'Tron: Ares' review: Visually appealing, emotionally unsatisfying

Virtual reality is yesterday’s news in "Tron: Ares," the third installment in Disney’s fitful, 40-year franchise. You might assume the central topic would be AI, but you’d be wrong. Instead, it’s the supersoldier: a fighting machine named Ares, born of computing power and beamed into our human world. He’s disposable and recreatable — and he also seems to be developing feelings.

"I am your creator," booms tech-biz CEO Dillinger (Evan Peters), rendered as an Oz-like head floating in a world of bits and bytes. Ares, played by Jared Leto, asks wonderingly: "Who am I?"

Everything old is new again in "Tron: Ares," from its combination of technophilia and technophobia to its basic premise as old as the Pygmalion myth. It’s also a repeat of the past "Tron" films, in that it’s aesthetically engaging but emotionally blank. Smoothly directed by Joachim Rønning, "Tron: Areas" employs a cool-looking palette of flame-orange light against nighttime cityscapes, and its score by Nine Inch Nails thumps and drones wonderfully while paying homage to ancient synth-gods like Gary Numan, Vangelis ("Blade Runner") and Wendy Carlos (the original "Tron"). But thanks to a clunky screenplay by Jesse Wigutow, "Tron: Ares" gets bogged down in information overload while skimping on things like character, story and reasons for us to care.

The film’s opening is a long stretch of setup, exposition (via the ever-handy newscast montage) and connective franchise tissue: Eve Kim, the young CEO of Encom (played by a serviceable Greta Lee), is searching for the "permanence code," which allows computer-generated objects to survive in the real world for more than a few minutes. Dillinger is after it too, since poor Ares is prone to agonizing disintegration. After a bit of back-and-forth between Eve and Ares — she’s beamed into his world, then both get beamed back into ours — they join forces. The film’s on-the-ground villain, Athena, is another supersolider played with cool disdain by Jodie Turner-Smith.

Leto conjures up a childlike sensitivity that can make Ares endearing. Like Alicia Vikander’s femme-bot in "Ex Machina," like the puppet in "Pinocchio," like the creature in Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" (which we glimpse Eve reading), Ares just wants to live a life of his own. That's a compelling story, but the film spins its wheels for so long that there’s no time left to explore it. Where did Ares’ empathy suddenly come from? Why is he drawn to the Rubik’s Cube? ("I like the ‘80s," he admits.) What makes him yearn to feel a rainstorm, like Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty in "Blade Runner?" As in that film, the creation will meet its creator, but here it’s Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a Dude-like guru in a New Age robe. ("Classic humor, man," Flynn says after Ares cracks a dumb joke.)

At least Ares, like the movie itself, has good taste in music. Cranking up the radio when he hears Depeche Mode’s "Just Can’t Get Enough," he gushes: "I find their brand of pithy, catchy, timeless and true ‘80s electro-pop to be deeply invigorating."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com