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Tron: Ares – when the Digital World Invades Our own

If the cult techno sci-fi films “Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010) are about humans going into “the grid” of the digital world,then the newest installment in this franchise,”Tron: Ares,” is about the digital world invading our own.Allegorically, this feels right for our particular moment, the film depicting AI super soldiers wreaking a path of destruction through human cities, but despite the ethical questions the film presents, it still can’t shake the franchise’s enduring techno-optimism even as it encourages getting “offline.”

This iteration of “Tron” is helmed by Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, with a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow. The Flynn men, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) and his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who starred in “Legacy”) are now out of the picture, and two warring tech companies are locked in an arms race for the future of artificial intelligence. The Kim sisters have taken over the Flynns’ company, ENCOM, while bratty upstart Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) runs Dillinger Systems under the watchful but ultimately powerless eyes of his mother (Gillian Anderson).

While Eve Kim (Greta lee) searches for a message from her late sister – an AI optimist who believed in the tech’s possibility to improve human life – Julian Dillinger is 3D-printing digital tanks and “expendable” super soldiers off his grid for investor presentations. Too bad their real-world lifespan is only 29 minutes.When he gets wind that Eve has located a “permanence code” thanks to her sister’s message, Julian sends his two best soldiers, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to retrieve the code by any means necessary.

If the appeal of the original “Tron” was its groundbreaking computer-generated imagery and forward-thinking concept, then the appeal of “Legacy” was its sleek sci-fi design and digital disco score by Daft punk, offering more of a vibes-based experience than absorbing narrative. “Ares” tackles more