REVIEW: 'TRON: Ares' is a cold heart that bleeds beautiful neon

In this world are two opposing mega corporations: ENCOM, headed by CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee), and Julian Dillinger (Peters) of Dillinger Systems.

Kim, a spunky gaming nerd, wants the digital world to mirror the organic one, furthering Kevin Flynn's original values. The other is a megalomaniacal genius and grandson of Flynn's original antagonist, Ed Dillinger, who wants to weaponize the digital world for the highest bidder. Both of them are fueled by the ideas and concepts of Flynn, his legacy in tech and philosophy.

Dillinger has built the Dillinger Grid and can 3D print combat programs from it, the most prodigious being Ares, who carries the title Master Control.

The military officials and other warlords are pleased and suitably whetted in their appetite after Ares was introduced, imagining their AI weapons and soldiers walking down the plains of Afghanistan or wherever they may want. Dillinger’s wishes to monetize the fusion of digital constructs with flesh is nearly within his grasp. 

What the board members don’t know is that any manifestation from the Dillinger Grid only lives for 29 minutes. Then it gets de-rezzed back into the digital realm like demons waiting for the next respawn.

Enter our heroine Eve, who has cracked this conundrum by finding the “Permanence Code.” In one of ENCOM’s Arctic archival offices, she learns that Flynn has stored, in one of his old floppy disks, the key to making virtual beings truly real. 

The code can grant programs life that transcends their limited life span. Dillinger and Kim are now in a futuristic arms race to see who can make the digital and real bleed into one another forever.  

As the chase for the Permanence Code intensifies, Ares throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings by beginning to show signs of life. He questions orders. He doubts his role as simply a weapon. Eventually, he seeks autonomy from his programming and his creator. What could be more of a danger to humanity than an AI loose from its leash, free to make its own decisions?

Where Ares shines is in the premise of the digital world coming into the real one. Light cycles cutting through police cruisers in half, flying mechs raining down lasers as they hover above skyscrapers, programs versus programs duking it out mano a mano on the streets. With the industrial agro of NIN’s songs playing over them all on an IMAX screen, it’s enough to send any cyberpunk geek into rapture.

As a corollary, a real person experiencing the realm of code is also given screen time. In one scene, a user runs their hands through the waters of The Grid during a chase and sees literal bits of binary like miniature LEGO bricks spilling through fingers.

Ronning and his writers also take pains to scribble out their themes of tragedy. Where else but in the dangers of making beings as organic or as noble in thought as we are through the metaphors of Shelley and Shakespeare? Frankenstein’s Creature for one and Caliban in the other.

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful,” reads AI program Ares about the created feuding with his creator and decides this is his new motto in life.

These are like graffiti on the walls of the movie, pointed out so often that nobody misses what they’re trying to do. But wasting the time to explain it makes it all too obvious, like a pickpocket explaining the wonders of misdirection while stealing your watch.

Jared Leto is more than decent here as Ares. He is at his best, I guess, when trying to breathe life into an AI program wanting to be human. At many points, he declares his love for Depeche Mode and 80s synth pop in an apt nod to the roots of this franchise. That is just adorable.

Likewise, Jodie Turner-Smith is a menacing figure as Athena, the sister program of Ares, who also wants liberation but seeks another path. 

Unfortunate then, that the movie wastes a talent like Peters in a role that, while entertaining, is essentially shorn of motive but capitalist greed and macho posturing. Why does he need to win against Kim so much? Ostensibly, it’s to impress his mother, played by Gillian Anderson. Another excellent role relegated to pooh-poohing her son’s ambitions and looking on helplessly at board meetings.  

While Lee is serviceable as heroine Eve Kim, everything is rote and cliché about her motives (even her lines are staid and unimaginative). There is simply nothing special to her character, and she seems more robotic beside any of the programs.

But Ares’ biggest sin is in trying to disguise an empty, cold heart with an excess of digital finery. We are moved along to slightly plausible yet many head-scratching plot twists, deus ex machinas (and in one a literal godlike move) that usher us along like they're jump scares.  

Characters simply interact and do not bond. Nothing here feels personal. Nothing here seems…real. The drama and humanity are so thin that something from today’s AI could have written a better story. Shot it and filmed it and—I bet my prompt skills—made more narrative coherence than what Disney created of this incredible franchise that could have commented so much for our crazy time.

Most disappointing among these are the moving limits of the programs themselves. Towards the third act, none of their motives still make that much sense. Programs suddenly transcend limits, workarounds tech and abilities come out of nowhere, for almost no reason than to move the story along.

For all its faults, Philip K Dick’s declaration of how "Living and nonliving things are exchanging properties" is the most apt quote that I feel will make “Ares” a cult hit.  

It could have been an update on how to buy the ticket and take the ride in 2025, with cinematography and score that create such a sensory rush of bleeding neon.  

So, if you can tough out the tedious, confusing story, then you’ll fully enjoy the slick packaging in the theater with the lights down and the Atmos sound of NIN on blast.

TRON: Ares is now showing in Philippine theaters.