"Tron: Ares' has style, but its storytelling doesn't compute

Worn-out ideas about sentience and AI plus a nonsensical plot make the film a chore.

- KATIE WALSH

If the cult techno sci-fi films “Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010) were about humans going into the “grid” of the digital world, then the newest installment in this franchise, “Tron: Ares,” is about the digital world invading our own.

Allegorically, this feels right for our particular moment, the film depicting AI super-soldiers wreaking a path of destruction through human cities, but despite the ethical questions the film presents, it still can’t shake the franchise’s enduring techno-optimism (or inevitability), even as it encourages getting “offline.”

This iteration of “Tron” is helmed by Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, with a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow. The Flynn men, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) and his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who starred in “Legacy”), are now out of the picture, and two warring tech companies are locked in an arms race for the future of artificial intelligence.

Eve Kim (Greta Lee of “Past Lives”) is at the reins of the Flynns’ company, ENCOM, while bratty upstart Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) runs Dillinger Systems under the watchful eye of his mother (Gillian Anderson).

While Eve searches for a message from her late sister, an AI optimist who believed in the tech’s possibility to improve human life, Julian is 3D-printing digital tanks and “expendable” super-soldiers for investor presentations.