When Tron: Ares was first announced, expectations ran high. The franchise, after all, has always carried the weight of cinematic innovation. The 1982 original broke ground in digital visuals at a time when such imagery was still experimental, while Tron: Legacy (2010) turned into a cult favorite largely thanks to its hypnotic design and Daft Punk’s unforgettable soundtrack.
Now, more than a decade later, Disney returns to the Grid with Ares, a sequel that dares to imagine what happens when digital programs cross into the human world. It’s a bold idea, one that should push the franchise forward. But as the credits roll, it’s difficult not to feel that the film never fully commits to its potential.
Visual brilliance that commands attention
There is no denying the scale of what director Joachim Rønning and the VFX teams have built. From the opening sequences, Ares bombards the audience with neon landscapes, endless geometric corridors, and futuristic vehicles that defy gravity. The lightcycle chases are choreographed with almost balletic precision, turning each duel into a kinetic piece of digital art. Every shot is polished to perfection, designed to overwhelm the senses, and on an IMAX screen the result is staggering.
The sound design amplifies that effect. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross step into Daft Punk’s shoes and, remarkably, make the music their own. Their score is heavy, industrial, and at times unnerving—a sonic pulse that guides the film’s rhythm more reliably than the script. When the narrative falters, the music fills the void, giving the impression of depth where the writing does not.
The concept versus the execution
The story hinges on a fascinating conceit: programs manifesting in physical form, yet bound by a strict time limit before they dissolve back into data. It’s an idea ripe with metaphor. Mortality, identity, and freedom could all have been explored through this fragile existence. Unfortunately, the script reduces it to a plot device. Rules bend whenever convenient, tension evaporates, and what could have been a profound meditation on digital life becomes a gimmick.
Watch the Tron: Ares (2025) movie clips
Jared Leto’s Ares embodies this tension. His awakening to the human world—feeling raindrops, hearing insects, discovering the weight of physical touch—should carry wonder and poignancy. Instead, his performance often comes across as detached, as if even he doesn’t quite believe in the stakes. Greta Lee fares better as Eve, injecting humanity into her scenes, but she too is undercut by underwritten dialogue and abrupt tonal shifts.
Nostalgia as both strength and weakness
No Tron film can escape the shadow of its predecessors, and Ares seems painfully aware of that. Jeff Bridges appears briefly as Kevin Flynn, in a role more ceremonial than substantial, and the production design is filled with visual callbacks to earlier installments. For longtime fans, these nods might be welcome, but they also highlight how little innovation the film offers. Where Legacy at least attempted to expand the Grid’s mythology, Ares spends too much time winking at the past, as if afraid to chart a course entirely its own.
Thematic ambition left unrealized
What makes Tron: Ares frustrating is not that it is a failure, but that it flirts with brilliance without ever committing. The film gestures toward timely themes—the autonomy of artificial intelligence, the ethical dilemmas of creation, the blurred line between digital and physical reality—but these threads are left dangling. In an era where films like Her or Ex Machina have grappled with such questions with nuance and depth, Ares settles for surface-level spectacle.
Final verdict
As cinema, Tron: Ares is breathtaking to watch and mesmerizing to hear. It is the kind of movie that justifies a trip to the biggest screen you can find, purely for the sensory overload it provides. But when the lights come up, the flaws become harder to ignore. The thin story, the shallow characters, and the overreliance on nostalgia keep it from achieving greatness.
For some viewers, the thrill of the neon spectacle will be enough. For others, especially those hoping for a sci-fi narrative as bold as its visuals, Ares may feel like a missed opportunity. In the end, it’s a film caught between innovation and imitation—striking to look at, but hollow to hold onto.
