Tron: Ares review: The top contender for Best Original Score has arrived
The Tron franchise has always taken big breaks between films. There was the OG, Tron, way back in 1982 and then Tron: Legacy in 2010. After 15 years, the sci-fi franchise is now back with Joachim Ronning’s Tron: Ares.
While the first two films were set primarily in the grid, a virtual world filled with programs that look like people, Tron: Ares brings the programs to the real world. Ares (Jared Leto) is a security program working for Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who is the grandson of Edward Dillinger from the original (played by David Warner back then) and the rival of ENCOM and its CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee). Julian gets Ares and his second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to do his dirty work, but they can only exist in the real world for 29 minutes. Dillinger needs the “permanence code” to fix the problem and unfortunately for him, Kim has just found it. Let the chase commence!
The Tron franchise has always been a case of style over substance. It’s not known for its story. It’s known for looking and sounding freaking cool. And on those two fronts, Tron: Ares is a success. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – known for scoring films like Challengers and The Social Network – provide the score under their band name, Nine Inch Nails, for the first time and it is the highlight of the whole movie. It’s easily the best score of the year so far. The pulsating techno music instantly makes the film more exciting and it’s sometimes so loud and bassy you can feel the vibrations.
And it also looks awesome. There’s a wonderful retro sequence which will please fans of the ’80s original and a lot of cool Tron tech. The costumes, the gadgets and the various modes of transport are great and there is a brilliant lightcycle chase. That’s probably the best action sequence in the film. There are a handful of others but these are edited like crazy and it’s hard to follow what’s going on. In addition to some questionable editing, there are also a few bad ADR moments where the lines don’t match the lip movements.
But the look and sound are overcompensating for a weak story. It’s perfectly fine and serviceable but nothing to shout about. Leto plays Ares very flat and one-note, but he kind of gets away with it in the beginning; however, it’s more obvious as Ares develops feelings and makes quips, as he cannot land the script’s attempts at humour. They feel a bit awkward. On the flipside, I really warmed to Lee as Kim (although her perspective on AI is questionable) while Peters is perfectly cast as the psycho tech billionaire and Turner-Smith is suitably menacing.
I don’t have any nostalgic connection to the Tron franchise so I’m not the target audience. But it’s entertaining enough and on par story-wise with the previous Trons.
In cinemas from Friday 10th October