Jared Leto somehow isn’t the worst part of “Tron: Ares”
Directed by Joachim Rønning
Screenplay by Jesse Wigutow
Story by David DiGilio and Jesse Wigutow
Based on Characters by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird
Starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges
It says a lot that even with a score as good as it has, Tron: Ares still winds up this bad. The compositions from Nine Inch Nails provide the perfect backbone for the film, a pulsing force that constantly underscores the action and keeps your head banging in your seat. It’s as good a result as you could hope for from the marriage of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Queer) and the Tron universe, the world’s foremost industrial rock pioneers and one of its most technologically forward-thinking film franchises. The latest installment follows a sentient program, Ares (Jared Leto, Morbius), charged with tracking a piece of code that will allow him and other virtual creations to exist in reality for more than twenty-nine minutes before “deressing” and being forcibly returned to world of the Grid.
Unfortunately for that score, any propulsion it offers is counteracted by some of Tron’s most dirt poor action sequences. From the start, director Joachim Rønning’s (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) camera swoops around and through the LED-encrusted melees, always on the move, ensuring that we have no idea who’s where or what they’re doing. That may have been intentional, a way to distract from unimaginative choreography that plays like a community theater production of the Star Wars prequels: lots of slow spinning that I’m sure looked good in the choreographer’s head. As if it wasn’t sluggish enough, Rønning opts to throw some slow motion in there, as well. Rather than add weight to the proceedings, it renders them even lighter, the stunt performers moving as if through a sea of molasses. There’s occasionally a cool concept, such as a third-act battle between fighter jets and a Regulator air ship, but there’s so little imagination even in those that they have no staying power.
The visuals are lackluster as a rule. You find yourself stuck between disappointment that you spend so much time in boring reality and relief that that’s the case given the uninspired visual language of the Grid. It’s certainly shiny; every surface that can gleam does, and I don’t doubt that that will trick a lot of people into believing that it’s visually impressive, like a half-finished children’s drawing absolutely coated with glitter. More is more. But in comparison to the tactile sets and costumes on display in its predecessor, Legacy, Ares resembles nothing more than a Gilette commercial. The red filter placed over every single shot leaves it plasticky at best and staggeringly monotonous at worst. Granted, Legacy was mostly blue, but it had the benefit of being directed by Joseph Kosinski, a man who knows how to compose a visual and shoot with a mind towards what the shot will look like once laden with effects. Rønning, the guy behind the worst Pirates of the Caribbean movie, can do neither of those things. This all reaches a nauseating extreme during a pseudo-jet ski chase, which drowns itself in particle effects to try to add a sense of speed but succeeds only in creating one of the most frustratingly eye-gouging sequences of the year.
And then there’s the dipshit it centers on. I’ve tried to stay away from Leto to this point because I think it’s important to prove that Tron: Ares is bad apart from the fact that it stars a fundamentally unlikeable man, a true void of charisma onscreen and off. It would have been a bad movie regardless of its lead, but Leto doesn’t help in a performance so wooden as to be laughable. It’s impossible to greet the scene where he stares up into a data stream in slack-jawed ecstasy with anything other than a chuckle. Even once Ares begins to transition from robotic servant of his masters to his own person, Leto proves completely incapable of portraying that transformation. Instead, Ares is completely bifurcated in his hands: the coldhearted tin man and the pithy action blockbuster protagonist who fist bumps people. There’s no continuity.
He’s not the only one. As Ares’s partner, Athena, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Agency) is also remarkably bad, though it’s easier to blame Rønning’s direction for her shortcomings here. She’s a gifted actress, and Ares gives her nothing to do but look taciturn and strike embarrassing poses during action scenes. The rest of the cast fares only slightly better despite their talent; only Evan Peters (Dahmer) makes it through unscathed as the lunatic scion of the Dillinger family.
Writer Jesse Wigutow (Daredevil: Born Again) tosses the overqualified cast tasked with bringing his ideas to life only pat cliches and exposition dumps, and there’s no evidence that the energy he could have spent on interesting characterizations or ideas went anywhere else. It’s pure hackwork. There’s a tragedy to Ares that goes unexplored. In an opening montage, we see that his training consisted of him being killed over and over again until he learned to fight, and it’s clear that deressing hurts when he’s brought to the real world, but the movie doesn’t dig into this. It never allows it to become something to empathize with; a story that wants to be about computer programs becoming human misses what might be the most human trait of its virtual cast: they don’t want to die.
No, instead of being allowed to connect with these characters, we’re treated to not one but two scenes where Ares communicates his humanity by monologuing about Depeche Mode. Leto is a loon, but no one could make absolute bottom-of-the-barrel sci-fi tropes like asking what “feelings” means, learning how to be human by watching a woman’s home movies, or reciting meaningful passages of Frankenstein work. It’s devoid of invention. I don’t know if a Tron movie starring Jared Leto could have worked, but a Tron movie starring Jared Leto that ultimately boils down to two megacorporations competing over whose CEO is going to be the first trillionaire? Nobody could have saved that.
Rating: D+
Tron: Ares is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer here.
