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The framework of pointlessness is reloaded in this tediously complex sci-fi movie, closer to a screensaver than an actual film. It's a threequel to the original movie Tron from the early 80s, a film that was groundbreaking and courageously innovative for its time in a way that escapes this one and its predecessor Tron: Legacy from the previous decade. Tron: Ares nearly comes to life just once – when Evan Peters gets a slap in the face from Gillian Anderson's character portraying his mum, in an old-fashioned bit of real-world action. This is a piece of tough love you might want to handing out to all the producers involved in this film, and it's sad to see the estimable Greta Lee's role and Jodie Turner-Smith's character being made to look so lifeless.

Story Summary of Tron: Ares

The situation now is that an malicious artificial intelligence company with the obviously criminal name of Dillinger Corp has become a competitor to the virtual reality firm Encom, first established in the 80s arcade-game era by genius trailblazer Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. This Dillinger (initially founded by Encom's executive Ed Dillinger's role, played by David Warner) is led by the founder's odiously nerdish grandson's character Julian (Evan Peters), who has a ambitious scheme to develop and produce lucrative items such as indestructible soldiers and armored vehicles in the virtual reality grid and then transfer them into the real world using a kind of three-dimensional printer.

The problem is that no matter how intimidating, these things crumble into dust after 29 minutes. But Encom's current CEO Eve Kim's character (Greta Lee) has uncovered the MacGuffin-y “permanence code” which can maintain these entities permanently, and even keeps it on her person on a very low-tech USB drive. So the dreadful Julian deploys his enforcer on her: Ares the warrior, the humanoid uber-warrior which can leave the VR world for 29 minutes at a time but which, in the time-honoured way of robots, is starting to exhibit symptoms of disobeying what he's told. Jodie Turner-Smith portrays Ares's stoic deputy Athena and poor Jeff Bridges has a wooden legacy appearance in sage-like white garments, like a budget Jor-El on Krypton.

Character and Performance Analysis

Moreover, Ares – the protagonist of the title – is acted by Jared Leto with hipsterish long hair, beard and subtly omniscient grin, touches that were perhaps designed by typing the words “incredibly irritating” into an AI human creation programme. Nobody who remembers the 90s TV classic My So-Called Life series will ever find it in their hearts to be completely harsh about Mr Leto, and I was also quite amused by his broad (and critically misunderstood) comic turn in Ridley Scott's movie House of Gucci. But Jared Leto is unremittingly, unrelentingly terrible here, although his performance isn't aided by a limp plot point which is supposed to allow him to display glimpses of “compassion” for Eve Kim's role and subcontract all the badass wickedness to Athena's character, thus making her marginally more interesting. It is meant to be adorable when Ares the character says how he adores 1980s electronic music and that Depeche Mode band are superior to Mozart's compositions.

Series Features and Overall Impact

And in keeping with the brand-identity of the franchise, there are motorcycles from the virtual underworld which whizz about the place in linear paths, conforming to the rectilinear design of antique arcade games (or even dance clubs); one even emits a death ray which slices a police vehicle in half. But there is no drama or danger or human interest anywhere. This series currently appears as relevant as an automobile CD system.