The first Tron (1982, directed by Steven Lisberger) is a man entering the grid. The second Tron or Tron: Legacy (2010, directed by Joseph Kosinski) is about a son who searches for his Daedalus-figure father. The third Tron or Tron: Ares (2025, directed by Joachim Rønning) is about the virtual entering the actual world.
All three are basically nerd wars. Among the three, the weakest is the third, which is a shame considering that Tron has massive expectations of breathtaking spectacle with a compelling story about encroaching technology and the human body.
The third installment muddies the upgraded spectacle of light-trailing weapons and vehicles into a latent, flimsy philosophy of life. It tries to be The Matrix (1999, directed by the Wachowskis), but instead, it ends up like a glorified nerd battle from Dexter’s Laboratory.
Evan Peters, as a version of Elon Musk in this movie, is a type of billionaire with a sense of magnitude who seeks to control the world (both the actual and the virtual, or the grid). There is too much on-the-nose painting of the big bad white billionaire techno bro versus a recalcitrant group of scrappy programmers who are not white and are women.
The biggest offense is Jared Leto (who produced the movie and, of course, stars as the titular character), who is a program named “Ares,” from the Greek god of war. It is not only offensive to make Ares the one with empathy, and that Athena (the Greek goddess of strategy and wisdom) is a blind follower.
The ultimate offense here is Jared Leto aligning himself as the typical computer glitch in search of its humanity. There is a wide-eyed sense of being in the actual world, which paints Leto like a crazed head of a cult, which he allegedly is in real life. Is this a propaganda film in search of more adherents?
It is hilarious that the life lessons (why would you have this in a Tron movie, I have no idea, because this is not the franchise for saccharine self-help schlock) are deployed by a computer program named after the god of war.
If anything, the Tron franchise is an indicator of where our culture is going: a total amalgamation of the virtual and the actual. But this movie is preaching a holier-than-thou idea that a higher sense of being comes from being off-grid. Yet, even choosing to be off-grid is not an act of rebellion but an act of privilege.
It’s amazing that the entire movie is about privilege and access to information, but it ended up as a soulless sci-fi romp of an even more soulless Burning Man festival.
The best thing about the movie is Nine Inch Nails returning and providing the awesome soundtrack for this movie. The band’s industrial techno-rock provides the ample pulses in an otherwise cold fish of a movie.
Here’s some techno-based self-help for you: The only thing that is mindlessly replicated are brainless viruses. The meaning of mortality is obsolescence. We will all be deleted. Hope that helps.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
