--- title: "TRON: Ares (2025) review" description: "Listen, I am reluctantly a cyberpunk Tron guy. As a millennial who came of age during an optimistic time in tech, the aesthetics of Tron Legacy hit hard when..." url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/tron-ares/ --- ![A still from TRON: Ares (2025)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/tron-ares/backdrop.webp) # TRON: Ares (2025) Oct 14, 2025 | 3 min read | Rated 1.5 out of 5 | Dir. Joachim Rønning Listen, I am reluctantly a cyberpunk Tron guy. As a millennial who came of age during an optimistic time in tech, the aesthetics of Tron Legacy hit hard when that came out in 2010. I was too stoned to remember the plot, but I played that Daft Punk soundtrack endlessly. Tron Legacy remains one of the coolest looking and sounding films of all time despite its horrible, terrible, boring flaws. Let me just say this film looks great. I love the music. That’s about all I can say positively. Tron: Ares is either the same or a massive downgrade in almost every category from Tron Legacy, which already doesn’t have a great legacy or high ranking. The Nine Inch Nails soundtrack is wonderful and I found myself bobbing my head quite a bit, but it just isn’t as good as Daft Punk. Some of the special effects actually looked worse than the 2010 version, which shouldn’t even be possible. But here’s what made me angry: in 2025, mega-corporation Disney is trying to convince us to fall in love with an advanced AI designed for war without making any sort of statement about AI, what it’s being used for, what it could do to us, or how we should think about any of this. They’re asking us to trust big tech to do the right thing. As a software engineer working in tech, I am not optimistic about tech companies doing the right thing with this technology. They will be looking to reap profits and extract value for shareholders without giving anything back. This movie does have things to say -it’s just that they’re just pro-big tech, pro-AI, pro-billionaire. Also, Gary Vaynerchuk is in this movie. If that gives you any idea of what this film represents. The plot is not good. Some of the ADR is Madame Web bad - lips aren’t moving but words are coming out, lots of crazy cutting to mask terrible ADR. That said, I wasn’t there for the plot. I was there for a two-hour Nine Inch Nails electronic dance bio-jazz soundtrack, and I mostly got it. It was basically an extended chase sequence. The most shocking part was how the pacing absolutely fell off a cliff the second Jeff Bridges showed up on screen. Why was that so boring? Bridges was at least bringing some fun and levity to counter Jared Leto’s absolutely flat performance. But jesus - that scene killed any momentum the film had. Speaking of Leto - I know it’s hard to play a robot, but Arnold did it in T2, so I know it’s possible. We’re expected to believe some sort of emotion is happening between the two leads during a single car chase in the middle of the film, and there’s one scene where Leto is so bad at emoting the feeling the director wants that they literally have to Put on screen what his feelings are in his HUD. Leto needs some sort of Tom Cruise-style career change up. Tom Cruise has moved in this direction of embracing his crazy public persona (a la Mission Impossible). And honestly, I think Leto needs to do that. I’m tired of him playing the coolest, smartest, sexiest person in the room. It’s just clearly not working box office wise for him to keep chasing that angle. They’re clearly setting this up for sequels. There are a bunch of ideas that were set up and never paid off, which I hate. The villain is teased to come back for the next one - who cares? This is Disney’s third attempt at making this franchise happen, and it’s looking like it’ll take another 15 years for them to sit on it and wait for another reboot, which I think is hilarious. Disney must really think they just need to get teen boys in seats, and the way to do that is to make mindless capitalist goop that can be injected directly into our arteries. Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/tron-ares/) ## Works on My Machine Get the next post by email. My newsletter covers homelab builds, AI tools and open source, and it goes out when I have something to say. It's free, and you can unsubscribe anytime. You'll get an email to confirm first. ![Joe Karlsson at his desk, chin on hand, with a microphone in front of him](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/about/collage/studio.webp) Joe Karlsson I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side. [More about me →](https://www.joekarlsson.com/about/) [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/joekarlsson.com) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joekarlsson/) | [GitHub](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson)