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A scene from Disney’s Tron: Ares.Disney/Disney
Tron: Ares
Directed by Joachim Ronning
Written by Jesse Wigutow
Starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges
Classification PG; 119 minutes
Opens in theatres Oct. 10
Over the years, I’ve developed a solid little writing trick when it comes to film reviews: Whenever possible, write while listening to the movie’s score or soundtrack. Not only does the music help immerse you into the world that the filmmakers have created, but it adds a necessary dose of propulsion to the sometimes (frequently) arduous, occasionally (always) stressful process of turning around a few hundred words on tight deadlines. And, in the case of a title like Tron: Ares, the score can be the very best part of the entire experience.
The long-delayed sequel to/soft reboot of 2010’s Tron: Legacy – itself a long-delayed sequel to/soft reboot of 1982’s Tron – Ares is a mostly disposable and thoroughly dumb product of lazy franchise fetishism from filmmakers who could not seem to care less about what story they are trying to tell. But as a two-hour visual screensaver to a thunderous and hypnotic Nine Inch Nails soundtrack, Ares rules.
Following Daft Punk’s magnificent electro-synth score for Tron: Legacy – itself the best part of that forgettable sci-fi nothingness – NIN’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver 24 tracks of alternately unnerving and jolting techno-grunge rock, the perfect soundtrack for the artificial intelligence-era dystopia that Ares’s director Joachim Ronning is trying so very hard to conjure. NIN’s work on the film is so entrancing – even with a sloppy sound mix that drowns out whole chunks of dialogue, and even with Reznor and Ross lifting sizable cues from their own score for 2010’s The Social Network – that it is often best to simply ignore Ares altogether. Close your eyes, and open your ears.
Failure to do so will result in having to gaze at one of the most inarticulate and incoherent wannabe blockbusters in some time. Opening with a spew of newscast-delivered exposition – the most unintentionally hilarious of which notes that the Legacy hero played by Garrett Hedlund has basically departed the story “for personal reasons” – Ares is set in a near-future in which audiences are asked to side with one of two warring tech moguls.
On one side is the altruistic Eve Kim (Greta Lee), who has inherited control of Encom, the video-game company founded by the original movie’s hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) back in the ’80s. On the other is the obviously evil Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who controls Flynn’s old corporate rival, Dillinger Systems. Both Eve and Julian are obsessed with winning the AI race, though we’re repeatedly told that the former wants to use the tech to better serve mankind through, I dunno, synthetic crops and people-less education or something. Julian, meanwhile, only wants to develop high-grade military hardware, including the world’s first digital-turned-corporeal soldier. This coveted weapon is produced using a fancy 3D printer, nicknamed for the Greek god of war, and played, with an astounding level of robotic non-presence, by Jared Leto.
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Jared Leto as Ares.Leah Gallo/Disney
The only problem with Julian’s plan? Ares, as a product, only has enough power to last 29 minutes in the real world before he and his cache of weapons and vehicles crumbles into digital dust. (There is a solid and unacknowledged joke here about how the film itself has only 29 minutes of solid material before it, too, disintegrates.) And so now Julian and Eve – with the hindrance and then help of an increasingly sympathetic Ares – race against time to recover a “permanence code” once developed by Flynn.
For the next two hours, Ronning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow throw a mess of neon-flavoured concepts and contrivances at the screen, all of which fail to capture the gee-whiz imagination and spirit of director Steven Lisberger’s original film, even if this sequel is intent on laying a number of meaningless Easter eggs for fans. (Except, curiously, any appearance of Bruce Boxleitner, who played the title character way back when.)
Lee seems increasingly weary of her green-screen surroundings as the action unfolds, the actress finding herself an especially long way from her starring role in Celine Song’s Past Lives. And although Peters sinks his teeth as deep as they can go into his Elon Musk-y antagonist, his commitment can only go so far. The less said about Gillian Anderson’s walk-on role as Julian’s domineering mother – a part that feels as if it was filmed in a day – and the overwhelming blankness of Leto, Hollywood’s most successful dud of a movie star, the better.
At least Bridges seems to be having fun, strolling into the story late in the game to offer a very Big Lebowski-coded performance that suggests everyone else should be enjoying this stoner-ready nonsense as much as he is. It is hard, though, to not wonder what the Dude himself might think about the soundtrack. Reznor and Ross aren’t the Eagles, but could the Dude abide Nine Inch Nails? It really does tie the room, ahem, film together.
