Movie Review: TRON: ARES

“I am fearless, and therefore powerful”

Forget everything you know about movie reviews. We live beyond the digital frontier now. Everything we read, imagine, envision, engage with, interact with - everything within the digital space is no longer yours. It belongs to them. The code behind, the LLMs, the agentic frameworks, GPTs and AI BOTs. 

So, with this in mind, I ask you: Is your opinion justified?

Because I just walked out after seeing Tron: Ares in IMAX. And yes, despite all the critics with their analog hearts hating on this movie, it was good. So, freaking damn good. I walked out of that IMAX theatre feeling like my synapses had been rewired in 4K laser-red synth. TRON: Ares is a sensory transmission beamed straight into the cortex. It’s the kind of movie that hums through your bones, floods your eyes in radiant data streams, and leaves your soul vibrating in binary. 

But don't take my word for it. Go experience it yourself.

The original TRON back in 1982 was a film decades ahead of its time and it faired poorly at the box office. Tron: Legacy redeemed the franchise and brought back a level of familiarity with its awesome visuals and soundtrack. Ares continues that legacy, stepping not just back into The Grid, but into our world, where the line between the physical and the digital has blurred into a luminous dream.

🔴🎧 The Soundtrack

Let’s start with the obvious and my overall second favorite thing about this movie. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails) is an auditory pulse. It feels like the Grid itself is pulsing and alive with energy, a digital mechanical hum of entropy and awakening. The sound design is a living organism: glassy synths, grinding bass, and that melancholic undertow of existential dread that makes you wonder if the code inside you is sentient too. I bet it is.

It’s not a soundtrack you hear. It’s one you inhabit. Listen to it on Spotify here.

🔴🧬 The Plot

Directed by Joachim Rønning and written by Jesse Wigutow and David Digilio, TRON: Ares loosely follows on from the previous movies. However, it is most certainly not a sequel. Sam Flynn and Quora are mentioned - but more in a passing reference towards the end. Kevin Flynn does make an appearance in a scene that carries with it a level of nostalgic familiarity as well as a shared reference to Neo's meeting with the Architect in the Matrix: Reloaded.

However, the real star of the movie has to be Jared Leto’s Ares: a digital assassin born of corrupted algorithms and ambition who crosses into the real world through a generative laser that blurs science and sorcery. He’s a construct of control, created by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the amoral heir of ENCOM’s dark legacy. Peters' character is an outright villain that speaks to the global superpowers of today - greed, power, corruption and warmongering are the order of the day with Dillinger Systems, rival company to ENCOM. And Ares is their soldier of the future - 100% obedience, 100% expendable.

Opposite him stands Eve Kim (Greta Lee), a CEO with a conscience, searching for Flynn’s lost “Permanence Code,” a digital key to immortality for the constructs within the Grid. Whereas Dillinger embodies profit and gain, Kim's ENCOM embodies hope, life and a future unbounded.

TRON: Ares doesn’t just flirt with AI ethics, it embraces the uncomfortable romance. The film’s moral engine hums around a single concept: creation without consequence. Julian Dillinger wants to sell sentient weapons to governments. Eve wants to birth hope through technology. Ares wants to understand his place between the two.

Yet beneath the metallic stoicism, Ares is haunted by wonder. The moment he steps into our world, he looks at the rain with the awe of a newborn child. There's a Blade Runner’s tears-in-the-rain moment inverted, the synthetic marveling at creation itself. Leto embodies Ares perfectly and his transition from antagonist to protagonist is a the real question behind all of our fears regarding AI. Are we really in control?

There’s even a moment, quiet and brief, where Ares quotes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

I digress. Anyway, I won't give too much of the plot away but there's definite influence from other movies. The hunt for Eve Kim has definite Terminator-like vibes with one of the best chase-scenes to experience in IMAX. There are elements of The Matrix, Bladerunner, Akira and practically every other cyberpunk movie you can think of. Even with the 1h59 min run time, the movie never slows and the pace keeps you on the edge of your seat through the entire wild ride.

🔴 The Visuals 

My favorite thing about all of the Tron movies was how well it pushed the visual boundaries of cinema and director Rønning directs like a conductor of light. The film flickers between our world and the Grid with transitions so fluid, so impossibly alive, that your brain stops caring which is real. One moment you’re in the Arctic snows where Eve manifests an orange tree, the next, you’re inside a data storm where architecture bends like soundwaves.

The imagery evokes familiarity, but it feels distinctly its own, dazzling, geometric, and relentlessly alive. Watching it in IMAX is essential. You don’t just watch TRON: Ares. You jack in.

🔴 Final Transmission

TRON: Ares is a glitch in the cinematic matrix, a film that dares to fuse the spiritual and the synthetic, the poetic and the programmed. It’s not free from imperfections, sure. The characters are often archetypal, the narrative lean, and some development and plot cohesiveness is lacking. But in a story about digital AI wrestling with identity, maybe that’s exactly right. Perfectly imperfect.

If TRON: Legacy was a requiem for The Grid, Ares is its resurrection. A story not about escaping the machine, but accepting that our futures with the digital world are now completely intertwined.

Go see it.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 neon discs ⚡
Best experienced: IMAX, loud, and slightly existential.