150 Word Review: 'Tron: Ares' (2025)
Game over
As an abstract work of art, Disney’s Tron: Ares almost succeeds. The movie is enthralling if you surrender to dazzling images of glowing red figures, freed from digital dimensions like genies from bottles, wreaking havoc on real life to a terrific, thump-thumping score by Nine Inch Nails.
The problem with Ares and 2010’s Tron: Legacy is that they look like any other big-CGI blockbuster. The innovative 1982 original, with its mix of hand-painted black-and-white film and 3D-animated light cycles, is still a visual marvel. Tron was a cyberpunk fantasia two years before William Gibson coined the term. Both sequels are products of their time.
Tron: Ares doesn’t make a ton of sense. Two corporations are at war. Each wants to turn ones and zeroes into flesh and blood—bad idea. Jared Leto is A.I. Jesus? Sure. Jeff Bridges has a whatever cameo, man. Whenever characters talked, I started to power down.
I saw it and was floored by how boring the whole thing was. It was all info dumps and fight scenes. Greta Lee was the best part of the film, but was stuck inside of an uninspired script.
This sounds right. The trailer had that high-octane visuals, pumping soundtrack feel that makes you think "Wow! This looks amazing!" and simultaneously "I probably just saw the only 90 seconds of footage of any interest in the whole movie."