TRON: Ares

"TRON: Ares" is spectacularly designed, swiftly paced, thoughtfully written, and directed within an inch of its neon-hued life.

An AI Jared Leto Discovers His Humanity in a Sleek but Programmatic Sequel

As groundbreaking as the original was, it's a shame this latest effort pulls some of its creative punches — but it is, if nothing else, sufficiently pretty and noisy. It has about as much depth as a floppy disk, but some lovely, shiny CGI and a stunningly ear-shattering score from Nine Inch Nails makes for a fun if forgettable bit of futuristic fluff.

Nine Inch Nails do most of the heavy lifting for a sequel that nobody asked for to a sequel that nobody loved. If only most of the dialogue didn't sound like a glitchy AI wrote it. Tron: Ares is less ponderous than Tron: Legacy, and the music is turned up to 11 in the hope you won't notice all the shortcomings.

The American film with the most unfortunate title in Britain since Our Souls At Night is a balloonishly pompous science-fiction smashathon... Ares makes an even less persuasive job of this than its predecessor, largely because its one good idea comes buried under two hours of bloated and un-absorbing non-plot, populated by some of the most aggressively charmless characters seen in a blockbuster since the Star Wars prequels.

The matrix of pointlessness is reloaded in this mind-bendingly dull sci-fi, more a screensaver than an actual film. Jared Leto is unremittingly, unrelentingly awful here, and there is no drama or jeopardy or human interest anywhere. This franchise now looks about as urgently contemporary as an in-car CD player.