There have now been two sequels to Steven Lisberger’s 1982 movie Tron, which established a series of iconic science fiction images that endured in our culture, even though the first sequel didn’t drop until 28 years later. Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy sought to update the core Tron visual aesthetic to the then-current standard for visual effects, and fuse it with the music of techno pioneers Daft Punk. Joachim Ronning’s Tron: Ares has essentially the same goal, though this time it’s the music of industrial pioneers Nine Inch Nails, and the difference between what was possible, visually, between 2010 and 2025 is not as noticeable as the difference between 1982 and 2010.

Essentially, these films were conceived first and foremost with the attempt to make us say “Wow! Cool!” Even the original Tron, with its various grids and geometric shapes and flying discs and light cycles speeding ahead of straight columns of laser exhaust, were designed to make us say “Wow! Cool!” while presenting us with the forefront of what we could create in terms of “digital” effects. We were all meant to be a bit like Homer Simpson walking into that 3D world. (“Looks expensive!”)

If we get any useful story at all we should be happy. And the story in Tron: Ares is useful enough to feed us beyond the inevitable awe at the digital effects. The use of the word “inevitable” there is notable. It is certainly not inevitable that digital effects should impress us nowadays, but maybe it’s easier to be impressed by something that is serving as a digital creation within the world of the story, rather than something that’s serving as a three-headed dragon. The quality of artificiality – which is also an inevitable part of our current received experience of digital effects – is to a purpose.

The story has canon ties to the previous two films, but they are flimsy enough that you don’t need to have seen those films to understand what’s going on – and it likely would only disappoint you to try to go back and make the connections. Tron: Ares holds up within its own logic, which is probably the best it could have hoped for.

In another parable about the coming of AI – though I don’t suppose it’s really a parable when AI is the actual boogeyman – two rival tech companies are seeking the so-called “permanence code,” which is a way to keep digitally created artificial intelligence weapons and soldiers “alive” in the real world past their dissolution date. At the moment, this impressive tech, 3D printed with a giant laser and impervious to most attacks, goes poof after 29 minutes, degrading into a pile of 1s and 0s on the floor.

Dillinger Systems, fronted by CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), wants to use this technology for ill, creating war assets that will make whoever possesses them the victor in any combat scenario. ENCOM, the video game company headed by CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) after the passing of her tech genius sister, has made its money on popular games, but now wants to save the world by creating orange trees in the middle of the frozen tundra, where they have a secret station to experiment on such things. Eve knows the code is somewhere in the floppy disk files of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), formerly of ENCOM, who I guess was stationed in the arctic at one point? Just go with it.

These assets, whether it’s a tree or a neon-coloured tank, don’t come from nowhere. Each company has a footprint in what’s called “the grid,” the digital world where the previous movies dwelled when they weren’t in “our world.” Here is where the titular character, a security program called Ares (Jared Leto), is trying to figure out its purpose. It’s designed to take directives from its leader – a disembodied digital head with Julian Dillinger sitting on the other side – and to execute them in “our world” alongside another security program, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith). For 29 minutes, anyway, before its consciousness and digital body must be rebooted again in the grid.

But as it’s starting to develop independent thoughts and feelings – for example, it fancies the music of Depeche Mode, era appropriate to the original Tron – Ares begins subverting the will of its master. It no longer thinks the permanence code should be delivered into what it now knows are the wrong hands.

To give us a relatively cogent story that holds together using ordinary narrative mechanics, Tron: Ares has to cut some corners. There are a lot of apparent abuses of the 29-minute permanence threshold, for example. There are some scenarios made more complicated by the script where you say “Wait, why didn’t they just do x?”

If you’re nitpicking a lot, you are probably doing Tron: Ares wrong. First and foremost this is a propulsive symphony of music and image, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross getting executive producer credits in addition to their credits as composers under the banner Nine Inch Nails. While that might not mean they did anything more than ask for a slightly bigger cut of the pie, this does seem to be a movie that relies more on their score than any since The Social Network. The effect of all this industrial synth is at times entrancing, when placed in the context of these worlds that continue to embody both retrofuturism and actual futurism.

A key thematic component to these films is the dividing line between human and AI, and you get a trio of captivating performances that fall along that spectrum. Lee as the one who is purely human is also the newcomer in terms of credits. Having recently levelled up to leading lady status, Lee gives us the gusto we need from a main character while still having the right amount of flesh-and-bone frailty. Leto straddles the line between human and AI, learning to be less robotic as he goes, the transition suiting his charisma as a movie star if not always the logic of the story. And Turner-Smith, who gets to remain fully robotic, submits a memorable performance in the lineage of programmed killing machines that includes the likes of several former Terminators.

Fan service? Of course. We get a little of the original Tron world here, a little Jeff Bridges, though only a few hints at the subject matter of Tron: Legacy, for those in the audience who remember its details. While that sequel didn’t fare as well as it might have, meaning it was another 15 years before anyone dared make another, this one might have created enough of a hunger to green light the next one – or it could just as easily fall flat on its face. Beauty, digital or otherwise, is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Tron: Ares is currently playing in cinemas.