Tron: Ares Review

I'm interrupting my mad string of daily 31 Days of Horror posts to write about seeing Tron: Ares with the family tonight. I had lowered expectations for this movie because while I enjoyed Tron: Legacy it was not my favorite movie by any means and I had many issues with it. The original Tron holds a special place in my heart, but is distinctly a beast of its time, and aged about as well as a movie trying to do CGI in a nascent era where CGI was all simple vector graphics could (and the rest wasn't even CGI, but rather simulated CGI). That said, I was a kid when the first one came out, and I read the entire novelization the night before seeing the movie, and my mental visual of the book was never going to compete with the poor film....it didn't stand a chance.

So going in to Tron: Ares I did not expect the following: that I not only liked it, I thought it kicked ass. Possibly my second favorite movie of 2025 next to Superman, and may immediately have joined a small but worthy passel of guilty pleasure movies, films I just viscerally love to watch. This list includes Predator 2, Robocop 2, The Thing, Tropic Thunder and The Life Aquatic, to give you sampling of the films I deeply love without justification. Tron: Ares is instantly on this list for me. 

For one thing: The Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails soundtrack kicks ass and elevates this movie immediately. It is a worthy successor to the retired Daft Punk of the last film. For another thing, this movie maintains a lovely, simple premise that expands the Tron universe without going wild. It raises subtle and interesting questions about what happens when the beings of the digital universe (the Grid) grow accustomed to the existence of the users, and no longer hold theological reverence for them. Instead, we focus on the idea that Dillinger's company and grandson have figured out how to use a variation on 3D printing to create real world hard-light constructs in which the programs can load themselves, and the new security program Ares is one such program. As Ares experiences the world, he realizes that he values something beyond his role as a program in service to Dillinger, and this leads to conflict as he is opposed by the more dedicated and single-minded program Athena. 

Meanwhile, Eve is the CEO of Flynn's old company Encom, and she's trying to discover the secret of permanence....how to make hard light constructs turn into real world things forever. Her work is revealing what amounts to replicator technology from Star Trek; making real food in a 3D printer, for example, that people can eat. In contrast, Dillinger's grandson is focused entirely on the entities of the Grid, and how they can be weaponized. This drives the conflict of the story, which is delivered in glorious, ultra stylish and cool fashion to amazing NIN music, making an almost mesmerizing experience. This really is what I wanted Tron: Legacy to be more like. 

Supposedly the movie isn't doing too great at the box office. I hope it does well enough for a sequel, because I liked it enough to really want more Tron now. Also, this movie made me genuinely like Jared Leto as Ares, and I am still trying to wrap my head around that. Solid A, and this one goes into my short list of films I'll rewatch regularly.