TRON: Ares

Visually stunning and rhythmically charged, TRON: Ares expands its digital world with heart and energy. I loved how it blends legacy style with a fresh pulse for today’s audience. All around great story, entertaining from start to finish. A mesmerizing ride that reminds you why cinema and technology belong together. The VFX work is outstanding — great job to the entire team. I had a great time seeing it!

One of the best IMAX 3D experiences I've ever had. Thanks to Jared Leto, the Tron franchise isn't dead yet even after all these years. Joachim Rønning is an underrated visionary director who's direction is right on the money with the visuals and with the sound design. Talking about the sound, Nine Inch Nails has done a remarkable job at composing music for the movie and might have made the best score for a movie this year. This movie experience is truly worth the ticket price!

Oh dear! After “Morbius” (2022), I had hoped that Jared Leto might pick better, but after about ten minutes into this overlong and repetitive adventure I am afraid that proved not to be the case. Named after the Greek war god, he is a sophisticated computer programme that makes the “Terminator” look like “Barbie”. Virtually indestructible, he can penetrate any security system and therefore could prove to be invaluable to the military. Meantime, at a rival technology company they are working on the one thing that has thus far evaded all of the developers. Permanence. No matter how clever their inventions become, corporate nasty “Dillinger” (Evan Peters) knows that after half an hour their creations turn into Lego. He knows that rival “Eve” (Greta Lee) might be onto a solution and so he plonks “Ares” and his kick-ass sidekick “Athena” (Jodie Turner-Smith) into their system and so a cyberspace battle-royal ensues that tests the mettle and the “humanity” of just about all the players. I say players because that’s what this comes across as for much of it’s computer generated existence. Unlike the first “Tron” film from forty-odd years ago, this has very little by way of story and relies way too much on the, admittedly impressive, visual effects and high-octane pace of the thing rather than making any real effort to characterise the folks engaged in their venal and morally questionable corporate shenanigans. Quite why Gillian Anderson is here is anyone’s guess, Jeff Bridges looks as if he ought to be off parting the Red Sea and the writing is largely irrelevant, save for a little psycho-babble towards an ending that reminded me a little of “Max” from Disney’s “Black Hole” (1979). There is the odd homage to bygone eras of video games, zeroes and ones but I found this a long old and disappointing two hours to sit through.