Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, a video game developer named Kevin
Speaker 1: Flynn was transported to the digital world, where he joined
Speaker 1: to fight against the Master Control program. The movie was
Speaker 1: called Tron. In twenty ten, Tron Legacy saw Kevin Flynn's
Speaker 1: son Sam back in the digital world, fighting his father's
Speaker 1: digitized likeness. Now, in twenty twenty five, this universe is
Speaker 1: introduced to artificial intelligence. In tron Aries, I'm Ronald Young Junior,
Speaker 1: and I'm leaving the theater. All right. This is Ronald,
Speaker 1: and I am leaving the theater after seeing tron Ares.
Speaker 1: Tron Aries written by Jesse Wigato, directed by Yoakum Ronning,
Speaker 1: starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jody Turner, Smith Hassen,
Speaker 1: minhaj Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges
Speaker 1: and per Usual. For a complete cast listing, you can
Speaker 1: go to the link in our show notes. It is
Speaker 1: just me today, all right. Tron Aries is the third
Speaker 1: in the tron series. I believe there's also a spinoff
Speaker 1: animated television series as well, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: that is still a part of the continuity here. It
Speaker 1: is still made by Disney, so I think it just
Speaker 1: might kind of be an offshoot of the Tron series,
Speaker 1: Whereas this is the third in the main canon, if
Speaker 1: you will, of the Tron series that began in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. I want to say I believe it is
Speaker 1: two years older than me. It had a sequel called
Speaker 1: Tron Legacy, which I believe came out in twenty ten
Speaker 1: or eleven right around there, and this is the third one. Now,
Speaker 1: I had seen trom Legacy years ago when it came
Speaker 1: out in twenty ten or eleven. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: Tron Legacy was the first movie I watched on my
Speaker 1: brand new flat panel television in my first apartment I
Speaker 1: lived in alone, and I remember I watched it and
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it at the time. If I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: I think what I enjoyed at the time was having
Speaker 1: a flat panel television for the first time and being
Speaker 1: in my own apartment. Because this past week, while on
Speaker 1: the plane, I watched both Tron and Tron Legacy, and
Speaker 1: I did not like either one of these films. I
Speaker 1: did not like them. Tron is It's a valiant effort,
Speaker 1: and I think it is a technological step forward for
Speaker 1: film in terms of special effects and what they were
Speaker 1: doing in order to accomplish the making of the digital world.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know what Tron is, let me
Speaker 1: just take a step back. It is a series about
Speaker 1: computer program who essentially are getting continuously sucked into the
Speaker 1: digital world, where they then have to accomplish a certain
Speaker 1: set of tasks in order to get out of the
Speaker 1: digital world. The name Tron comes from the fact that
Speaker 1: in the first film, and I guess also in Tron Legacy,
Speaker 1: that there is a character named Tron who is a
Speaker 1: security program within the computer meant to fight against the
Speaker 1: Master Control, which is the villain in the first film,
Speaker 1: along with the rival computer program. It's honestly, none of
Speaker 1: this is important because these movies aren't terribly plot driven
Speaker 1: or plot heavy at all. They're really about the visual
Speaker 1: and technological spectacle. This was the case in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two because these films were one hundred percent bad in
Speaker 1: terms of what it takes to actually write and execute
Speaker 1: a movie. The writing is bad. There's large swaths of
Speaker 1: the movie where I'm uncertain as to what we are
Speaker 1: doing or waiting for. We are in the digital world constantly.
Speaker 1: In Tron and Tron Legacy in a way that is
Speaker 1: extremely boring to me, and especially watching Tron Legacy, having
Speaker 1: grown up with the Matrix, not with Tron, but I've
Speaker 1: grown up with the Matrix. I already know what it
Speaker 1: looks like to be in the digital world versus the
Speaker 1: real world, and it feels like, especially after Tron Legacy
Speaker 1: came out, when you have the Matrix, which already existed,
Speaker 1: it feels like it would be very, very easy to
Speaker 1: make a good Tron movie in the shadow of the Matrix.
Speaker 1: But no, they did not. Tron Legacy not very good.
Speaker 1: All of that being said, both between those two movies,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure I was prepared walking into
Speaker 1: Tron ares My biggest critique of Tron and Tron Legacy
Speaker 1: is that there's too much going on in the digital world.
Speaker 1: It's boring. I don't care about it. It's not interesting.
Speaker 1: They have not done a good job of representing it.
Speaker 1: It's just not a great place to be. Generally, they
Speaker 1: fix that in tron Areas and tron Areas. We spend
Speaker 1: not much time in the digital world at all, and
Speaker 1: one of the main plot points early in the film
Speaker 1: is about three D printing, which is bringing the digital
Speaker 1: elements out of the digital world into the real world,
Speaker 1: and I liked that a lot better. I just feel
Speaker 1: like it makes for a better movie. I don't there's
Speaker 1: more things happening in this real world than in the
Speaker 1: digital world. We are dealing with the consequences of what
Speaker 1: of the programming that folks are doing, and they're bringing
Speaker 1: those problems out in front of everyone, which for me,
Speaker 1: feels more realistic. It feels like there's more for a
Speaker 1: plot to do with that scenario. In this one, the
Speaker 1: main plot of the film is that there is a AI
Speaker 1: program called Ares that essentially become sentient and decides that
Speaker 1: it wants to permanently live in the real world. But
Speaker 1: that's impossible to do because everything that is printed out
Speaker 1: of the digital world into the real world only has
Speaker 1: a twenty nine minute lifespan before it completely disintegrates. So
Speaker 1: one of the main focuses of all the Trons are
Speaker 1: the things that you probably know the most is light bike,
Speaker 1: meaning those two motorcycles that are racing against each other
Speaker 1: and one of them has to cut the other one off,
Speaker 1: and that is the battle that is kind of the
Speaker 1: centerpiece of Tron. You've probably seen that if you haven't
Speaker 1: even seen either one of these films, well, of course
Speaker 1: they have to put light bike in the neutron areas,
Speaker 1: and they do, and it's glorious because it's set in
Speaker 1: the real world. They're riding around real streets. They're still
Speaker 1: doing the light bike stuff. They're tearing up everything, but
Speaker 1: it's all in the real world world. And obviously technology
Speaker 1: has progressed to a place where it looks good. This
Speaker 1: is what I'm talking about. What I'm saying, you live
Speaker 1: in a world where the matrix exists, build on top
Speaker 1: of that, don't build on top of old trons. You
Speaker 1: have better technology, all of that. What does it look
Speaker 1: like to be doing this in a world with a
Speaker 1: lot better technology than we've ever had. So it looks good.
Speaker 1: The light bike looks good, but more generally, all of
Speaker 1: it looks good. This is a This is a visual
Speaker 1: spectacle in the way the others kind of aspire to be,
Speaker 1: but they actually kind of nail it in this one. Visually,
Speaker 1: very good. Plot still not there, still not there, I
Speaker 1: will say of the three films, this was the best
Speaker 1: in my opinion, plot wise and visually. And I think
Speaker 1: there's going to be some people who will try to
Speaker 1: say that this one's not as good as the originals,
Speaker 1: but I think they might be burdened by nostalgia. I
Speaker 1: am not. I have seen all three of these moves
Speaker 1: this week, and I could say, for me, hands down,
Speaker 1: Trona Aries is the best of the three. There are
Speaker 1: times in which it feels like a Jared Letto vanity project.
Speaker 1: But Greta Lee is such a grounding force in the film,
Speaker 1: and obviously love looking at her, love hearing her talk,
Speaker 1: love watching her perform, and she grounds the movie in
Speaker 1: a way that kind of makes me feel like there
Speaker 1: are stakes. There's a little bit of grief happening as well.
Speaker 1: While she's also tried to accomplish this technological goal by
Speaker 1: changing it from a woman from a man to a woman,
Speaker 1: I feel like it also changes kind of the tenor
Speaker 1: of the movie. Then you can really start to think
Speaker 1: of this woman CEO versus this man CEO. The audience
Speaker 1: is going to bring with it all of the baggage
Speaker 1: that comes with that as well, which just makes the
Speaker 1: movie more interesting. She's also Asian, which again it makes
Speaker 1: it more interesting. I still think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways in which movies don't get race right, and
Speaker 1: obviously I talked about it a lot on leaving the theater,
Speaker 1: but here watching this and thinking about her being a
Speaker 1: woman in power in this universe, that's means something that's significant,
Speaker 1: And even though they don't dwell on it at all
Speaker 1: in this movie, I'm kind of thinking back to say, like,
Speaker 1: did they explicitly even mentioned it in the movie? It's
Speaker 1: still something that comes to bear because it exists. And
Speaker 1: I am a human watching this movie, So yeah, outside
Speaker 1: of the Jared Leto probably grew up loving Tron and
Speaker 1: he's one of the producers on the film, so obviously
Speaker 1: as excited about the film in a very specific way.
Speaker 1: So he's going to set himself up as the center
Speaker 1: of the movie. I didn't feel like he was. I
Speaker 1: feel like he is a center of the movie, but
Speaker 1: I feel like Greta Lee for me, was who I
Speaker 1: was paying attention to the most, who I wanted to
Speaker 1: see the most on screen. This film sets up for
Speaker 1: a sequel in several ways. There are two pretty important
Speaker 1: things that happen towards the end of the film. There
Speaker 1: is some fan service that happens that I was able
Speaker 1: to pick up on because I've watched the other movies
Speaker 1: so recently they meant absolutely nothing to me. But I
Speaker 1: know if you are a Tron fan, if you grew
Speaker 1: up with it, this will be the culmination of all
Speaker 1: of your fandom, watching all of it come together in
Speaker 1: this way. Technology, the mixing, the merging of the digital
Speaker 1: and the real world, all of it. So with all
Speaker 1: of that being said, I don't think this movie was great,
Speaker 1: but it was fine. And when I got to the end,
Speaker 1: I remember with the setups that they were doing for
Speaker 1: future Tron films, I remember thinking, oh, well, I'll I
Speaker 1: want to see where this is going. I'll watch those obviously,
Speaker 1: which and I would watch this one again. But I
Speaker 1: don't love it. I don't love it. So I think
Speaker 1: i'll give it a three point twenty five. I'll give
Speaker 1: it a three point twenty five of five stars because
Speaker 1: it's a little bit better than just your standard would
Speaker 1: see this again three star movie. But ah, not quite.
Speaker 1: It's it's not I mean, it's feel. It feels fairly
Speaker 1: middle of the road to me, more exciting than Tron Legacy,
Speaker 1: but still not quite. They've got to work on plot
Speaker 1: elements that make this exciting and not just someone getting
Speaker 1: in a vehicle and cutting other things and halves with
Speaker 1: the like the lasers that come out of the back
Speaker 1: of the plane, Like they gotta for me, that's got
Speaker 1: to be something different. They've got to keep pushing this
Speaker 1: forward so that it's exciting in a real way and
Speaker 1: not just visual spectacle over and over again. So yeah,
Speaker 1: three point twenty five of five stars and with that
Speaker 1: leaving the theater is a production of Oh It's Big
Speaker 1: Round Studios. I mixed this episode and currently I am
Speaker 1: in sunny Pasadena, California. That's right. I am out here
Speaker 1: on a retreat, visiting friends, doing some work stuff. And
Speaker 1: while I'm out here, I went to the movies. I'm
Speaker 1: recording outside of my hotel and I will likely edit
Speaker 1: and post this before I get home. Currently it is Saturday.
Speaker 1: I might edit this today. I might edit this on Sunday.
Speaker 1: It comes out on Tuesday. But the bottom line is
Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing this work while I am
Speaker 1: on the road. I planned for it. I actually recorded
Speaker 1: the intro already. I have the elements I need to
Speaker 1: actually pull this all together, and I feel pretty good
Speaker 1: about that. However, that is labor. It is a labor
Speaker 1: of love, but it is labor at it. That's important
Speaker 1: to you. If you realize the effort that I'm putting
Speaker 1: in and you love listening to this show, you should
Speaker 1: consider becoming a member of the Patreon Go to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash leave in the Theater, where you can
Speaker 1: have access to an ad free feed. You can have
Speaker 1: access to the new podcast. I don't like that you
Speaker 1: have access to on the couch which new episodes will
Speaker 1: be coming soon, because I have to do a new
Speaker 1: one for The Running Man, the original one, because the
Speaker 1: new one with Glenn Powell is coming out next month,
Speaker 1: so I need to be on top of that. My
Speaker 1: new thing is making sure I've watched the old one
Speaker 1: while I watch the new one, so I could see
Speaker 1: where it sits in comparison and just kind of in
Speaker 1: the canon of its own film. This is a lot
Speaker 1: of work, it's a lot of effort, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of labor. It is a labor of love, but it
Speaker 1: is labor. If that means something to you, again, Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash leave in the Theater, or go to
Speaker 1: the link in our show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder,
Speaker 1: theme music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information
Speaker 1: about tron aries check on our show notes. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok, Threads, or letterbox
Speaker 1: at ortz Big Ron that's at O H I T
Speaker 1: S b I g R O N. You find out
Speaker 1: more about this show and other Arts Big Round Studio
Speaker 1: shows by following us on Instagram at Ortz Big Round Studios.
Speaker 1: Leaving the theater will be back soon. Thanks for listening.