The “Tron” movies have a legacy of great electronic soundtracks. The original 1980 cult classic was scored by legendary trans music pioneer Wendy Carlos, who also contributed the unforgettable scores for Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining.” Disney’s long-delayed sequel “Tron: Legacy” featured a soundtrack by Daft Punk, who put so much heart and soul into their computerized compositions that the score was, frankly, the only thing most people got excited about.
“Tron: Ares” continues this tradition with a new score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, under their long-disused band name Nine Inch Nails. It’s a tidal wave of sound, crashing into Disney’s film and soaking every frame. It is a sonic wonder for which both Reznor and Ross deserve great praise. (They’re probably used to praise by now, but that’s no reason for us to get numb too.) “Tron: Ares” has, in no uncertain terms, a great frickin’ soundtrack.
The movie, on other hand, completely sucks.
“Tron: Ares” is a hack job, and the most annoying kind, because it hides beneath a thin veneer of superficial competence. The film looks adequate. It has big stars who try, mostly, to earn their paycheck. Everyone’s always running somewhere, which can easily be confused for momentum. Then of course there’s that score, which ties everything together. Like a diamond tennis bracelet wrapped around a garbage bag.
“Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010) were ambitious sci-fi epics that envisioned the inside of our computers as glowing digital landscapes, populated by anthropomorphic programs who worshipped their human creators like we were gods. They were pretentious films, but they refused to sit on their laurels and coast on their groundbreaking visual effects. They equated modern technological revolutions with classical theology, and asked meaningful questions about the responsibilities we have for, and towards, all of our creations. They were, whatever their other flaws, films with ideas.
“Tron: Ares” has no ideas. Instead, it has plot. Lots and lots of tedious plot. It takes place years after “Tron: Legacy,” and now two tech companies — the saintly ENCOM and the evil, evil Dillinger Systems — want to bring computer programs into the real world, instead of sending real people into computers. They’ve figured out how to make programs real for 29 minutes, but after that their creations evaporate. Never mind why. Dillinger uses it to make tanks, for crying out loud. We have tanks that don’t dissolve after 29 minutes already.
Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the CEO of ENCOM, has the secret to keeping programs in the real world indefinitely, so her rival Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) sends his digital goons after her, led by the security program Ares (Jared Leto). This is a lot less effective, it turns out, than sending regular guys after her, since his computer programs turn the city into a giant trippy light show and call attention to Julian’s criminal enterprise, damaging the company’s reputation and making the whole A-story completely pointless.
What matters, apparently, is that Ares is evolving past his programming, so he teams up with Eve to unlock the secret to “permanence.” This involves running from more digital goons who, again, die instantly after 29 minutes. All our heroes have to do is drive an hour outside of town and the whole plot would dissolve like a flan in a cupboard.
Greta Lee is an excellent actor — you’ve seen “Past Lives,” you know this already — but she spends the whole movie just running from bad guys and fixing computers. All Eve has is a backstory, and even that gets explained to her by a man she met thirty minutes ago. He also tells her how to complete her character arc, which she dutifully does. “Tron: Ares” takes every possible thing away from Greta Lee. It’s a thankless role. I hope she was well paid.
All Jared Leto had to do was play a character with a soul. He’s not very convincing. Ares is a one-note entity who desperately needed an actor with a twinkle in their eye, someone who could subtly add life to an artificial life form which, technically, has none. Leto stares blank-faced for most of the movie and delivers his lines with all the intensity of unscented deodorant. The only other program we spend time with is Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), who also lacks personality, and this is all inconsistent with the rules of “Tron.” Programs in these movies are typically modeled after their programmers, and are often passionate individuals. Which means the makers of “Tron: Ares” — the film was directed by Joachim Rønning with a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow and story by Wigutow and David Digilio — changed the rules of this whole universe just to make their story worse.
And then of course there’s the Grid, where all these computer programs live. It’s a place everyone in the audience can stare at in slack-jawed wonder because, if nothing else, it’s always looked cool. The Grid is also always color-coded, so blue equals good and red equals evil. “Tron: Ares” spends mosts of its Grid time in the red section, which makes us feel like we’re trapped in the failed Nintendo Virtual Boy. It’s just a recipe for headaches. Maybe that’s why more of the movie takes place outside the Grid, in the comparatively boring real world. Because someone behind the scenes thought the problem with “Tron” and “Tron: Legacy” was that they were gorgeous. Don’t worry. That era of “Tron” is over.
Disney has been trying to turn “Tron” into a thing — like, any kind of thing — for almost half a century. The previous films have their fans. Not enough to justify their budgets, perhaps, but they’re out there. It’s hard to imagine any of those fans getting excited about the most generic “Tron” yet, and it’s hard to imagine all the audiences who weren’t interested before suddenly getting stoked now that it’s boring.
In real life we’re finally at a stage where the issues raised by “Tron” are relevant in the real world, where we’re having difficult discussions about the illusion of artificial intelligence and what its implementation could mean for the future of humankind. It’s exactly the wrong time to release a “Tron” with nothing to say about the topic. Then again, it’s always the wrong time to release a bad movie.
Skip this new film. Watch the old ones. But listen to all the scores.
“Tron: Ares” opens exclusively in theaters on Oct. 10.