Directed by Joachim Rønning | Written by David DiGilio and Jesse Wigutow, based on characters created by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird | ▲▲ | In Cinemas

Is Tron the least loved science fiction franchise to span over 40 years?

I see the cult around its production design, video games, and music — the soundtracks of each of three movies are unimpeachable, a shout out to Wendy Carlos, Daft Punk, and now Nine Inch Nails — but the movies are not classics. People have an affection for the look and sound of them, the universe building, but the characters, the plots, those things don’t tend to linger long in the mind.

Unfortunately, the third entry, coming 43 years after the first and 15 after the second, won’t do much to distinguish itself, either. It’s got the required visual pop, the great score to tie it together, and a lot of moving parts, but even now it’s fading from the memory. It’s something processed, machine-crafted rather than made by people.

We’re another generation past of where we last left our beloved (?) characters. Spoilers coming for Tron: Legacy (2010): gamer-and-digital-whizkid-turned-whiskery-guru Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, too many of his roles now feel infused by The Dude) is trapped on the Grid, the digital world he created inside the computer. Many of his programs have achieved sentience — which was already happening back in Tron, let’s face it — and when his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund) arrives in the digital space, Dad sacrifices himself to give Sam and an isomorphic algorithm named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) the chance to escape to the real world. At the end of that chapter, Sam intended on retaking control of his father’s company, ENCOM, and make the guy who invented the Tron program, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), chairman of the board.

I bring all this up because you’d think a second sequel would make an effort to reconnect with those characters, but no. Sam’s out of the picture, Alan isn’t even mentioned, and his program, Tron, barely is — literally the Luke Skywalker of this series, the franchise is named after him. Instead, ENCOM is now run by Eve Kim (Greta Lee, the best thing in this movie, though her competition isn’t fierce), who is grieving the death of her sister. Across town is Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) — grandson of Ed Dillinger (David Warner), villain of the original movie — and now running a competing tech company. He’s getting military investment in a new project: Ares, a 3D laser-printed soldier (played with his usual smugness by Jared Leto).

The problem with Ares is that he can only exist in the real world for 29 minutes before he derezzes. What Julian and Eve both want is The Permanence Code, which will extend the digital life beyond that half hour. Eve believes it exists in one of Kevin Flinn’s old databases. Why Flinn, who never really had anything to do with taking digital creations to the real world, would have created this bleeding edge tech is something we’re just asked to take on faith. There’s a whole lot of plot here that if you pay any attention to it derezzes in a lump of ash.

Also hanging around at Dillinger Tech is Julian’s mother, Elizabeth, played by Gillian Anderson, who is so poorly lit in some scenes it looks like they’ve digitally altered her eyes. It seems like the only reason she’s in the movie is to give Julian someone to argue with about things he’s going to go ahead and do anyway. From the Grid we also get Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), another aggressive security program working with Ares, though less prone to questioning her role in the larger scheme of things.

That’s the thing — Ares is set up to be the villain of the piece for about 10 minutes, but he clearly resents being called expendable by his maker, and his 29-minute lifespans in the real world introduce him to rain, of which he’s a big fan. That, and learning about Eve is enough to make him turn on Julian and cause all kinds of problems, both in and out of the digital world.

And that’s the thing about Tron: Ares — digital and actual characters are jumping back and forth from RL to cyberspace with dizzying frequency. Some of that is undeniably cool — a lightcycle chase through Vancouver at night is pretty impressive, complete with an Akira skid, as is a scene at a parking garage at what looks a lot like the location used at the start of The Dark Knight.

Greta Lee does her best to provide some flesh-and-blood emotion to this thing. For a brief, promising moment she and Ares have a conversation about her grief that suggests we’re going to explore the kinds of relationships people have with ChatGPT — the potential here for the movie to genuinely resonate with what’s happening right now with AI is huge, but the filmmakers couldn’t care less about that. They just want stuff to glow, go fast, and explode in cute, digital cubes.

And that brings us back to Leto. I recently wrote on this blog I try not to blame the actors when the film doesn’t work because it’s never really their fault — it’s more about the script, the director, and the casting decisions. In this case, with Leto credited as an executive producer, he’s fair game.

Leto has talent, and can be good in the right role — witness his solid supporting parts in Dallas Buyers Club and Blade Runner 2049 — but here he’s a dead pixel in the middle of the movie. You never really care about him or his wish to be a real boy — he’s preternaturally unlikeable. If he and Lee had managed a smidgeon of chemistry maybe there could’ve been a bit of romance? On second thought, it’s a good thing they didn’t attempt it.

At one point Ares finds himself back in the Grid from the original Tron, and as he looks around all they can think of to have him say is, “the 80s.” If he projected any sense of curiosity or wonder he’d be a lot more enjoyable. The movie around him suffers a similar fate.