“Tron: Ares” is definitely one of the most spectacular eye candies of this year – and that is all. Right from the beginning, the movie dazzles and overpowers us with a series of terrific visual moments worthwhile to watch in big screening room, and I often admired its technical qualities even as observing the story and characters from the distance without much interest or care. Yes, I understand well that both of its predecessors, “Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010), are also basically superficial eye candies, but the movie does not go further than either of them in terms of style and idea, and that is a bit too disappointing to be compensated by those epic visual moments in the film.

In my trivial opinion, its main inherent flaw is that the movie does not try anything fresh and different compared to its 1982 predecessor. Sure, the 1982 film looks quite dated at present, but you can also sense the adventurous spirit of the people who made it with real care and enthusiasm, and that is why it has occupied its own distinctive place in the movie special effects history. In case of “Tron: Legacy”, this redundant sequel is also inherently flawed in terms of story and characters just like the 1982 film, but it has some sense of fun and amusement mainly thanks to the presence of Jeff Bridges, who rendered a bit of personality to both of these two films as simply enjoying himself in the middle of their digital fantasy world.

The story of the movie is set in 15 years after what happened at the end of “Tron Legacy”, and the opening part hurriedly summarizes what happened to a big digital technology company founded by Bridges’ character. Once it was taken by Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and her younger sister, the company rose further as remaining on the top of its field, but it also had to compete a lot with its main opponent company, which is incidentally run by the grandson of late David Warner’s character in the 1982 film. Both Eve and her main competitor have been trying to bring those digital entities into the human world, but there is a serious setback because those digital entities somehow cannot last that long in the human world.

Before dying due to her unfortunate terminal illness, Eve’s sister believed that there is actually a solution hidden somewhere inside the old digital archive belonging to Bridges’ character. When the movie shows Eve visiting her sister’s little private place located somewhere in Alaska, you may become a little nostalgic if, like me, you are old enough to remember those big floppy disks whose storage limit was only around 2 megabytes.

Anyway, the solution turns out to be a short but crucial computer code, and Eve promptly goes back to LA with that computer code hidden in her little memory stick, but, of course, there soon comes the interference from Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the aforementioned grandson of Warner’s characters. He promptly brings the artificial intelligence (AI) security program of the main server of his company into the human world, and Ares (Jared Leto) and several other AI programs are certainly ready to do anything under Julian’s order.

However, around the point when Eve is eventually captured and then transferred into the main server of Dillinger’s company, things get a bit complicated. As experiencing more of the human world, Ares comes to have a sort of glitch which can only be interpreted as curiosity and confusion, so he decides to save Eve at the last minute, and both Dillinger and Ares’ deputy figure, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), are not so amused to say the least.

As the situation surrounding Eve and Ares becomes much more serious than before, the film expectedly throws a number of big action sequences, and they are often quite impressive for their top-notch qualities. Thanks to Oscar-nominated cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and editor Tyler Nelson, these action sequences and the other key scenes feel slick and smooth with many striking visual moments to behold, and the movie often lets itself driven by the aggressively propulsive electronic score by Nine Inch Nails, whose two main members incidentally make a brief cameo appearance later in the film just like Daft Punk did in “Tron: Legacy”.

However, the movie remains thin and hollow in terms of story and character, and many of its main cast members are simply required to fill their respective spots in the film. While it is really nice to him being far more subdued compared to many of his embarrassingly distracting over-the-top performances such as Razzie-winning supporting turn in “House of Gucci” (2021), Jared Leto, who also serves as one of the producers of the film, sometimes seems to be not so committed to his role, and his relatively bland lead performance is frequently overshadowed by several other main cast members. While Greta Lee, who has steadily advanced since her breakthrough performance in Oscar-nominated film “Past Lives” (2023), manages to inject a bit of human warmth to the story despite the lack of chemistry between her and her co-star, Evan Peters willingly chews every moment of his in the film as the main villain of the story, Jodie Turner-Smith did a good job of generating some single-minded intensity to hold our attention. Sadly, Gillian Anderson, who plays Julian’s disapproving mother, simply comes and goes as demanded by her thankless supporting role, while Bridges has another good time again during his expected brief appearance later in the movie.

On the whole, “Tron: Ares”, directed by Joachim Rønning, is not as boring as I worried at first, but it does not surpass either of its two predecessors despite the considerable technical efforts presented on the screen. I am sort of glad that I watched it at a big local IMAX theater, and its strong visual moments may linger on my mind for a while at least, but, folks, this is more or less than what I experienced before with more interest and satisfaction.