A highly sophisticated Program, Ares, is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission.

The third movie in the ‘Tron’ series is subtitled ‘Ares’, picking up over a decade since ‘Tron: Legacy’ and nearly 40 years since the original ‘Tron’. This odd little series started with a Disney production in the 1980s at a time when computers and computer games were just starting to become commonplace and there was a sense of unknowing about what the future might hold, whereas today, we live in a world that has moved on vastly in terms of technology. ‘Legacy’ was pretty good, in large part down to a terrific Daft Punk score, so let’s see how ‘Tron: Ares’ stands up.

The plot of this movie involves a battle between a couple of large tech companies to find a ‘thing’ called the permanence code, which appears to be a piece of code that enables things that are created in the virtual world to be then recreated in the modern world as a physical thing. One of the tech companies are the ‘good’ guys (the one led by Greta Lee and Hasan Minhaj), the other are the ‘bad’ guys (the one led by Evan Peters, with Gillian Anderson as his mum looking over his shoulder). The link to the previous ‘Tron’ movies is that finding this code takes place in the ‘grid’, which involves Julian (Evan Peters) character sending a couple of ‘soldiers’ created in his grid after Eve (Greta Lee) with the aim of taking her out. One of these soldiers is the ‘Ares’ of the title, played by a deadpan Jared Leto who plays the performance more low key than I was expecting given some of his recent displays (‘House of Gucci’ especially!).

This is a very loud and noisy movie, filled with action and set to a pulsating Nine Inch Nails score, that while not as memorable as Daft Punk’s score from ‘Tron: Legacy’, was effective and one of the best parts of the movie. Once the frankly overly complicated setup is introduced, it gets down to the action which largely involves chase sequences through Vancouver where Eve is hunted down by a couple of robots who have been ‘physicalised’ from the grid – influence of ‘The Terminator’ is clear in approach if not in quality.

Frankly, ‘Tron: Ares’ is a lot of nonsense with a complex plot that doesn’t really make sense, but in a way I actually quite enjoyed it. It’s definitely a movie to see at the cinema though where it works more as an experience, as expect my opinion would be lesser if I watched it on a small screen at home.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Joachim Rønning

Starring: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6604188/