Tron: Ares crashes

A PG rating drains the thrills in the science-fiction franchise's third film

- John Lui Senior Film Correspondent

The story: Two mega-corporations dominate the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and both have mastered technology that turns digital avatars into real objects. Ares (Jared Leto) is an Al warrior program created by one corporation that controls the digital realm of The Grid. Ares is given the task of hunting Eve (Greta Lee), the head of a rival company, who holds a vital piece of AI code created by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). He is the genius who was digitised into the computer realm in original movie Tron (1982). Chaos erupts in the city as avatars are pitted against flesh-and-blood humans.

When it comes to sentient machines hunting humans, the bar for that science-fiction concept was set astronomically high with the first two Terminator movies (1984 and 1991).

Tron: Ares, the third movie in the franchise after Tron (1982) and Tron: Legacy (2010), has not only co-opted the Terminator concept, but has also chosen to do it in the most difficult way possible: by folding it into a PG-rated product.