When i first saw this movie flyer i was like "Y'all better have Tron himself show up, last we saw of him was in Legacy where he fell into the digital sea after regaining his program."
Oh man, watching Tron: Ares felt like stepping into a neon-drenched dream you were told would be epic… only to wake up halfway through wondering whether all that glow was just a reflection of something empty inside. From the moment the film opens—with slick light cycles tearing through rain-slick streets, red and blue trails cutting into darkness—you’re hit with the sensory overload: music by Nine Inch Nails pounding like a second heartbeat, visuals that feel like a circuit board come alive. But as much as it dazzled, it also left me strangely cold.
The story begins 15 years after the previous grid-adventure: two giant tech firms, ENCOM and Dillinger Systems, competing to introduce digital constructs into physical space. It is high-concept and it sounds that way. Or there is the “Permanence Code” by Kevin Flynn (here again Jeff Bridges, making a slick appearance) which can give the objects of the virtual world physical existence in the real world, but only 29 minutes before they turn to ashes. Then we have Ares (played by Jared Leto), a program sent by the Grid to do havoc, but who strangely begins to feel. And some time I bent forward and wondered how an AI can find humanity.
It has one great opening scene. This is the initial appearance of Ares in our world. He looks over at the raindrops on his arm and then lifts his arm and observes the drops come off it as they should not belong to him. That silent scene led me to suspend my breath- because it had the effect of letting the movie pose: What becomes someone like this when he/she feels? And some time--I believed in such question. I believed in Ares.
And now the mech-plot of the studio takes over. Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) desires this technology to be weaponized. Eve Kim (Greta Lee) desires that it be based on hope. It has political intrigue, corporate betrayal, digital armies, laser stunts and chases on light cycles that should fall so hard yet seem to fall so softly. I sat in the spectacle, and was delighted at the sight of it--those light-cycles glittering through city streets of blackness, the Grid oozing into reality--then I continued to wait patiently the emotional referent.
And there I thought the movie had failed me. And there is so much going on, and so little that is sticking. The character arcs were thin. The awakening to emotion in Ares is interesting on paper, but in practice I was left asking myself: why do I care? The supporting characters were like props. The novel hurried itself to great scenes--without allowing the great scenes ample breathing time. Critics say: The film is visually spectacular, programmatic in storytelling.
Nevertheless, I cannot lament about everything. The Nine Inch Nails score comes down heavy. The structure, the cinematography of it--they are a banquet. I leaned into those parts. However, each time the feeling was to be felt--each time Ares was to be more than a smooth shell--a faint dislocation occurred in me. It was struck by one user in Reddit: “Good pictures... so what is the point of that when there is no urgency or gravity to any of the pictures?
At the last act we are speeding away to lasered cities, digital worlds breaking down, the destiny of both human and program in the air. Ares chooses. Eve sacrifices. The permanence code turns out to be hope and curse. The passages are enormous, and the reward made me speechless, rather than breathless. there should have been some scenes of hubris and fall--of the creation spun round to its destruction--but instead I found myself in that bit I had experienced so early on, of dripping rain on the arm of Ares.
and later, coming out of the theater, I found myself divided. On the one hand I had got a big screen IMAX ride: heart stopping beats, lights. I was a bit vacant on the other hand. I mean, the film is not a bad one. It is fantastic in its sensual desires. It is also a reminder that spectacle in the absence of soul is a hollow echo. The story develops interesting ideas, but the conclusion is not proper and unfinished, as the reviewer of Roger Ebert remarked.
In the end, Tron: Ares made me feel like a program looking for purpose in a code-heavy world. It showed me a future where AI blends with flesh, where corporations build gods out of laser light—but it didn’t fully convince me why any of it matters. I walked away dazzled by the neon, moved by the music, but craving that human heart the visuals promised. If you’re searching for big sci-fi flash, this has it. If you’re seeking truth, emotional ruin, and character that breathes beneath light-trails—well, you might still be watching the credits roll.
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