Review: 'Tron: Ares' looks spectacular, but could have gone deeper into critiquing our tech obsession

“Tron: Ares” is caught between two worlds — the one where director Joaquim Rønning gets to comment on our technology-addicted society, and the one where he must deliver a Disney legacy sequel that must deliver ticket sales to the shareholders — and can never fully reconcile the two.

The plot exposition at the opening, delivered through fake news reports, tells us that Encom, the computer game maker at the heart of the franchise, was acquired by a pair of tech-savvy sisters, Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and Tess Kim (Selene Yun). They forced out the previous CEO, Julian Dillinger (Ewan Peters) — the grandson of David Warner’s ruthless character from the original movie. Julian has started a rival company, Dillinger Systems, and started working on creating cyber weapons for the military.

Julian’s breakthrough is in implanting a super-soldier computer program into a 3D-printed body. His most sophisticated program is named Ares, for the Greek god of war — and enters the real world as a human-like mechanism, played by Jared Leto. 

The glitch in Julian’s plan is that nothing he builds in the real world, including Ares, lasts more than 29 minutes. Julian needs something called the “permanence code,” which will allow his devices to last indefinitely. Eve, off the grid in Alaska, has found that her late sister found that code — which has something to do with Encom’s long-missing chief programmer, Kevin Flynn (the part Jeff Bridges played in the original). Eve must get back to Encom’s headquarters before Julian sends Ares and another battle program, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to steal it.

What Julian doesn’t notice at first is that Ares, programmed to consume information, has learned too much from studying the Kim sisters — including their capacity for empathy, which he adopts as he goes against his programming and try to help Eve, in both our world and the computer world. (Ares also develops a taste for Depeche Mode, a joke about the ‘80s culture that created “Tron.'“ The joke never quite lands.)

Rønning — a Disney veteran, having directed the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment and the second “Malificent” movie — and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (who shares story credit with David DiGilio) create some eye-popping set pieces, such as the deployment of the Tron lightcycles in the real world, creating energy trails that look like molten glass. Dillinger’s CPU world, where Eve briefly finds herself, is too brooding to be effective, but there’s a later visit to the cyber realm that will make fans of the 1982 version smile.

The best performance here is from Peters, who takes the maniacal supervillain trope and finds new life in it — with the bonus of pairing Julian with his mother (Gillian Anderson), who continually warns Julian that he’s playing with forces he doesn’t understand and can’t control.

Speaking of control issues, couldn’t Rønning have done something about Jared Leto? Turns out that Leto is more fascinating when he’s a villain, and dull as dishwater when he’s supposed to be heroic. It’s a casting choice that comes close to sinking the movie.

What keeps “Tron: Ares” going are the breathtaking special effects, which borrow ideas from the original and adds some updates, and the propulsive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (recorded under the name of Reznor’s band, Nine Inch Nails). One wishes the movie’s viewpoint on technology — after all, the original “Tron” was Hollywood’s first real exploration in the world we now call A.I. — was as dynamic as the visuals and as insistent as the Nine Inch Nails music.

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‘Tron: Ares’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence/action. Running time: 119 minutes.