Jonah Naplan October 12, 2025
Stories like “Tron: Ares” have been told since long before motion pictures were a thing. Perhaps one of the most famous earliest examples is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a classic tale of a creation developing its own mindset and complex set of feelings and rebelling against its creator. In the last 100 years or so, this concept has evolved into media PSAs about how artificial intelligence is the next worthy candidate for intellectual independence and how our lives will be taken over by robots if we take the wrong step. “Tron: Ares” takes this notion to the next level, detailing the exploits of a futuristic super-soldier within a computer program who resists the control of his human manufacturer. It’s sort of a science-"non-fiction" movie; it creates a fantasy world that’s as believable as a video game, but its messaging and ideas feel very real.
No, I wasn’t paid to endorse this movie. And I assure you that any other critic who gave “Tron: Ares” a rave review was not, either. Complaints about the film have largely cited the lack of original storytelling beats as the major issue, and that criticism is indeed irrefutable. But like the recent “How to Train Your Dragon” remake, I was fully immersed in this film’s commitment to its cinematic escapism and it marvelously succeeds on that front. Since the very first one in 1982, the “Tron” movies have been subject to condemnation because of how they prioritize style over substance. I see them as films to experience not nitpick. In this way, “Ares” falls perfectly in line with its predecessors by being a sublime visual and aural experience that never falls short of aweing you. It actually fixes a lot of my problems with “Tron: Legacy” (one of the very first examples of the modern “legacyquel” from 15 years ago) in the consistently entertaining way that it explores important themes without ever being unnecessarily convoluted or hard to follow.
Directed by Joachim Rønning, “Tron: Ares” sort of disregards the ending of “Legacy,” which suggested that if there were to be any future movies in this franchise, they’d probably continue to follow the adventures of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund)—son of “TRON” video game creator Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges)—and his computerized love interest Quorra (Olivia Wilde). Instead, it ret-cons and reshapes the narrative towards the new CEO of the Master Control Program Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who has continued the longtime technological rivalry with Flynn’s ENCOM Corporation by creating Ares (Jared Leto), a digital assassin that does all of his bidding. Dillinger’s mother Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson) was MCP’s former CEO, and is understandably wary about the profit-focused direction her eccentric, people-pleasing son has taken the company by negotiating to sell Ares as well as his equally capable counterpart Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to the U.S. military.
There’s only one foreseeable problem with these nearly unstoppable machines: MCP hasn’t quite cracked the code for permanence yet. Ares and Athena only exist for 29 minutes at a time before they disintegrate and are beamed back to life at headquarters. Supposedly, this code is buried somewhere on one of Flynn’s servers, but Dillinger is competing with ENCOM head Eve Kim (Greta Lee, who was so brilliant in “Past Lives”) to hunt it down. It’s not really a spoiler to say that by the end of the movie, Ares will have gone on a journey of self-discovery to ultimately realize that impermanence is what makes life so valuable. But it takes a moment to get there, and the code acts as the movie’s MacGuffin that, like the central object in the two most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies, has the potential to shake up the technological fabric of the world in a devastating way. Artificial intelligence is the subject but not the villain in this one; the pernicious entity is instead a human being who wants to use these tools to turn a profit through unethical means.
The chase for the code is exhilarating as much as it is immersive. A key attraction of the “Tron” movies has always been the Light Cycles (such that they inspired their own ride at Disney World), and there’s a phenomenal sequence in “Ares” where the two assassins are hot on the heels of Eve as she zooms through the streets of San Francisco, dodging cars and pedestrians alike. It’s truly best-in-the-franchise stuff. The overlap between the real and the digital world fuses together so well in a way these movies have never explored before, compliments of the revelatory camerawork by Jeff Cronenweth, who did the cinematography for several of David Fincher’s most iconic movies, including “Fight Club,” “Gone Girl,” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” His visualizations here of the characters as moving components on the massive network of circuit boards that make up the cityscape is marvelous to behold on the big screen.
The astounding visual language is accompanied by a propulsive score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, otherwise known as Nine Inch Nails, which gives the whole movie a mesmerizing atmosphere, like something warped in from the future that we won’t be able to fully appreciate until 20 years from now. Similar to their versatile work in “Challengers” and “Soul,” NIN’s score establishes “Tron: Ares” as something ethereal and, indeed, out-of-this-world. If you want to experience this film again and again, streaming the score over and over will get you halfway there.
Now let us address the elephant in the room. You couldn’t call “Tron: Ares” the “first of its kind” by any logic whatsoever. This is a film that borrows all of its plot beats and thematic ideas from pieces of media that already exist, anywhere from films like “The Terminator,” “I, Robot,” and the original AI cautionary tale “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to novels like, of course, Shelley’s original, but also Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. Screenwriter Jesse Wigutow takes what we already know—artificial intelligence can be used for immoral purposes and could destroy the world if put into the wrong hands—and places it within the context of a futuristic fable about societal idealism and conditioning. Admittedly, Wigutow doesn’t make it terribly deep. The moments where Ares, a human-like generative android who takes commands from an off-screen Dillinger, scrolls through Eve’s social media posts and saved video files, discovering sprinkles of human emotion, or stands outside in the rain—contemplating one of the novelties of “real life,” are frustratingly baseline. But the sensational visual and auditory experience of watching “Tron: Ares” makes up for those shortcomings.
More about Ares: Leto has always felt like an actor who awkwardly stumbled into fame accidentally, and is now just going along with his quirky schtick because it earns him roles. He works in this movie because the character matches his irreverent, out-of-place vibe. The way he delivers lines completely deadpan, sort of like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800, is comedy gold when the movie finally earns it. And, also like Arnie, he knows how to make a dramatic entrance before a smackdown in a way that will give the audience goosebumps. After the disasters that were “Morbius” and “Haunted Mansion” (and does anybody remember him in “House of Gucci”?), this finally feels like a role he can be satisfied with.
Everybody else is solid, too. Lee is a strong, resourceful heroine who’s entirely competent in the face of danger while staying charming and likable. And Turner-Smith manages to be intimidating all the way up to the very end when the movie finally offers her a shred of vulnerability. Peters is appropriately snobbish as the quintessential tech bro proud of the havoc he’s wreaked, and Bridges’ brief appearance as Kevin Flynn, trapped inside the original “TRON” grid, is an endearing reminder of how far we’ve come since the 80s. It’s one of those special films where everybody involved was on the same page about the kind of movie they were making, and it shows in their tireless commitment to playing the characters, creating the special effects, and building this fantastical world that blurs the line between reality and fiction.
“Tron: Ares” won’t win any big prizes for being a blast (though I’d argue it should be in contention for Best VFX at the Oscars this year), but it will leave an impression as one of the most instantly rewatchable movies of 2025, worth experiencing again and again just to get a hit of those cinematic endorphins. Watching “Tron: Ares,” I didn’t expect to be so transported, but by the time it ended, I had gone on a thrilling journey. Movies are funny like that sometimes.
Now playing in theaters.