Tron: Ares, move around AI nothing to see (critic)

Despite its visual qualities, and a brilliant soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails, the new part of the franchise sorely lacks humanity.

The Tron saga remained in the closet for 28 years before Joseph Kosinski signed Tron: Legacyan uninteresting sequel whose story only retained the Daft Punk soundtrack. It was not a flop, however, and even a modest success, with more than 400 million dollars in revenue worldwide for a budget of 170 million. Just enough to justify extending the saga, with a third film started in 2011 by Disney, but which also took a long time to see the light of day. Kosinski is still behind the scenes as producer, leaving the direction to Joachim Rønning, the director of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 And Maleficent 2.

So here we are again immersed in the world of Tron. The company ENCOM, founded by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), is still a hit in video games. It is now led by Eve Keem (Greta Lee), a humanist working in parallel to save the world using new technologies. His great rival, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of the 1982 Tron antagonist, has less noble ambitions. He wants to bring his defense computer program, Ares (Jared Leto), to life to make him a RoboCop-style super soldier. But both face the same problem, their creations, generated by super laser printers, self-destruct after 29 minutes.

When Eve Keem finds the solution, Julian Dillinger is quick to send Ares after her. Spoiler: he will immediately fall in love with his target and show himself to be more human than his creator (this was in the trailers). Soon, he begins to philosophize and declare his love for Depeche Mode and the aesthetic of the 80s, culminating in his “collector” meeting with Flynn/Bridges, a little retro interlude and fan service also teased in the trailers. Not dishonorable but a little vain.

This is the main problem with this new Tronwhose overly basic and simplistic storyline struggles to involve the viewer. We catch up on the visuals, which are quite impressive. We must salute the work of decorator Darren Gilford, who had already worked on Tron: Legacyand the work on special effects, notably carried out by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Another good point, some damn good action scenes. And magnified by the music of Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), a model of industrial techno which enhances each sequence of the film.

All this beautiful varnish unfortunately cannot save Tron: Ares. Also because of its frumpy casting. Gillian Anderson doesn’t know what she’s doing there, Jodie-Turner Smith has nothing to play as an implacable robot, Evan Peters is making a fool of himself (think of Gary Oldman at Besson) and Jared Leto, hardly more inspired than in Morbiusstruggles to give humanity to his character, making the very heart of the film fall flat. Before AIs replace actors, it is still actors who play AIs. But the added value here is not very obvious.

And what about the moral of the film? At the end of this confrontation between “good tech” and “bad tech”, we are reminded of this outdated idea which would suggest that innovation (here artificial intelligence) will one day end up solving all the problems it has caused to our planet. A scientism that is a little off the mark at a time when we are investing hundreds of billions in data centers to run ChatGPT…