Tron Ares

Ronald Young Jr. reviews Tron Ares by himself… 

RYJ wonders how a Tron movie feels relevant when the Matrix exists

RYJ -  3.25 of 5 stars

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Available in theaters

Starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges
Written by Jesse Wigutow
Directed by Joachim Ronning

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
In nineteen eighty two, a video game developer named Kevin
Flynn was transported to the digital world, where he joined
to fight against the Master Control program. The movie was
called Tron. In twenty ten, Tron Legacy saw Kevin Flynn's
son Sam back in the digital world, fighting his father's

(00:21):
digitized likeness. Now, in twenty twenty five, this universe is
introduced to artificial intelligence. In tron Aries, I'm Ronald Young Junior,
and I'm leaving the theater. All right. This is Ronald,

(01:32):
and I am leaving the theater after seeing tron Ares.
Tron Aries written by Jesse Wigato, directed by Yoakum Ronning,
starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jody Turner, Smith Hassen,
minhaj Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges

(01:58):
and per Usual. For a complete cast listing, you can
go to the link in our show notes. It is
just me today, all right. Tron Aries is the third
in the tron series. I believe there's also a spinoff
animated television series as well, so I don't know if

(02:21):
that is still a part of the continuity here. It
is still made by Disney, so I think it just
might kind of be an offshoot of the Tron series,
Whereas this is the third in the main canon, if
you will, of the Tron series that began in nineteen
eighty two. I want to say I believe it is
two years older than me. It had a sequel called

(02:42):
Tron Legacy, which I believe came out in twenty ten
or eleven right around there, and this is the third one. Now,
I had seen trom Legacy years ago when it came
out in twenty ten or eleven. As a matter of fact,
Tron Legacy was the first movie I watched on my

(03:04):
brand new flat panel television in my first apartment I
lived in alone, and I remember I watched it and
I enjoyed it at the time. If I'm being honest,
I think what I enjoyed at the time was having
a flat panel television for the first time and being
in my own apartment. Because this past week, while on

(03:27):
the plane, I watched both Tron and Tron Legacy, and
I did not like either one of these films. I
did not like them. Tron is It's a valiant effort,
and I think it is a technological step forward for
film in terms of special effects and what they were
doing in order to accomplish the making of the digital world.

(03:51):
For those who don't know what Tron is, let me
just take a step back. It is a series about
computer program who essentially are getting continuously sucked into the
digital world, where they then have to accomplish a certain
set of tasks in order to get out of the
digital world. The name Tron comes from the fact that

(04:13):
in the first film, and I guess also in Tron Legacy,
that there is a character named Tron who is a
security program within the computer meant to fight against the
Master Control, which is the villain in the first film,
along with the rival computer program. It's honestly, none of
this is important because these movies aren't terribly plot driven

(04:36):
or plot heavy at all. They're really about the visual
and technological spectacle. This was the case in nineteen eighty
two because these films were one hundred percent bad in
terms of what it takes to actually write and execute
a movie. The writing is bad. There's large swaths of
the movie where I'm uncertain as to what we are

(04:58):
doing or waiting for. We are in the digital world constantly.
In Tron and Tron Legacy in a way that is
extremely boring to me, and especially watching Tron Legacy, having
grown up with the Matrix, not with Tron, but I've
grown up with the Matrix. I already know what it
looks like to be in the digital world versus the

(05:21):
real world, and it feels like, especially after Tron Legacy
came out, when you have the Matrix, which already existed,
it feels like it would be very, very easy to
make a good Tron movie in the shadow of the Matrix.
But no, they did not. Tron Legacy not very good.
All of that being said, both between those two movies,

(05:43):
I wanted to make sure I was prepared walking into
Tron ares My biggest critique of Tron and Tron Legacy
is that there's too much going on in the digital world.
It's boring. I don't care about it. It's not interesting.
They have not done a good job of representing it.
It's just not a great place to be. Generally, they

(06:06):
fix that in tron Areas and tron Areas. We spend
not much time in the digital world at all, and
one of the main plot points early in the film
is about three D printing, which is bringing the digital
elements out of the digital world into the real world,
and I liked that a lot better. I just feel

(06:27):
like it makes for a better movie. I don't there's
more things happening in this real world than in the
digital world. We are dealing with the consequences of what
of the programming that folks are doing, and they're bringing
those problems out in front of everyone, which for me,

(06:47):
feels more realistic. It feels like there's more for a
plot to do with that scenario. In this one, the
main plot of the film is that there is a AI
program called Ares that essentially become sentient and decides that
it wants to permanently live in the real world. But

(07:09):
that's impossible to do because everything that is printed out
of the digital world into the real world only has
a twenty nine minute lifespan before it completely disintegrates. So
one of the main focuses of all the Trons are
the things that you probably know the most is light bike,

(07:31):
meaning those two motorcycles that are racing against each other
and one of them has to cut the other one off,
and that is the battle that is kind of the
centerpiece of Tron. You've probably seen that if you haven't
even seen either one of these films, well, of course
they have to put light bike in the neutron areas,
and they do, and it's glorious because it's set in

(07:52):
the real world. They're riding around real streets. They're still
doing the light bike stuff. They're tearing up everything, but
it's all in the real world world. And obviously technology
has progressed to a place where it looks good. This
is what I'm talking about. What I'm saying, you live
in a world where the matrix exists, build on top
of that, don't build on top of old trons. You

(08:13):
have better technology, all of that. What does it look
like to be doing this in a world with a
lot better technology than we've ever had. So it looks good.
The light bike looks good, but more generally, all of
it looks good. This is a This is a visual
spectacle in the way the others kind of aspire to be,
but they actually kind of nail it in this one. Visually,

(08:36):
very good. Plot still not there, still not there, I
will say of the three films, this was the best
in my opinion, plot wise and visually. And I think
there's going to be some people who will try to
say that this one's not as good as the originals,
but I think they might be burdened by nostalgia. I

(08:57):
am not. I have seen all three of these moves
this week, and I could say, for me, hands down,
Trona Aries is the best of the three. There are
times in which it feels like a Jared Letto vanity project.
But Greta Lee is such a grounding force in the film,
and obviously love looking at her, love hearing her talk,
love watching her perform, and she grounds the movie in

(09:18):
a way that kind of makes me feel like there
are stakes. There's a little bit of grief happening as well.
While she's also tried to accomplish this technological goal by
changing it from a woman from a man to a woman,
I feel like it also changes kind of the tenor
of the movie. Then you can really start to think

(09:39):
of this woman CEO versus this man CEO. The audience
is going to bring with it all of the baggage
that comes with that as well, which just makes the
movie more interesting. She's also Asian, which again it makes
it more interesting. I still think that there's a lot
of ways in which movies don't get race right, and
obviously I talked about it a lot on leaving the theater,

(10:00):
but here watching this and thinking about her being a
woman in power in this universe, that's means something that's significant,
And even though they don't dwell on it at all
in this movie, I'm kind of thinking back to say, like,
did they explicitly even mentioned it in the movie? It's
still something that comes to bear because it exists. And

(10:20):
I am a human watching this movie, So yeah, outside
of the Jared Leto probably grew up loving Tron and
he's one of the producers on the film, so obviously
as excited about the film in a very specific way.
So he's going to set himself up as the center
of the movie. I didn't feel like he was. I
feel like he is a center of the movie, but

(10:42):
I feel like Greta Lee for me, was who I
was paying attention to the most, who I wanted to
see the most on screen. This film sets up for
a sequel in several ways. There are two pretty important
things that happen towards the end of the film. There
is some fan service that happens that I was able
to pick up on because I've watched the other movies

(11:03):
so recently they meant absolutely nothing to me. But I
know if you are a Tron fan, if you grew
up with it, this will be the culmination of all
of your fandom, watching all of it come together in
this way. Technology, the mixing, the merging of the digital

(11:25):
and the real world, all of it. So with all
of that being said, I don't think this movie was great,
but it was fine. And when I got to the end,
I remember with the setups that they were doing for
future Tron films, I remember thinking, oh, well, I'll I

(11:48):
want to see where this is going. I'll watch those obviously,
which and I would watch this one again. But I
don't love it. I don't love it. So I think
i'll give it a three point twenty five. I'll give
it a three point twenty five of five stars because

(12:10):
it's a little bit better than just your standard would
see this again three star movie. But ah, not quite.
It's it's not I mean, it's feel. It feels fairly
middle of the road to me, more exciting than Tron Legacy,
but still not quite. They've got to work on plot

(12:31):
elements that make this exciting and not just someone getting
in a vehicle and cutting other things and halves with
the like the lasers that come out of the back
of the plane, Like they gotta for me, that's got
to be something different. They've got to keep pushing this
forward so that it's exciting in a real way and
not just visual spectacle over and over again. So yeah,

(12:56):
three point twenty five of five stars and with that
leaving the theater is a production of Oh It's Big
Round Studios. I mixed this episode and currently I am
in sunny Pasadena, California. That's right. I am out here
on a retreat, visiting friends, doing some work stuff. And

(13:17):
while I'm out here, I went to the movies. I'm
recording outside of my hotel and I will likely edit
and post this before I get home. Currently it is Saturday.
I might edit this today. I might edit this on Sunday.

(13:38):
It comes out on Tuesday. But the bottom line is
I'm going to be doing this work while I am
on the road. I planned for it. I actually recorded
the intro already. I have the elements I need to
actually pull this all together, and I feel pretty good
about that. However, that is labor. It is a labor
of love, but it is labor at it. That's important
to you. If you realize the effort that I'm putting

(14:00):
in and you love listening to this show, you should
consider becoming a member of the Patreon Go to patreon
dot com slash leave in the Theater, where you can
have access to an ad free feed. You can have
access to the new podcast. I don't like that you
have access to on the couch which new episodes will
be coming soon, because I have to do a new

(14:20):
one for The Running Man, the original one, because the
new one with Glenn Powell is coming out next month,
so I need to be on top of that. My
new thing is making sure I've watched the old one
while I watch the new one, so I could see
where it sits in comparison and just kind of in
the canon of its own film. This is a lot
of work, it's a lot of effort, it's a lot
of labor. It is a labor of love, but it

(14:41):
is labor. If that means something to you, again, Patreon
dot com slash leave in the Theater, or go to
the link in our show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder,
theme music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information
about tron aries check on our show notes. You can
follow me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok, Threads, or letterbox
at ortz Big Ron that's at O H I T

(15:02):
S b I g R O N. You find out
more about this show and other Arts Big Round Studio
shows by following us on Instagram at Ortz Big Round Studios.
Leaving the theater will be back soon. Thanks for listening.