Movie Review - TRON: ARES

TRON: ARES is an assault of the senses. It is big and bright and bold and the images flood over you in wave after wave after wave of bright visual content while the soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) bombards you with throbbing rhythms incessantly.

If this is your jam, head to the largest screen with the most bad-ass sound system you can find to check this marvel out.

If this is NOT your jam, then the headache it will induce in you will NOT be overcome by the film itself, it’s plot, dialogue or characters.

The 3rd in a series of TRON films put out by the Walt Disney Company, Tron continues to be an idea that is in need of an audience. For Disney, TRON has found an audience - at their theme parks, for the TRON: LIGHTCYCLE RUN Roller Coaster is one of the Company’s signature Theme Park attraction.

And…this movie feels like you are on a theme park ride, but instead of it lasting 2 1/2 - 3 minutes, it lasts 2 hours, well past the point of enjoyment.

Tron: Ares does have some things going for it besides it’s visuals and soundtrack. Jared Leto (Oscar winner for THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB) is interesting (enough) as the titular character, Ares (a computer program brought to life in the real world). His journey as a sort of computer-age Pinocchio drives the narrative and holds the center together…barely.

Greta Lee (PAST LIVES) is serviceable as the “good guy” in this film, but she pales in comparison with the waaaaay over-the-top performance of the normally good Evan Peters (American Horror Story) as the film’s bad guy. It’s like he watched Christopher Walken’s performance as the bad guy in the James Bond film A VIEW TO A KILL and thought “how can I turn that performance up to 11”? It is comically bad.

Gillian Anderson (THE X-FILES), Hasan Minhaj (IT ENDS WITH US), ARTURO CASTRO (the ROADHOUSE remake) and Sarah DesJardins (YELLOWJACKETS) all struggle mightily to make some sense out of their under-written, under-utilized parts which are no more than secondary items to the visuals of the film.

Only Jodie Turner-Smith (QUEEN & SLIM) rises to a performance that attempts to match Leto’s and the battles between the 2 are the best part of this film.

Oh, and Jeff Bridges (the first 2 TRON films) shows up, briefly, to remind us what came before us, which is nice (but where is Bruce Boxleitner’s titular TRON character)?

All of this is poorly wrapped in a film that is weakly directed by Joachim Ronning (MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL) who, clearly, gave short shrift to script, character and performance and focused all of his attention on visuals and sound.

Which is the only reason to see this film

Letter Grade: B- (and I’m being generous, for the visuals and sound are something to behold).

6 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank (ofMarquis)