Tron: Ares is Exhilaratingly Cool and Stylish and That's Enough (Review)
Tron: Ares is the third movie in the 43-year-old Tron franchise. The series has historically used the relationship between humanity and emerging technology as the backdrop for cool-as-hell sci-fi action. That remains to be the case here. The film fumbles the very conversations about AI and the future of technology that it posits, but Ares excels at what Tron does best: being cool, exciting, and stylish. // Image: Disney
The more you talk about media - whether in blog posts like this, on social media, or in conversations with other people -, the more you develop the preferences that you often latch onto in stories. For some people, they’ll really latch onto dialogue and how characters interact with each other, and that can often become the ultimate differentiator for them. A movie with decent character dialogue versus a movie with incredible character dialogue is what separates an enjoyable movie from a masterfully crafted one to that person. We all have certain factors that help push us over the edge from liking something into full-on loving it.
For me, that factor is coolness.
Don’t get me wrong: as I’ve demonstrated time and again on this blog, I have no issue with digging into the various factors that come together to create a cohesive story. I’ve broken down how certain elements shine to make a movie or game reach an even greater potential. But I can’t deny that I have a weakness when it comes to determining how much I liked a piece of media. That weakness is how cool the presentation of the story is.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve garnered an interest in video game genres like JRPGs, character action games, and fighting games - all of which are often made to foster distinctly stylish possibilities of player expressions. Perhaps that’s why musicians like Hiroyuki Sawano and Daft Punk have created much of my favorite music - because what they produce is just cool and empowering to listen to. There’s an unmistakable cool factor that I recognize in a lot of my favorite media. From Xenoblade Chronicles X to Attack on Titan, I have a deep appreciation for things that are just cool as hell and own their stylish presentation. This very idea of coolness is more than just a means of presentation - it’s an emotion that’s elicited throughout a story’s DNA and gives it a unique feeling distinct from other tones explored in other media.
And for me, there’s perhaps no other IP I associate more with being cool as hell than Tron, Disney’s 43-year-old franchise that just received its third movie with Tron: Ares. More so than with any other franchise, I’ve found Tron to be a franchise whose identity is intrinsically linked to being cool and ambitious. 1982’s Tron was the progenitor of cutting-edge CGI animation - leading to a movie that looked absolutely nothing like what other science fiction movies were attempting at the time. The ambition of its visuals and aesthetics in addition to telling a story focused on emerging technologies and following the perspective of a young game developer in a time when the industry was relatively miniscule all made for a cool, stylish story. Tron’s overall narrative wasn’t revelatory, but it didn’t need to be. It understood the value of its coolness and ambition, and such things carried the movie to respectable success.
The IP went dark in the following decades despite having a lot of potential to be built upon, leading to the film becoming something of a niche sci-fi classic. The Tron IP got introduced to an entire new generation thanks to Tron’s inclusion as a world in 2005’s Kingdom Hearts II. That same year, plans for a sequel began to emerge within Disney. In a few years, those plans would materialize in the form of Tron: Legacy. In conjunction with Kingdom Hearts being an introduction to the world of Tron to many unfamiliar with the original film along with the viral “Flynn Lives” marketing campaign leading up to its 2010 release, Tron: Legacy was set up for success.
Much like the original 1982 film, Tron: Legacy was a visually ambitious film, completely transforming the comparatively primitive digital world of the original movie into something compellingly otherworldly. Tron: Legacy was as good as it was because it knew what it needed to be: a modernization of the original film’s cool ideas and aesthetics. This was accomplished through a modernized neon aesthetic, a plethora of action scenes ranging from fights to bike chases to aerial dogfights, and finally, an all-timer soundtrack by legendary French duo, Daft Punk.
The visuals, music, and action-filled pacing of the film combined to create an unflinchingly cool movie - the very kind that makes dudes go “hell yeah”. At the end of the day, that’s precisely what made the film work so incredibly well for me. The film’s story is a fairly basic isekai-style setup of Sam Flynn accidentally entering the digital world within Tron and having to return to the real world. Beyond a somewhat derivative premise, the writing has some instances of corny dialogue. There are flaws, to be sure, but multiple facets of the movie come together to make neon-soaked coolness that looks, sounds, and feels like nothing else out there.
When it came time for a follow-up to Tron: Legacy to be made, it naturally led to the question of what could be done beyond what had been attempted before. Both Tron and Legacy shared similar plots, despite having different setups and contexts. For a new Tron to succeed, it would likely have to tread new ground to keep the franchise from becoming stale - all while retaining the series’ standard of coolness. Enter Tron: Ares, a film that quickly raised eyebrows when it cast the controversial Jared Leto to star in it - a casting decision that cast a shadow of skepticism over the film’s quality. Fast forward to 2025, and the third Tron film is finally out, but the response to it feels different from what happened when Legacy brought the franchise back over a decade before.
There’s a lot of conversations to have about Tron: Ares, particularly in the wake of its lackluster box office performance in its first weekend. I’ve been keeping an eye on how the film’s been talked about on social media and on platforms like Letterboxd to gauge just how people have been responding to Ares. Unlike the general excitement for the return of the franchise with Legacy, Ares’ reception has been a lot more mixed-to-negative, with many people sharing a “who asked for this?” sentiment in relation to Tron getting a third film. Some have even gone so far as to say that the film is a glorified Nine Inch Nails music video with an incoherent plot. Many are (perhaps rightfully) questioning why Jared Leto needed to be included in an otherwise strong, respectable cast of actors to tell this story.
There’s ostensibly more noise with this film’s reception; however I want to spend this review redirecting what I think should be a larger point of conversation when talking about this film. While the film certainly has flaws, I can’t deny that the film demanded and easily retained my attention perhaps more than any other film this year. The action, animation, and brilliant presentation of this film kept my eyes glued to the screen in a way that reminds me of why I love movies in the first place.
I love being immersed in stories and being engaged in stories that make me feel something. Tron has historically done this through being exciting, stylish, and cool, and Tron: Ares succeeds at carrying on that legacy so much so that it elevates the experience into being one of my favorite movies of the year. From strong pacing to excellent music and mind-boggling visuals, Tron: Ares masterfully understands what makes Tron movies different from any other sci-fi action flick, and that self-awareness carries the film towards greatness.
I greatly enjoyed my time with Tron: Ares and want to discuss what makes the film exceed at its mission of being both a new Tron film and an evolution of what a Tron movie can be. Let’s discuss what makes Tron: Ares the very kind of cool, stylish film that we should see more of.
Tron: Ares upends the typical structure of a Tron film. While previous films were isekai-style stories of humans entering the digital world and trying to escape, Ares creates action sequences built around digital assets entering the physical world. This results in awe-inspiring action and chase scenes that beautifully combine the otherworldly and the mundane. // Image: Disney
“No going back” - this is the marketing tagline defining the direction of Tron: Ares’ story. Previous Tron films have taken a safe but effective direction with their stories: establishing the juxtaposition of the real world and the digital world creating in The Grid - computers constructing digital worlds where Programs live. In both films, we follow characters that navigate the real world before being isekai’d into the digital world. This is where the juxtaposition between the physical and digital worlds becomes the most apparent. In both films, the primary conflict comes from trying to resolve whatever issues in the digital world are preventing real-world Users from returning to the physical world.
This is immediately where Ares diverges from what has come before. The big spectacle on display throughout Tron: Ares is the idea of technology developing to a point where any digital asset can be constructed into reality. The main conflict arises from the natural malice that can come from unethical use of this technology. ENCOM and Dillinger represent the two tech corporations in a race to use this technology, both eager to use the technology for their own selfish interests. Eve, the protagonist and the representative for ENCOM, claims to be interested in using this technology to return that which has been lost to us. Eve doesn’t have much of a character beyond mourning the loss of her older sister and carrying on her late sibling’s legacy and research efforts. The strong implication throughout earlier parts of Tron: Ares’ narrative is that she wishes to use this realization technology to create a new version of her sister - effectively using technology to bring back the dead, or at least a living embodiment of the memory of the dead.
Dillinger, ENCOM’s opposition, doesn’t offer an ethical proposal for the technology, either. Their interests are solely financial, in the sense that they wish to use this potentially powerful tool to produce infinite numbers of soldiers and equipment to be used for warfare. The idea is as scary as it is lacking a shred of humanity, making Dillinger and their drunk-with-power CEO the antagonistic force of this story.
Is this narrative concept used to illustrate meaningful themes about emerging artificial intelligence technology and provides an informed commentary on the ways such technology can be unethically exploited to serve corporate and militaristic interests? Only on a surface level, if I’m being honest. This concept, while an interesting offering, isn’t thoroughly investigated on intellectual or thematic levels. Rather, they’re effective window-dressing for Tron: Ares’ true goal - to present the visual spectacle of the digital world and physical world merging into one.
We see occasional glimpses of the digital worlds throughout Tron: Ares that mostly carry on the visual identity and language presented in Legacy’s presentation of the digital world. While we mostly saw ENCOM’s digital world in Legacy, Ares offers mostly a peek into Dillinger’s digital world, which feels far darker and more oppressive thanks to red neons soaking up space as opposed to ENCOM’s familiar and more comforting blue lights. While we see a few action sequences play out in these digital spaces, the real star of the show is when parts of the digital world enter the physical world, leading to visual spectacles unlike anything else seen previously in this franchise.
Seeing light cycle chases in Tron and Tron: Legacy were exciting in their own rights given that they took place in imaginative worlds, but seeing those same light cycle chases now take place in a real cityscape at night creates a beautiful juxtaposition between urban roads and the synthetic neon that paints the city red. Digital characters, vehicles, and weapons entering the physical world leads to visual sequences that are unlike anything else I’ve seen in and out of the Tron franchise and that spectacle is enough to elevate the action on display here.
It helps that the action taking place alongside this visual spectacle is equally exciting. Motorcycle chase scenes see digital barriers arise, which cause vehicles to get split in half and cars getting flipped over. This creates a blend of CGI and practical effects that leads to all of the film’s action and destruction feeling both expensive and weighty, creating a greater degree of punch throughout the film. From chase scenes to fights, it’s hard to look away from all the action sequences that Tron: Ares presents. The film weaves together action scenes that mostly combine the physical and virtual to produce unforgettable imagery - which, I would argue, is the very essence of what Tron has historically been all about.
Tron movies have always used advancements in animation to produce visuals unlike anything audiences have seen before. The original Tron showed the world what CGI animation could provide to the world of big-budget filmmaking over a decade before the first entirely CGI-animated film, Toy Story. Tron: Legacy showcased how far animation had come in the boom of post-Avatar animation and high-scale immersion in filmmaking. Here in Ares, the benchmark is not as substantial - we see CGI animation used alongside live-action all the time in big-budget films today, but the unique aesthetic of Tron mixing with a grounded vision of reality still succeeds at producing and presenting images we haven’t seen anywhere else.
Beyond that, Tron: Ares also succeeds in carrying the torch with another series tradition: being cool as hell.
I find it exceptionally rare to find a movie whose primary one it’s trying to aim for is coolness. A lot of blockbuster films put out by the likes of Disney and Marvel typically try to channel feelings like noble heroism, quirkiness a la Marvel quips, cuteness, and melodramatic. Of course, coolness is but one of countless tones and emotions that a movie can attempt to capture, but it’s one that I think makes for exciting and fun movies to watch. I remember strongly disliking a lot of elements of 2018’s Ready Player One, but I can’t deny that the cool factor of some scenes didn’t make me feel something when watching that film. The coolness depicted in the film was almost enough to make me overlook a lot of that film’s flaws.
All this is to say that I value movies that want coolness to be at the forefront of the action. The velocity and diversity of the action itself does a lot elevate that coolness, as do the previously mentioned visuals. A large part of Tron’s identity as a franchise, however, is that of its score, and like with Legacy, this is an aspect of the film that elevates Ares to feeling exceptionally cool and memorable.
Daft Punk’s Legacy score combined strings with electro subgenres like house and industrial, imbuing that film with both cool style and a subdued emotionality that accompanied the film’s hero’s journey. Ares is a comparatively darker film that doesn’t have a traditional hero to root for, and Nine Inch Nails’ soundtrack here reflects that. Nine Inch Nails opt to use heavy synths, distorted guitars, and even vocals to paint a darker, more brutal soundscape. The score’s decisively industrial direction helps the film feel darker, colder, and having higher stakes - and the film is absolutely better for such a score contributing to its tone.
Nine Inch Nails do an exceptional job at succeeding Daft Punk’s legendary score by opting to do something quite different with Ares’ soundtrack while still retaining the level of coolness Tron’s music needs to still feel like Tron. Through great visuals, a dark yet energetic soundtrack, and heavy-feeling action sequences to boot, Tron: Ares delivers a lot of sequences that deliver a frantically-paced film that’s hard to look away from. Conclusions to action sequences often lead to character triumphs and narrative breakthroughs that lead to a sense of power and weight that combine to create an unmistakable X factor of coolness interlaced throughout the film.
Tron: Ares is a departure from what has come before and therefore feels like a massive swing. Whether or not it hits from that swing will depend on how much you want the fantastic visuals and audio carry the experience. // Image: Disney
Of course, delivering a single tone doesn’t make a film perfect. I’ve felt obliged to talk about this film’s unique coolness and style because it’s something that directly appeals to me. As someone that loves it when anime or video games show cool style, I feel giddy getting the opportunity to talk about such a thing being the case in a major motion picture. That said, I can’t pretend that being cool doesn’t make something a critical masterpiece. Tron: Ares features somewhat flat character motivations. The aforementioned Dillinger CEO is cartoonishly evil with his obsession to monetize this premature technology by promising to infinitely fuel the military industrial complex. The characters at ENCOM that accompany Eve on her journey are direly one-dimensional characters, with some offering comic relief that rarely ever lands.
Moreover, the aforementioned narrative ideas of artificial intelligence and grey area of ethics when it comes to emerging technologies are nuanced concepts that the film isn’t entirely interested in exploring. This, I feel, does a bit of a disservice for a film that is so centered on the technology and video game industries. The Tron series chooses to depict conflict between tech industry giants and yet can only ever say surface level things about such a thing, when it feels there could be so much more that it could say and present to audiences.
Lastly, some elements of the narrative feel silly, including when Dillinger’s CEO hacks into ENCOM during a game launch night event. The speed and severity of Dillinger’s hack is so bafflingly quick and vast that it’s hard to believe. This is certainly the film’s weakest instance of writing, as this silly hacking event is something that needs to happen to progress the film’s narrative about Dillinger searching for code that ENCOM has access to, but the only means through which this narrative progress can be made is through this relatively clunky plot device. There are also instances where the writing drops any subtlety or trust in the audience - which, again, is often done by the unneeded comic relief character that feels truthfully out of place in the film.
The thing about a movie like this, though, is that issues such as these can feel like they don’t matter that much so long that what does matter gets done right. I can safely that such a thing is the case with Tron: Ares. While I disagree with the casting of Jared Leto as the titular Ares, I think the arc that this character goes on is a strong narrative hook for the film that makes sense for this IP.
Ares, built and programmed to be a disposable, perpetually regenerated war asset to be used for endless war profiteering, develops a conscience and desire to have free will independent from the interests of his creators. This creates a narrative of defying the destiny placed on oneself - a trope typically explored in a lot of video games and anime and one that’s often used because it leads to cool moments. After all, defying expectations placed upon you and carving your own path is exactly what defines punk culture - a culture that’s inherently encoded with coolness.
Eve goes on a similar arc, initially feeling pressured to be an acceptable successor to her forward-thinking sister. She gets briefly thrown into the Grid and becomes targeted by Dillinger’s Programs for having witnessed the permanence code that can ensure that digital assets created in the real world permanently stay in the real world. The bulk of Ares’ action comes as a result of her being chased down by Programs, ultimately moving towards an arc where she realizes the selfless purposes that the permanence code can be used for. Again, this character arc is built around breaking free of the pre-conceived ideas that we think may define our life paths. This is cool narrative direction that accompanies the already cool backdrop and aesthetic of Tron.
Coolness doesn’t make for all of what makes Tron: Ares a compelling watch, though. There is a fantastic degree of attention to detail that prevents Ares from feeling like yet another cynical cash-grab legacy sequel coming from Disney. A lot of this attention to detail culminates in the film feeling like a thoughtful continuation of the many ideas explored in the previous films and including specific references to previous events. From “Flynn Lives” posters referencing the previously mentioned viral marketing campaign of Legacy to there being an image of Eve where she’s wearing a Daft Punk shirt referencing the franchise’s legacy of music. Call it attention to detail, call it fan service - Tron: Ares is built in a way that honors what’s come before instead of milking what’s previously been established.
For a third release that features such a different narrative and cast of characters, it’s comforting to know that the film was thoughtfully produced with odes and nods to what came before. This even includes a delightful section of the film that references the animation style of the original 1982 film through a clever in-universe means.
With all this said, I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds with this sentiment about coolness. The original Tron’s aesthetic is seminal for the traditional cyberpunk and retrowave aesthetics, but the film itself has never been typically considered cyberpunk. While the film and its following films have been cool, I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re all-out punk. Although this tells a story about greed-filled tech corporations, this is still ultimately a product coming from Disney, arguably the largest corporation in the world. Tron’s potential for providing commentary on such massive corporations is limited by the sheer fact that it itself is a product of a corporation. Tron as a franchise can be cool, but it can perhaps never be anti-establishment enough to be punk because of who holds the rights to the IP.
I say this because, although I think there’s an inherent limit on how cool Tron can be, the coolness conveyed throughout the franchise and in Tron: Ares is still leagues more impressive than most of what’s coming out in the film industry right now. Coolness is more than just an emotion - it’s kineticism. Being cool is to give a vibe that can carry an entire experience. That’s what previous Tron films have done and that’s what Tron: Ares continues to do, making it a worthy successor to the previous two films despite minor flaws.
I want to briefly revisit the criticism, “who asked for this?” in response to this film’s existence. Many people look at a film franchise with three entries over 43 years and view it as little more than nostalgia bait whenever the film comes back. Moreover, many view Tron: Legacy as a logical conclusion to the story first presented in the original Tron, making additional films feel unneeded and redundant. And yet, I can’t help but be bothered by this rhetoric.
I’m of the opinion that no one necessarily “asks” for specific kinds of art and stories - they merely have a drive to see something new, creative, and different from anything they’ve seen before. No one was really “asking” for a movie like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, but the film was so different and interesting from anything else on the market that it garnered strong word-of-mouth and unprecedented success for a horror film untied to any previous IP.
No one knows what they want to see until it is in front of them. It is only then that they can determine if it’s something they want to see or are “asking for”.
Was I necessarily filled to the brim with questions after Tron: Legacy and needed a third film to answer them? No, I would’ve happily accepted if Legacy was the end of the film franchise. When Ares was first announced, I was curious to see where it could go and kept an open mind. Now having seen the film, I can’t help but have a deep appreciation for what the film does. I respect how the film honors its identity as a Tron film while still trailblazing its own identity. It’s for that reason that Tron: Ares, beyond being a cool movie that I greatly enjoyed watching, is a film that I admire and am glad exists in the capacity that it does.
Lastly, I want to talk about why all this matters. Who cares if a movie is cool? What value does that really bring in the grand scheme of things? For me, it’s a matter of aesthetical identity.
James Cameron is one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the history of film industry, not necessarily because his movies are profound or are the most well-written and cinematographed pieces of film. Rather, his work is beloved because he realizes a potential of film that so few directors can deliver: immersion. James Cameron takes audiences to other worlds. Say what you will about the Avatar films and how memorable they are as stories, but you can’t deny that the experience of watching an Avatar movie transports you to another world. There’s a genuine escapism with James Cameron’s movies. That escapism serves as the perfect backdrop for eliciting particular emotions. In the case of Avatar, whimsy, awe, and heroism are the defining characters that illustrate the vibe of Avatar. Those feelings come through brilliantly thanks to the film’s dedication to immersion and escapism - and that’s enough to create a unique viewing experience that has its own distinct value.
The Tron movies are but another example of this phenomenon in my eyes. These films transport viewers to a different world thanks to larger-than-life action setpieces, industry-leading CGI animation, incredible music, and an unparalleled aesthetic. By transporting viewers to another world, they don’t necessarily need to be treated with an ambitious, subversive narrative with characters unlike anything we’ve seen in other films. All that is truly needed when transporting an audience to another world is cohesive direction and a strong emotion to center the whole film around.
Tron: Ares uses coolness to define its immersive, escapist movie-watching experience. There’s a genuine place for this coolness, this immersion, and this escapism because they aren’t things that we typically see in filmmaking. As someone that’s seen well over 100 movies in theaters this year alone, the momentum and vibe of Tron: Ares was as refreshing as it was distinct from anything else I’ve seen this year. Through being refreshing, distinct, and brimming with imaginative worldbuilding, I couldn’t help but have an immense amount of fun watching the film. My worries and stresses in my day-to-day life faded away while watching Tron: Ares far easier than they would had I watched nearly any other film released this year.
I think there’s immense value in that, and that’s why I can’t help but recommend seeing Tron: Ares. More so than any other film in recent memory, Tron: Ares provides comfort through its immersion, and the coolness embedded into the very essence of this movie only further drenches the film in style. It’s enough for Tron: Ares to be a cool film above all else, because such an emotion and style is one that we don’t see much of as a primary emotion elicited in blockbuster films such as this. Tron: Ares’ commitment to being cool is as much of a differentiator between it and other films on the market as much as it is a respect to the series it’s a part of. For that reason, being cool is enough.
The commitment to being cool is also enough, because doing so makes for viewing experiences that make you feel alive; that make you feel real - or at least, as real as you need it to be.
Final Grade: A
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on Tron: Ares and the Tron IP? Do you think there’s demand for this franchise, or is this a legacy sequel that no one asked for? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.
