A highly sophisticated Program, Ares, is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission.

I remember the original Tron from the 80s as a fun trip into the fresh-for-then video game phenomenon but I wouldn’t say I had any nostalgia for it. Fifteen years ago, the franchise returned with Tron: Legacy, an ultimately forgettable affair in that I forget everything about it save for the enjoyable soundtrack from Daft Punk. So, I went into Tron: Ares with low expectations and interest, and got exactly what I thought – a mediocre affair that wasn’t bad but didn’t endear me any further to the IP.

The good guy here is Greta Lee’s Eve, a gaming mogul who discovers the technology to bring the entities created in the gaming world to life in our world. One of those entities, Ares (a stone-faced Jared Leto), is a soldier for the bad guy, Julian Dillinger (performed with full mustache twirling by Evan Peters). But Ares wants to live autonomously and his better bet for that is to align with Eve. So, there’s a lot of fights in the real world with the computer-generated bikes and trails in the first two movies, only this time in a deep red instead of the benevolent blue from before.

There are stakes. And potential world endy things. There’s a coding takeover happening inside a computer that is showcased as people fighting. Jeff Bridges pops in to reprise his main character from the other films (with a little bit of The Dude from The Big Lebowski thrown in). Killer soundtrack though, this time from Nine Inch Nails (billed so, rather than as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as they usually are for film work, probably because that was more interesting than a lot of what was happening on screen). Not terrible, but doesn’t tackle any of the AI type conversations it tries to introduce.

Jonathan’s grade – C-