By Bob Grimm
Some 43 years ago—and just 16 years after Walt Disney himself croaked—Disney made a goofy movie called Tron.
The original Tron (1982) received a lot of hype for its then-groundbreaking (now comically dated) use of computer-generated effects, at a time when arcade games and home-console games like Atari were all the rage. Starring Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer who gets sucked into the digital world and has to wear a funny suit, the film put video game aficionados everywhere into a coma and underperformed at the box office.
But the film would nonetheless spawn a franchise: The video games based on the movie made a boatload of money, and Tron became viewed by some as a great movie idea that was ahead of its time.
Cut to 2010, when Tron finally got a legit sequel in Tron: Legacy. The film picked up where the original left off, and Bridges returned; Daft Punk provided an amazing soundtrack; and the visuals were great. But the story, once again, was dull, and the film—although not a complete box-office failure—didn’t warrant enough hype to garner an immediate follow-up.
Now, another 15 years have passed. Disney, with its video games and park rides based upon Tron still raking in dollars, has once again forgotten that the general public really doesn’t care for Tron movies—because Disney is at it again with Tron: Ares.
Ares is an attempted reboot with new characters and only a few nods to the two prior films. Yes, Jeff Bridges returns for one dopey scene, and yes, there is a sequence in which a main character finds himself back in the janky 1982 Tron world, but this is supposed to be a fresh start—and it winds up being is the worst Tron movie yet.
It sports some terrific visuals at times, and it has a fantastic score from Nine Inch Nails. That’s basically all the good that can be said about Ares. This is a film in which the only thing that really matters is the score, which overwhelms the boring script and bland performances. You slowly start to realize you are simply watching a visually impressive promo reel for some decent Trent Reznor tracks—it’s a Nine Inch Nails commercial.
Legacy’s stultifyingly boring son-of-Flynn character (Garrett Hedlund) is out in favor of a new lead, that being Jared Leto as the incredibly gorgeous but still horribly boring title character. Leto is an actor I really want to enjoy, because I have seen movies like Requiem for a Dream, American Psycho, Panic Room and The Thin Red Line, and I know he’s capable of good acting.
But other than his Oscar-winning work in Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Leto has been horrible in most movies for more than two decades—and he’s a franchise killer, wreaking havoc on Marvel (Morbius), DC (Suicide Squad) and, yes, even Disney with Haunted Mansion. Here, he’s at it again with an utterly charmless performance that will surely be the death march for Tron movies.
Leto does almost nothing in this film. His character is essentially security software created by an evil tech mogul (a lost-in-cinematic-hell Evan Peters), and he’s in search of a “permanence code” that would allow his computer self to survive in the real world.
This is the dumbest premise for a blockbuster movie this year. We get emotionless Leto for most of the movie, then slightly-alive Leto in the film’s final act once he’s driving a car and regaling in the wonders of Depeche Mode. This movie completely lacks humor. Wouldn’t it have been a funny idea to make Ares a Nine Inch Nails fan? A fan of the actual music propelling his story? Nope. They opt for Depeche Mode.
In his one scene, Bridges looks as lost as he’s ever been. Much of the weight of the film falls upon Greta Lee as a competing tech mogul trying to create her own permanence code. This, unfortunately, will not be the breakout role she was surely seeking.
Tron: Ares needs to be the end of it: No more Tron movies, please. Maybe Disney will try again in another 50 years when, thankfully, I will be dead, unless I pull a Kirk Douglas and make it more than 100 years.
Oh lord, that will be some kind of hell if I have to see another Tron movie in my final years of life. It’ll be a double hell if they somehow get Leto to be in that one, too … de-aged, of course. Maybe that will be the thing to finally do me in? Seeing a de-aged Leto still talking about Depeche Mode in 2075 will be so boring that it will overcome whatever pep meds the nursing home has been pumping into me and send me into a merciful cardiac arrest. That would be better than having to watch another Tron/Leto movie all the way through.
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