Does Tron Still Work in The Modern Day? Tron: Ares

Tron: Ares is a disappointment in every sense of the word. It's awfully paced, written terribly, and forgets its core concepts halfway through. However, disregarding all of that, I'm not sure the Tron franchise even still works anymore. The original was a product of its time that cannot be properly replicated without stripping most of its allure.

When the first Tron movie released in 1982, and even to a degree in 2010 with Tron: Legacy, technology was still somewhat of an unknown. Even owning a home computer or the sheer concept of the worldwide web was such an alien idea in the 80s and this movie was simply bringing everybody's curiosities to life and imagining them in this fantastical world. It made this new technology seem exciting and fun, as well as giving it some sense, even if its from a sci-fi movie.

Of course, the world of technology was very different in 2010, people did have some amount of a grasp on technology, but it was still not even close to being as big a part of our lives as it is today. Nowadays you'll have a smartphone in your hand, a smartwatch on your wrist, and access to all the knowledge of the universe at your fingertips, not to mention the ever rising phone and social media addiction. As a result, technology just isn't as exciting or mystical anymore, at least not in this form.

Even though it may seem like it, I'm not proposing that no movies can be made about technology or AI, but as the technology of our world catches up, the world of Tron is hardly moving forward while still attempting to bring us into a world far in the future - which, in reality, isn't too far away from our present day.

This isn't all I had a problem with, however. Simply put, this movie made me feel nothing and I think that is partly attributed to the music. While Nine Inch Nails did put together a great electronic album, it's not right for a movie's soundtrack, at least not this movie. This isn't because of the genre, it's just that it doesn't excite you. There's absolutely no build, no unavoidable pressure from an antagonist in a chase, there's simply just no sense of urgency. Any song could be moved to any other moment in the movie and it wouldn't change a thing about the scene. A score that does the exact opposite incredibly well is Hans Zimmer's Cornfield Chase from Interstellar.

Due to this lack of urgency, not a single chase meant anything to me - and there were a lot of chases. Every death felt disposable, no cat and mouse had any perspective on how much danger they were in or even how close to it they were. There's two ways to show these things to the audience, you can either literally show them with some sort of wide shot or just the antagonist catching up, or with the music building. Most of the time, they chose neither of these options and tried to get us invested into a chase that has nothing but glowing lights.

The pacing felt strange throughout the entirety of this movie, actually. I felt as if I'd sat through an entire three acts, only to check my watch and see we still have a full hour left. They completely rushed through the first two acts, only to draw out the third to an insufferable level. One thing that did surprise me was the actual runtime, not even scraping the two hour mark. What didn't surprise me, however, was that it felt so much longer than it really was.

Onto the characters and the writing, Even Peters plays the 'billionaire nepo baby with no regard for human life, only caring for his profit margins' Elon Musk type amazingly. The problem is, the script gave him absolutely nothing to work with and didn't show off any of what he was supposed to be. He got beaten by every program so easily, he wasn't smart at all unless the the plot demanded it to move forward (i.e. hacking), and he didn't really even pose any threat because of how much of a pushover he was. It can be argued that maybe that's the point, he's supposed to be an idiot who stumbled his way into being a CEO and can't handle it, but I really don't think so. Every so often, they'll try to show us how he is actually in control and is powerful, yet they flipflop between Tony Stark and Richie Rich.

Greta Lee's character is someone I would've loved to have seen more of, just not in this story. In this, she pretty much just follows Ares around and does as he says, however the core concept of her character is so interesting. In this world, an asian woman has the power and the platform to be the CEO of one of the world's leading technology companies. I would've loved to have seen how this world is more developed than our own, more than just technologically, but also culturally.

One of my biggest gripes with this movie was how much Ares seemed to change after he experienced emotion. At the start he's obviously very robotic and unblinking. But why, after he feels emotion, does that cause his eyes to get dry or his walk to change or even for him to start fist bumping people? I understand that they may have been trying to accentuate his newfound humanity, but this avenue made no sense to me. I think it would've been fine to have simply had him care for his surroundings, which he didn't unless they aligned with his objective. Audiences are smart enough to understand that he feels emotion without you having to spoon feed it to us.

Another big problem is that it seems as if they forgot the core concept of what permanence meant for these programs. All throughout, they weren't able to survive longer than 29 minutes so permanence would mean they're not constantly dying and - in terms of Dillinger's plans - could survive on the battlefield for as long as needed. However, in the end it seems like they decide that 'permanence' almost means becoming human. Even when these programs are permanent, they should still be able to be replicated after they die, it just means they wouldn't die every 29 minutes. However, with the correct logic carried through the whole movie, Jeff Bridges' scene about the sanctity and impermanence of life would be redundant, and you need a legacy cameo to round of this movie, right?