The best Disney movies never let you down. There’s an epic struggle between good and evil, important lessons are learned, the good guys triumph, and you have some fun along the way. That’s the perfect way to describe Tron: Ares, the long-awaited third film in the Tron franchise. Those first two Tron films were, of course, also Disney movies but were made with enough technological advancement that they didn’t quite feel that way. They felt a little edgy. A little cooler. Tron: Ares is certainly cool, but in no way edgy. It’s familiar, safe, and formulaic in very Disney ways that make it work overall, but that also means it never wows or surprises you too significantly.
In Tron: Ares, two companies are in a battle for the future. On the one side, there’s Encom, the company made famous by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), which has gone through some hard times but is now once again experiencing prosperity thanks to CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee). Then there’s Dillinger, an offshoot of Encom run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of Flynn’s old rival, Ed Dillinger. Each company is exploring ways it can use the digital world, nicknamed the Grid, to improve the real world. Encom wants to be more progressive. Dillinger wants to build weapons.
Dillinger’s ultimate weapon is Ares, the Master Control Program of the Dillinger grid, played by Jared Leto. Ares and his army of programs do whatever Dillinger wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants, including when they are brought from the Grid into the real world. The problem is, for both Encom and Dillinger, assets from the Grid, which cost nothing to make or remake because they’re digital, can only last for 29 minutes in our world. And so each company is on the hunt for a Permanence Code that will make those pure profit, wholly subservient programs last in reality. That is, of course, until Ares starts to get wise to his true purpose and sides with Eve to find the Permanence Code for himself, shifting the battle from the Grid into the real world.
All of that might sound a little complicated, but director Joachim Rønning, working from a script by Jesse Wigutow, streamlines it and makes it incredibly easy to understand. There are a few times when Tron: Ares remembers it’s a Tron movie and suddenly eschews its story to provide a nice little cluster of exposition about Kevin Flynn, his son Sam, and more, which should appease fans of the franchise, like myself. But that’s much less important than the basics. The good guys and bad guys want the same thing. Good guys want it for good. Bad guys want it for bad. Then the lead bad guy becomes a good guy. That’s all you really need to know.
For the bulk of Tron: Ares, we’re just following that straight line, with an occasional focus on Ares evolving from a robotic program to a more understanding and empathic human. Much of that derives from Leto’s performance, which, if you can get over his real-life red flags, is actually very well mapped out. Ares in the first scene is radically different from Ares in the last scene, and we clearly see that transformation happen over the course of the movie.
You can’t really say that about most of the other characters in Tron: Ares, though. Both Lee and Peters are super solid and charismatic but don’t have nearly as much to work with as Leto. They’re there largely to advance the plot and represent their sides of this argument between greed and good deeds. Still, they do that job well. You cheer for Eve, jeer for Julian, and enjoy where each of their stories goes. One standout is Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena, Ares’s second in command. She’s the same throughout, but that’s the point. Athena is an absolute killer of a program, wholly loyal to Dillinger, and Turner-Smith brings a perfect power to every scene she’s in.
This, of course, is a Tron movie, though, and a by-the-book story, with surface emotions and obvious themes, is all less important than two other things: the visuals and the music. Visually, the first two Tron films were incredibly groundbreaking in their own time. Tron: Ares doesn’t have that going for it, unfortunately, but the way it integrates Grid components like lightcycles and Recognizers into the real world is undeniably awesome and gorgeous. You kind of wish there was more Grid in the movie, but whenever you get any of it on screen, it looks fantastic. Then there’s the new music by Nine Inch Nails, which doesn’t always nail the simple emotions of the film, but is super loud and propulsive, giving everything a really exciting, important feeling throughout, even when the film itself may not quite live up to that energy.
One other element that gives Tron: Ares that little boost is the idea of this 29-minute countdown. Knowing that, without the Permanence Code, assets from the Grid can only exist for this set amount of time adds an unexpected but welcome bit of tension to some otherwise normal scenes. It doesn’t raise the bar of the film in a massive way, but it does just enough to make it slightly more interesting and dramatic.
More often than not, though, Tron: Ares is just a really pretty Disney movie. Messages about the gift of life, the dangers of technology, and everything in between have been done a million times before. And yet, that doesn’t make them less poignant, especially when seen through these fun visuals and set against this exciting music. Tron: Ares is fun. It’s fine. Like a good, solid Disney movie, it may not be extra special, but it doesn’t let you down.
Tron: Ares opens in theaters on October 10.