The short version is that it's too much story for too little movie. My movie buddy and I agree that this much story would have fit better into one of the six episode series that are so popular on streaming services. That would have given far more time for creating depth, both in characters and story. However, they did not do that so I'll review what they did.
They introduced an interesting concept of disposable, replaceable battlefield assets. When one becomes a casualty, build another. This is especially interesting when it comes to soldiers because it means they show up trained and equipped to continue fighting, with no sense of anything but completing the mission they're given and knowing what prevented that to this point. That's something that could have, but did not, have some very interesting plot development on the ethics and ramifications on the future of warfare.
We got Tron red lasers creating things in the material world. And because they're the red lasers you know they're working for the bad guys. It's nice that some things stay the same - red for bad, blue for good. Red in this movie is the Dillinger company, blue is still Encom. There's no orange as in Tron: Legacy because there's no CLU anymore.
The core plotline is the inherent problem - both red and blue - of object permanence in the material world. Creations last twenty-nine minutes. After that, they disintegrate into dust that for some reason sticks around. You'd think the dust would go back to the network world or something. I know, they did it for cinematic reasons because watching something/someone crumble to dust instead of just fading out is more interesting. But it's one of those things that make you kind of tilt your head upon reflection. Maybe it did go away later? Maybe it's just the cohesiveness that's lost after twenty-nine minutes but the material sticks around? Dunno. Never mentioned.
Continuing on the things not explored is the power consumption needed to make this stuff. The cinematic effect of (red) lasers playing over the things they're building is great but where is it getting the source material, how much energy are those lasers using, and how practical is the whole mess to do on a larger scale? The intent seems to be completely military in function so those things would matter, even in the initial demonstration.
Good timing in the bad guys kept their presentation under the deadline so the potential buyers didn't see that everything crumbled to dust in a short period of time.
This is where we get to meet Ares, the super soldier. It seems he's the head super soldier - the new CU (Control Unit. Don't quote me on that because it could also have been MCU for Master Control Unit but that term has very different meaning since the original Tron movie came out so it was probably shortened to prevent confusion and lawsuits) of the entire shebang. He's supposed to be super strong, super smart, and super something else. They say "Biblically strong" for some reason, maybe referencing Jared's cult status or some throwback to when they used more religious allegory in the movies. But onward.
Onto the blue side of the board.
There's a quick wrap-up of Sam Flynn stepping away from the company and the sisters who stepped up into leadership. They're also highly skilled computer geeks. Spoiler - one of them has already died of cancer at this point, leaving the other sister grieving and floundering. All future references refer to the living sister as a solo entity.
The Encom CEO is looking for code that Sam left behind somewhere that gives these constructs permanence. The Dillinger CEO is also looking for that code, obviously. So there's your McGuffin - The Permanence Code. She found some way off-grid lair that Sam Flynn left behind, complete with 80s computers and memorabilia. Digging around she finds it and copies it to a very fancy flash drive. She tests it and leaves the test object in place, conveniently pointing the way to the lair for later. Then she's off to bring the code home.
That's our intro to the female lead. She's smart and she's focused on the goal. There's hints that she's doing it because her dead sister was also focused on it but at this point she's pretty one dimensional.
The Dillinger company head finds out she's got the code by doing fancy computer searching using surveillance cameras, etc. just like every computer themed movie has ever used. Grainy footage stays pretty grainy tho and that's a refreshing change from Temu level camera footage being processed into 8k beauty.
Dillinger creates another Ares and team to go get the very fancy flash drive from her. After a chase scene where she's cornered on a pier she breaks it in half and drops it in the water. Obviously the only thing they can do is bring her back to Dillinger so that they can extract the information from her brain. No one brings up the fact that data recovery exists, if they go back and get the pieces of the drive she dropped.
They put her into the network as a user so she's in the blue light suit. I guess it's easier for them to get code from her brain when she's code herself? Whatever. She's blue light in a sea of red. There's talk of whether or not she'll survive the process and eventually the Dillinger CEO decides it doesn't matter. He shows up as a Wizard of Oz talking head when he's communicating with the network. OK then.
Ares has been spending time doing his own browsing while he's back in the network and in another actor it might be seen that he's seeing a world beyond his programming. Leto is stoic so all you see is close up shots of his face as his eyes move, showing that he's reading the stuff that's been inserted by CGI later. Right around now it seems that he's deciding he wants permanence and the only way to get it is to save the Encom CEO to get the code for himself. He also seems to have a moral quandary about the lack of care for the person of the Encom CEO. It shows Ares is growing beyond his programming, as a plot development.
I forget the place in the story where the Encom CEO and Ares kind of team up in the material world and she sends him back to the network using their one and only laser portal gun things, promising to bring him back and make him permanent when she can. Of course, the laser portal gun thing, their one and only laser portal gun thing, gets damaged by the Dillinger network second in command when she's there to capture the Encom CEO. Conveniently she drops her red laser portal gun when she disintegrates. This time there's a reason for the laser portal gun remaining - the Dillinger CEO gave it to her when they started the chase.
The laser portal gun thing is important, as you can tell by the amount of film time they spent on them.
Onward.
Ares decides that they only way he's going to get to be permanent himself is to help her, so he does. He gets her to the portal, they meet up with Kevin Flynn who's intrigued by Ares as a "malfunctioning program". There's fancy blue light CGI as he manipulates stuff to bring out the orange Permanence Code, which he calls the Impermanence Code. There's a bit of moralizing because he wants to make sure Ares realizes that he's a one and done if he accepts the code. That's pretty decent of Flynn and is one of the few deeper moments in the movie. Ares accepts the code and his red light turns blue.
The Encom CEO realizes there's another functioning laser portal gun right in front of her freaking face and she and her unmemorable sidekick work to create a single functioning laser portal gun from the two of them to bring Ares back as they promised.
Ares shows up in his new blue light glory. The Dillinger CEO is miffed that he lost out on getting the code and creates a big red light task force to get her back including one of the flying cargo lift shaped ships seen in Tron: Legacy. During this the second in command gets promoted because Ares has gone off his programming and the first thing she does is stab the CEO's mother who's going to shut the whole thing down because she does have ethics. A throwback to Tron: Legacy to the whole "create a perfect world" situation. This is the character defining moment for that CEO as he holds his mom and sees what his directives have done. It doesn't stop him from changing his orders to his creations, tho.
Funny enough both Ares and the second in command have triangle shaped identity disks rather than the more common round ones. The corners pop out into stabby things. I guess they needed to show something special on the higher command models? More than likely it was a merchandising thing. But there it is. The rest of the mooks have the standard round ones.
Sidebar since I can't remember where it fits into the narrative. Pre-permanent Ares sums up the Encom CEO's life, motivations, hopes, and dreams in a single monologue as they're driving through the city. She never gets a chance to develop as a character since it's all laid out for us nice and tidy so we can focus on the special effects and Jared Leto staring at things.
Battle in the city with lots and lots of red lights. There's only one blue light to oppose all this - ARES. Yeah. There you go. The Biblical thing. There's light cycles, there's light flyers, there's light tanks, there's light all kinds of vehicles and weapons. All of which will disintegrate twenty-nine minutes from creation. So really all the good guys need to do is hole up somewhere for a while and it all ends. But that wouldn't be very exciting or colorful.
The end battle is predictably between Ares and the second in command. Somehow he still can do all the fancy fighting that he could before he was made permanent. It's one of those things that was necessary for the movie but brings up the whole moralistic thing of what is Ares when he's code made permanent?
Ares wins, with a little help from time and I think the Encom CEO using a broken red light polearm. He conveniently disappears from the area. The Dillinger CEO ends up putting himself into the network to avoid the jail time he earned and gets his own identity disk of unknown origin and while it's round it's of a different design than the regular ones.
There we go. The movie. There's a way to get things between the two worlds now. There's a way, only found in one program so far, to make network things permanent in the material world but it's implied that once they're gone they can't make another network-to-material one even though they have the code sitting right there.
We're set for another Tron movie with the Dillinger CEO out in the network. He's in red so he's technically a program at this point but who knows what they'll make of that. Maybe his company's process doesn't turn the light blue when they go in that direction. Maybe he's a program now. Maybe he's a hybrid of some kind. There's that odd identity disk that was waiting for him.
I saw it in the fake IMAX and the sound was way too loud. I'm not talking "I'm old and the sound was too loud". I'm saying it was flat out too loud. Hopefully they'll mix it better for the digital releases because the contrast between the music/effects and dialogue was atrocious. I guess they wanted to make sure that everyone knew there was new NIN music to be had.
The Jared Leto bashing is a bit overdone, imo. Pretty much any good looking action hero actor could have stepped into his jumpsuit and done the role. Given the material it's not like they could have done worse. For everyone bashing him for his performance they're not giving enough bashing to the writing and directing that created the role. It was a joint effort to make him that forgettable.
There is an after credit scene where it's Jared Leto in all his beard goodness riding a Ducati somewhere in the world. He'd sent a postcard to the Encom CEO saying he's working on finding himself. No one asks how he's funding his world adventures or how he can travel outside the country (implied by location) without a passport or any identification of any kind, unless it's also implied that he's got networking skillz to make fake stuff.
I like the Tron movie. I like Tron: Legacy. I'm disappointed in Tron: Ares and hope that someone can smack people around enough to either make a smaller movie the next time around or stretch it out into the multiple episodes and do justice to the Tron universe itself.
I don't plan on seeing the movie again. It's best seen in IMAX and I just can't stand the idea of sitting through that noise again. Seeing it in the digital format means losing out on the big screen, with the potential of badly mixed sound on fewer speakers. It wasn't compelling enough for me to risk it.
