Tron: Ares – Film Review

After nearly fifteen years in development limbo, Tron: Ares arrives as Disney’s latest attempt to reboot and expand its cult-favorite cyber universe. Directed by Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) and penned by Jesse Wigutow from a story co-written with David Digilio, this long-gestating sequel to 2010’s Tron: Legacy ventures further into the boundary between human and program. While it succeeds in delivering arresting visuals, moments of emotional grace, and a propulsive industrial score by Nine Inch Nails, it also collapses under the weight of a tangled narrative, uneven pacing, and a central performance that feels too artificial even for a movie about artificial intelligence.

The story picks up in 2025, fifteen years after Sam Flynn’s adventure in Legacy, as ENCOM and its rival Dillinger Systems race to perfect a process that can bring digital constructs into the real world. Their experiments are hindered by a “29-minute barrier,” the limit before these constructs disintegrate. ENCOM’s CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and her colleague Seth Flores uncover a “permanence code” in an old Alaskan outpost once operated by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), hoping it will bridge the digital-human divide. Meanwhile, the ambitious Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), grandson of the original film’s villain, unveils Ares (Jared Leto), a new Master Control Program designed to be the ultimate soldier—self-aware, expendable, and dangerously curious about existence.

Rønning’s direction emphasizes the contrast between sterile corporate futurism and the kaleidoscopic wonder of the digital realm. The production design is predictably sleek, filled with reflective black surfaces and bold neon accents that recall the franchise’s signature look. But Tron: Ares refines that style into something sharper and more tactile. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth crafts a consistently mesmerizing film, his camera gliding through corridors of light and data storms that feel both alien and hauntingly beautiful. Whether it’s a high-speed light cycle chase across collapsing data bridges or a quiet moment of reflection between Eve and Ares surrounded by pulsing energy streams, the visuals maintain a hypnotic allure that few blockbusters achieve.

Nine Inch Nails’ score further deepens that atmosphere. Following Daft Punk’s iconic work on Legacy was a near-impossible task, yet Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross avoid imitation and forge their own identity within the grid. Their pulsating electronic textures and distorted synth basslines evoke both awe and melancholy. The music pulsates like the code itself—sometimes violent, sometimes mournful, always alive. When paired with the film’s imagery, it creates a sensory experience that feels immersive even when the story falters.

Unfortunately, the story does falter—often. Wigutow’s screenplay brims with fascinating ideas about consciousness, creation, and identity, but it attempts to weave too many subplots into a two-hour runtime. The film juggles ENCOM’s scientific breakthroughs, Dillinger’s corporate espionage, Ares’s existential awakening, and Eve’s personal trauma, but it rarely allows any thread to breathe. As a result, pacing becomes a recurring issue; the movie alternates between bursts of kinetic action and long, expository stretches that test the audience’s patience. Rønning’s direction can’t entirely smooth over the tonal shifts between philosophical dialogue and blockbuster spectacle.

Jared Leto’s performance as Ares proves equally divisive. While he commits to the ethereal detachment of a being struggling to understand humanity, his delivery often feels distant to the point of disengagement. There’s a fine line between portraying alien intelligence and emotional emptiness, and Leto leans too far toward the latter. His Ares should be a tragic, childlike figure awakening to life; instead, he registers as a handsome cipher—a vessel for the movie’s ideas rather than a compelling character in his own right. When the film asks the audience to empathize with his desire for permanence, it struggles to generate genuine emotion.

By contrast, Greta Lee gives Tron: Ares its emotional heartbeat. As Eve Kim, she delivers a performance rooted in determination and vulnerability, grounding the film whenever its digital spectacle threatens to overshadow human connection. Lee manages to make the technical jargon feel personal, transforming what could have been a perfunctory corporate role into something resonant and layered. She conveys Eve’s internal conflict—her guilt, ambition, and compassion—with remarkable precision. In a movie dominated by glowing suits and artificial beings, Lee feels refreshingly real.

Evan Peters, on the other hand, is disappointing as Julian Dillinger. The grandson of the original film’s antagonist, he should represent a new generation of corruption—a man intoxicated by technological control. Yet Peters plays Julian with erratic energy and little menace, never achieving the cold, calculating gravitas that the role demands. His villainy is more petulant than powerful, and the film’s attempts to humanize him through family tension with his mother (Gillian Anderson, excellent in limited screen time) never fully land.

Among the supporting cast, Jodie Turner-Smith brings stoic authority to Athena, Ares’s lieutenant, while Hasan Minhaj and Arturo Castro provide fleeting moments of levity amid the seriousness. Sarah Desjardins – one of my favorite actors working today – playing Erin, stands out despite minimal screen time. Her warmth and subtle humor make her one of the few characters who feels genuinely human in this digital odyssey, though the script gives her little opportunity to develop beyond her function in the plot.

The film’s action sequences are hit and miss. The light cycle chase midway through is exhilarating—a dazzling ballet of color, speed, and digital destruction that recalls the adrenaline of Legacy while upping the spatial complexity. Another standout moment sees Eve and Ares racing through collapsing data tunnels as Reznor and Ross’s score blares with thunderous intensity. Yet not every set piece achieves that same clarity; some fights devolve into visually cluttered chaos, more interested in spectacle than coherence. Rønning directs them with energy but not always with purpose.

Where Tron: Ares intermittently shines is in its exploration of empathy and creation. The bond between Eve and Ares—one human, one digital—mirrors the franchise’s ongoing fascination with humanity’s relationship to its inventions. There’s a tenderness in their connection that hints at something profound: the longing to be understood, even by what we create. Sadly, these moments are fleeting, buried beneath the convoluted plotting and inconsistent tone.

By the final act, Tron: Ares feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped. It gestures toward deep questions about immortality, control, and legacy, but its storytelling never matches its thematic ambition. The film’s emotional peaks are diluted by an overreliance on exposition and spectacle, leaving viewers with the sense of a movie constantly reaching for transcendence but never quite seizing it.

Still, for all its flaws, Tron: Ares is a visually ravishing experience—a flawed but fascinating continuation of a franchise that refuses to die quietly. It’s a film of ideas and imagery, of humans and machines blurring their boundaries in search of meaning. Lee’s commanding performance, Reznor and Ross’s haunting score, and the sheer visual artistry make it worth seeing on the biggest screen possible, even if its story doesn’t always justify its ambition.

Tron: Ares is both a triumph of design and a failure of cohesion—a neon dream rendered in breathtaking detail but told with frustrating unevenness. It’s a film that dazzles the senses but doesn’t always touch the soul, proving that even in the digital age, humanity remains the hardest code to crack.