"The original 1982 film was for years a pop-culture bookend: The tale of a video-game developer who gets zapped into his own software, it was the first movie to significantly use CGI in its production. As visually groundbreaking as it was, is also narratively puzzling-built on an internal logic of digital life that required lots of exposition. It was a box-office disappointment, seemingly destined to be a footnote in cinematic history."
"Ares does make a heroic effort to refer back to the two prior films: 15 years after Legacy, sentient computer programs now run amok on metropolitan streets, unleashed from their digital compound. In some ways, Ares feels responsive to real-life headlines that are consumed with whatever staggering technological leap that machine intelligence might make next-though the movie doesn't have much of a take on AI beyond "It would be nice if it were good, and not bad.""
The 1982 Tron pioneered cinematic CGI with a premise about a video-game developer digitized into his software, yet its narrative relied on heavy exposition and underperformed commercially. Two sequels followed, including 2010's Tron: Legacy and the new Tron: Ares. Ares updates the franchise's neon visuals and cartoony virtual designs but pairs dazzling imagery with a muddled, 'rock-brained' screenplay. The film references prior entries, placing events 15 years after Legacy and depicting sentient programs roaming metropolitan streets after escaping a digital compound. The movie nods to contemporary AI anxieties but offers little substantive viewpoint beyond superficial spectacle and large glow-stick battles.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]