| Worth seeing: | as a 2 hour long Nine Inch Nails music video, with impressive visuals but not much of a story to speak of |
| Director: | Joachim Rønning |
| Featuring: | Jared Leto, Arturo Castro, Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee, Hasan Minhaj, Jeff Bridges, Jodie Turner-Smith |
| Length: | 119 minutes |
| Certificate: | 12A |
| Country: | US |
| Released: | 10th October 2025 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Tech entrepreneur Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) is hoping to save his company with his creation of invincible AI soldiers and tanks. Even if they are destroyed, he can just print new ones. The only thing he hasn’t told potential clients is that they disintegrate after only 29 minutes. He has to find a way to stop them crumbling to dust, or his company itself will crumble to dust.
The head of a rival tech firm, ENCOM, Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and her associate Seth (Arturo Castro) are also looking for what they call the “permanence code” – and they find it first.
Dillinger prints off two AI soldiers, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) and send them to steal the permanence code from Eve.
Ares goes rogue, as he starts to feel human emotions, but Athena’s mission stays on track – pitting the two AI computer programmes against one another, setting up a devastating battle – out in the real world – as Eve and Dillinger have to watch the fates of their companies be decided from the sidelines.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
When the first Tron film hit the big screens, back in 1982, it was revolutionary in terms of its key theme – blurring the boundaries between reality and the digital world – and its visual impact.
By the time its sequel arrived, nearly 30 years later, the rest of the industry had long since caught up, and another 15 years later, there’s almost nowhere for it to go.
The franchise has certainly lost its visual edge – bold and thrilling as it is, there’s nothing that every other blockbuster doesn’t have – and films in which characters flit around between different realms are two a penny.
Following on from Tron: Legacy, it feels odd that Ares moves away from the franchise’s own legacy to start afresh with a new set of characters with little more than references to 1980s music and a cameo from Jeff Bridges to link it to the source material.
But in truth, so much time has elapsed since the original film that younger audiences will have no knowledge of it or interest in where that world might be now. And older viewers will long since have forgot the thrill they once had, watching Bridges et al racing around The Grid on their Light Cycles.
On paper, this must have seemed like it all made sense, but everything plot element seems to follow in someone else’s footsteps, from the protagonist having a crisis of conscience, through kooky best friend and overbearing mother stereotypes, to a cityscape becoming collateral damage in a clash between super beings.
But while it remains visually arresting, the characters are rarely interesting enough to car about and the entire narrative feels as obvious as it is banal.
Perhaps the highlight of the film is the pounding soundtrack from the electro-grunge band Nine Inch Nails, making this feel very much like a stylish two-hour music video for their latest album – much as Tron: Legacy was for Daft Punk.