Tron: Ares is not a good movie. We should start This Tron: Ares review honestly, and if that’s all you needed to know, read no more, friends. But if you’d like to understand just what a stinker Disney has shoveled out upon theaters this fall, continue on and I’ll explain.
Before we get into the review, which will feature spoilers since this is so bad, I need to give you some context as to how I have looked at movies over the last years.
If I had to give scores (and I have) for these movies you’ve heard about and possibly seen, they’d look something like this:
- Top Gun Maverick: 9.5/10
- Snow White: 4/10
- Godzilla Minus One: 10/10
- F1: 9/10
- Thunderbolts: 6.5/10
- Lilo and Stitch: 7/10
A ship in Tron Ares – YouTube, Disney
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As you can see, I try to call balls and strikes. Nobody’s perfect, but those are the numbers I’ve been giving, and I bet many of you agree with some of those. I suppose we’re not so far off on our tastes. And with that said, I’m going to rightly savage Tron: Ares. Please note, that while I do so, I take no joy in reviews like this. Somewhere, somehow, this is someone’s favorite film. I don’t understand how that can be, but opinions are opinions. So I review this film with the understanding that I’m going to disappoint a random fanatic of what I just saw on the silver screen.
So here’s the skinny: I would have walked out of Tron: Ares halfway through if not for the fact I was there to professionally review the thing.
The digital world in Tron Ares – Youtube, Disney
The film is about two CEOs, who do not act anything like CEOs, who both are said to run giant companies. One runs a video game company founded by series favorite Flynn, but she’s actually a globetrotting techno-genius who is working on a god machine that creates anything (including life) using a laser. How does it work? Shut up, that’s way beyond what this script can do.
The other CEO is a young Lex Luthor type who gets criticized by his mother at every turn (she’s there to tell us what the invisible, off-camera board is doing, which apparently also acts and functions nothing like any corporate board you’ve ever heard about). He lives in a giant hangar where lasers create people and military vehicles. He also talks to programs, which are people things without free will, inside a giant computer simulation. Unlike what we can already do in today’s world with voice commands, our bad guy CEO is stuck typing his messages on a keyboard that are then relayed inside “the grid” to his program computer people. And if you know anything about characters using a keyboard in a movie to communicate, it’s just as riveting as you might imagine.
Did I mention our good girl CEO is also a supreme motorcycling expert who can pull off moves no human on earth could ever attempt, even aiming her vehicle as a projectile into the bodies of soldiers trying to kill her? And did I mention the movie will give no foreshadowing whatsoever that she can do this or that she has the talent until she just suddenly needs it?
The script is written in a very dumb way and assumes that the viewers are also very, very dumb. Even when characters are asked to explain what is going on by other characters in the movie, they almost always respond with, “there’s no time for that right now!” That’s code from the writers that they too have no idea what is going on inside this movie. The film also explains quite frequently what just happened because, again, the writers assume the audience has a combined IQ of 47. When someone is punched, you can expect another character to say, “Oh man, so-and-so just got punched!”
A screenshot from the trailer for Tron Ares – YouTube, Disney
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In one shot of a Honda Civic driving unnecessarily fast, and for no apparent reason, the cars on the bridge it is passing are obviously driving very slowly so the illusion can be made that the Civic is going quickly. I know this is how they did the scene because the cars traveling in the other lane are all driving at the normal speed, thus destroying the illusion. This reference is made just so you can know that every possible facet of the film falls flat on its face.
The entire purpose of the movie is to have our CEO Spy Kids duke it out and yell at their computer screens as they attempt to get the “permanence code” that will allow their ultra-fast 3D print models to stick around for more than half-an-hour. Whoever gets that code can keep their super soldiers from melting into Minecraft lava blocks. In the process, the bad CEO sucks the good CEO into the computer world where she convinces anti-hero Ares to get some free will because he saw rain one time and thought he might like to feel that stuff land on his skin (this is actually the plot).
Jared Leto in a Helmet in Tron Ares – YouTube, Disney
So they escape together and she sends him into 80s cameo world for a little philosophical chatter with The Dude dressed as Force Awakens Luke. While this is happening, Athena, who is Ares’ right hand Bond girl villain decides to grab a Galaga ship and slowly hover it over the city to kidnap good CEO (again). But good CEO hatches a brilliant plan to buy time for another character to hack the bad guy’s network and save the day (I don’t give this other character a name because he otherwise had five minutes of screen time, even if he’s ultimately the savior of the world).
Good CEO’s brilliant plan is not actually to get a motorcycle and go Evel Knievel in this finale, but rather she decides to go into the streets and slowly run around in the open with a speed that makes Ezra Miller look like an Olympic sprinter.
No, I’m not kidding.
The movie ends with the hacker guy we know nothing about (except that he’s the CTO of the good video game company) causing every bad guy to evaporate like a targeted Thanos snap. Which, of course, means our main protagonists really had nothing at all to do with the way the movie ends. If only the writers had figured that out!
The Disney logo with a Tron Ares Overlay – YouTube, Disney
Tron: Ares is a pointless, joyless, monochromatic mess that breaks its own rules every thirty seconds and whose characters inside the world can’t even explain what the heck is going on. It’s painful to watch, and even mindlessly eating popcorn is insulted by what’s on the screen because you would be better served eating said popcorn while staring at a pet rock.
I am genuinely shocked that anything with this kind of budget could actually be released this poorly-conceived from beginning to end. There is not a single believable character, nothing in the story is relatable in the slightest, and the Minecraft movie had deeper logic in how its world functions. It is an abomination to the other films in its franchise.
Review Score: 1.5/10
Give us your review of Tron: Ares! Sound off in the comments and let us know?
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Tron was one of my favorite movies from my childhood. I had all the toys and even the little arcade game with the discs (sort of like Tron’s version of Pong). I’m sad that these last two entries have leaned more toward the Highlander school of thought to the point where most will agree there was only one Tron movie and anything else is just bad amateur video.
I knew this would be a troublesome picture from the moment they announced that Jared Leto was joining the cast. That is almost always a sign of a terrible movie in the making. Finding out this was going full on girl-boss where a girl who programs is the CEO charting the company of our beloved Flynn, and is super competent at all things, including feats of motorcycle agility that would put Motocross and MotoGP athletes to shame… well, that’s very on brand for Disney.
And means I will not likely see this movie… ever.
The biggest surprise here is that you gave Snow White as high as a 4 out of 10.
On the most fundamental level, how is a TRON film with no ‘Tron’ even remotely a smart idea?
Opinions are like……