Tron Ares review: An inescapable, cacophonous assault on the senses

When you watch the original Tron movie, its special effects very much look four decades old, but there is a nostalgic charm to it.

Not only that, but it makes spatial sense. You can actually follow what is happening on screen, who’s chasing whom, where all the action is at any one point.

Technology and visual pizzazz has advanced eons in the time since Jeff Bridges first introduced audiences to Tron cycles, but just because you can do more, doesn’t you should.

Tron: Ares is a visual and audio assault so overwhelming to the senses that this is one movie which might actually be better seen on a medium screen, rather than the biggest one you can find. Your eardrums and retinas will thank you for it later.

There is so much – too much – going on at any one point, it even does a disservice to the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack that when combined with everything else serves to bludgeon the viewer into submission.

Submit to what exactly? Our AI overlords. Maybe. Probably. Who knows. For a movie that had a relatively simple plot, the overall impression is one of confusion as you seek to separate the story from the inescapable over-stimulation. Cacophonous is an understatement.

There is some backstory to the original and 2010 Tron movies but, for the most part, Tron: Ares works even if you’re not familiar with the canon.

The gist of the world-building is this: There are two rival tech giants that are racing to find a MacGuffin called the permanence code, which will allow organic material to be printed without an expiration date.

Eve Kim (Greta Lee) is the current chief executive of ENCOM, the company Bridges’ Kevin Flynn took control of in 1982. She’s the good guy in this because she has a dead sister who she forlornly remembers.

Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) runs Dillinger Systems, who is also after the code so he can stabilise his printed AI bots which last only 29 minutes in the human world before disintegrating. You know he’s the bad guy because one, AI bots, and two, he’s the grandson of the original villain.

Jared Leto plays Ares, a superintelligent AI program created by Dillinger. He lives in a digital world called “the grid” unless he’s been printed in the human realm. He experiences one moment of human empathy and it changes his programming, and discovers a love for Depeche Mode.

Jodie Turner-Smith plays Athena, another program given physical form, but also for, again, 29 minutes.

Tron: Ares is people either shouting “get me the permanence code” or “they mustn’t get the permanence code” in between CGI battles featuring lots of swishy beams of light.

The one impressive sequence is when Leto and Turner-Smith on souped up Tron cycles chase Lee on her super-fast motorcycle. It is actually an adrenalised set-piece with style and stakes.

It also makes you remember how brilliant the Tron ride is at Disneyland, and that’s not a burn because that attraction is legitimately excellent. If Tron: Ares manages to do nothing else except sell some extra tickets to Disneyland, well, that’s not nothing.

The rest of the film, oh boy, is a lot. Everything gets bigger and bigger, including the confusing battles, the arch performances, particularly from Peters who was been directed to just scream, furrow his brow and scream some more, while Leto’s whole schtick seems to be besting Jenna Ortega on who can go the longest without blinking.

Given the timing of its release with the growing relevance of AI, Tron: Ares seems wilfully uninterested in engaging in how the conversation has shifted and deepened since the original film’s thesis.

It’s less a movie and more a two-hour Nine Inch Nails video clip.

Rating: 2/5

Tron: Ares is in cinemas