I might be telling on my own bad taste here, but I could have liked this better than TRON: Legacy. Obviously the visuals and music of Legacy are undefeated, but it was bogged down by long conversations that ruined the momentum. Legacy is half of an incredible movie, and half boring dogwater. (I’m sorry.)
TRON: Ares is actually kinda great outside of extremely terrible casting on one specific role, which manages to make the *whole thing* dogwater. (I’m not sorry.)
Music and editing keep the momentum going. The NIN soundtrack was better in situ; I was lukewarm when I initially listened to it, but it makes a lot of sense while watching.
A TRON Pinocchio story feels sort of inevitable, in retrospect, as does the red aesthetic to contrast the previous blues. 3D printing bodies for your AI is a timely update too. I don’t mind the MacGuffin of a time limit on these prints. Whatever gets us to the next light cycle chase is fine.
I never got bored, exactly…there were just parts I couldn’t bear to look at thanks to stiff serial killer-like acting, sort of like how I can never look at Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name. I’d be having such a wonderful time until I remembered he was in the movie and had to dissociate.
Weirdly great casting (aside from THAT ONE GUY) means there are *really* compelling performances if you only pay attention to Jodie Turner Smith, Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson, and Greta Lee. There’s a moment between Turner Smith and Anderson that makes me wanna write the sexiest evil lesbian darkfic.
Imagining a recast Ares suggests a movie that could have been total fandom bait. Put any Tumblr favorite into the Ares role – someone who has chemistry with Greta Lee, someone who doesn’t inflect with all the skill of a cadaver, without serial killer eyes – makes the idea of a programmer/program relationship very appealing subtext.
Ares pining over Eve might have been believable if, say, Evan Peters had played Ares. And why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t Evan Peters be both The Worst Son and also Murder Program? God made us in His image, or whatever, and TRON has done it before. His acting is quite good! Extremely watchable!
Jodie Turner Smith easily could have been a better Ares. Michael Sheen, Ben Barnes, or friggin’ Rhys Darby could have been a better Ares. It’s possible that *I* could have been a better Ares, but I don’t think Tumblr would be interested.
I’m not convinced improved casting of the titular role would have made it perform better at the box office. The fact Disney got to a third TRON movie when it’s never performed well does have the aroma of a money-laundering scheme. It’s just such a shame when TRON, as a milieu, is absolute nerdbait for legbeards like me, with *some* amazing talent, divine aesthetic, and reliably quality music.
Why can’t you get it right, Disney?
I’m opposed to the contemporary usage of LLM genAI. That said, if someone vanishes one of the Great Lakes in order to replace Jared Leto in TRON: Legacy with literally anyone else (not Armie Hammer), I would happily rewatch this every time I rewatch the other TRON movies. I’m not hard to please.
