★★★☆☆ Tron Ares, Directed by Joachim Rønning
Starring Jared Leto's hair and a lot of code
Tron Ares
Directed by Joachim Rønning
Starring Jared Leto’s hair and a lot of code
I am old enough to have seen the original Tron in theatres when it came out in 1982. I was 26 years old. There was a lot of buzz about the effects. (Wikipedia says critics “praised its groundbreaking visuals.”) I remember feeling distinctly underwhelmed. Of course, the technology of the time limited what the filmmakers could do with visual effects. I’m pretty sure I also saw Tron Legacy, but I have not the slightest memory of it.
Of course, now in 2025, technology is no longer a significant limit. Anything the filmmakers can imagine, they can make happen on the screen. That’s a great place to be in, if your imagination is up to it.
I saw Tron Ares yesterday, 11-Oct-2025 in IMAX 3D. Sadly, this time it was not the effects that seemed underpowered, but the story. It has a plot that makes a certain amount of sense. If I weren’t concerned about spoiling I could give a broad overview of what it was about—it was basically a remix of the plot of a whole bunch of films about AI that you have seen before. Details in a way that makes sense, those I could not tell you. Characters, no. Except for the ones that are software constructs—the warriors Ares and Athena—I never really understood their backgrounds or motivations. I have a feeling that the filmmakers expected us to remember the previous Tron films as well as they themselves probably do, but those were 43 and 15 years ago and I am 69 years old, so no.
The effects were indeed pretty cool. There was one pervasive effect that Tron Ares inherits from Tron. Vehicles produce wakes that act like impenetrable fences or blades. You see this in the trailer where a police cruiser is cut in two by one such wake. This leads to some fairly cool tableaux effects.
I was distracted by two things. The first was Jared Leto’s hair. His character, Ares, has long flowing black hair, and I couldn’t help but be distracted by it. This is strange for me, since I am usually unconscious of every aspect of wardrobe or coiffure. But Leto’s hair just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense for his character, the ideal deadly warrior, to have hair like that. I can kind of imagine why it made sense to the filmmakers, but I tell you, when a viewer like me is being distracted by the hero’s hair, you are probably not accomplishing whatever it was you intended to.
The other thing, this time on the positive side, was the code. There are lots of screens in the movie with computer text on them. And it was real code, or realistic-looking computer output. I recognized Microsoft Basic and *nix shell scripts. I think in the early part of the film I may even have seen IBM Job Control Language—not sure of that. I’ve experienced a little JCL in real life, but mostly JCL was before my time. The authenticity of the text on the screens contrasts with other films that are supposedly about computers. In The Matrix you see a lot of screens full of cool-looking visual gunk that is allegedly code, but it is not recognizable as such by a Practitioner Of The Art.
I liked all the code. It made me feel seen and known, and gave the show more authenticity than it otherwise had.
Thanks for the informative review. I also saw the original in the theatre, and spent too much time playing the video game back then. I suppose I'll see this new one on a plane at some point in the future.