soundtrack provided by Nine Inch Nails’ Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor really adds to the whole film, giving the neon Tron rave a goth noir bite as well. And for those of you who might not know, the newspaper picture Ares is looking at towards the very end of the film before he rides off in search of, was of Sam Flynn and Quorra, a program from Tron: Legacy.
Join the hunt for the Permanence Code and the eternal quest for individuality and freedom, in Tron: Ares in theaters now!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass