TRON: Ares was by far the biggest disappointment of the year thus far for me. I was introduced to the series a few months ago by a friend, and have been a big fan since. The original Tron was dated but so quirky and interesting that I couldn’t help but enjoy it, and Legacy had one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a movie, and some of the best visual effects I’ve ever seen in a movie, not even just for its time either. Both films were just so interesting when it came to the visuals, especially since they were so unique for when they came out. They also had interesting lore and stories that nicely complemented the visuals, too.

Unfortunately, TRON: Ares just doesn’t give me that feeling of satisfaction that was so prominent in the series’ first two films. First off, it has an incredibly shallow story that doesn’t give you anything interesting or emotionally weighty to it.  Only one of the characters really has a backstory, and it’s focused on so little that it’s hard to even have time to truly care and get attached to that character. Also, Jared Leto’s Ares is an artificial being and the central character alongside Greta Lee’s Eve, and he is, to put it simply, uninteresting and has no personality. I know that makes sense for being an A.I., but there have been plenty of movies that have proven that A.I. characters can have depth, such as Blade Runner for example.

The villain played by Evan Peters is just the same way as Ares. You never understand him even by the end because the film never makes it believable why he’s doing what he’s doing. He can’t even get away by simply being a “pure evil” character because he’s just not interesting enough whatsoever. He also seems to kind of come in and out of the movie randomly which I thought was really odd and strange.

My biggest criticism of the story was that I really wasn’t satisfied at all with the new lore. What makes this so unfortunate is that the premise itself, where instead of going into the world of Tron, the world of Tron comes to us, is so interesting and a perfect idea and opportunity to add new lore to the franchise. Tron introduced us to a new and interesting world, while Legacy expanded that world into something entirely new. The writers had all of the opportunity in the world to expand all of that even further simply by its awesome premise alone, but it was never fully realized. I never felt like they added anything all that significant other than some new visual effects, or at least significant enough to warrant an almost two hundred million dollar movie that probably won’t even come close to breaking even, even if it were acclaimed. The world of Tron still feels the same by the end.

The fact that the world of Tron came into our world at all was also not done well at all. The whole plot felt incredibly small and tied to one city, whereas I felt as if it should have been more grandscale and epic. The stakes weren’t ever high enough not only because of this, but because of the lack of characters I cared about and a story/plot that I cared about.

Now with the positives, this section is going to be a little more interesting because I’m kind of more mixed about it for one big reason: the best things about TRON: Ares were few and far between. I’ll talk about the obvious two first, starting with the visual effects and action. There wasn’t a single element of CGI that I thought looked “ugly” or “out of place,” and some of the new visual effects stuff was awesome and gorgeous. The action was also just as exhilarating as ever, but like I said, there wasn’t much action or new visuals at all when it comes to the actual percentage of the runtime. I kept waiting for action, but there really wasn’t enough of it and the stuff we did get was very short run for the most part.

The other obvious element of the movie that I liked but was also disappointed about was the soundtrack. I don’t know much about Nine Inch Nails, but I was immediately sold when I heard the main tracks from the trailers. I have to say though, completely different from Legacy, the soundtrack wasn’t really in the movie all that much other than in the far few action scenes we got. Like I said, I loved the soundtrack, but I wasn’t satisfied by it at all because there wasn’t even close to enough of it.

The last positive I have has to do with how they call back to previous stuff from the series. I can’t speak much on it at all without spoiling stuff, but they did something with the visuals that I thought was really cool and definitely had me grinning while I was watching it. It was something that was sort of hinted at in the trailers, but I never really caught onto, so I was pleasantly surprised by it.

So really when it comes to it, it’s simply just a franchise entry that doesn’t warrant it’s own existence. I really hope they try again with this series, but I also really hope it’s not related to this film.