Film review Tron: Ares: One Transforminator with Pixels please!

Contents

The Disney media group is in crisis. The old franchises are no longer working, the audience is craving something new. But a mere change of brand is not enough. If the same formulaic stories are now told not in the Marvel or Star Wars universe, but in the computer world of Tron, not much is gained.

Tron: Ares has to fulfill great expectations. The original film from 1982 became a cult because it showed computer graphics before computer graphics existed in the cinema. The actors were filmed in black and white; their costumes were drawn with fluorescent lines and highlighted in color—everything by hand, frame by frame. In between, there were the first computer-animated images showing futuristic motorcycle races with three-dimensional vector graphics, which was groundbreaking at the time. Necessity made the designers Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Syd Mead inventive: the sequences were minimalist, edgy, and defined a new visual grammar.

It was not until 28 years later that a sequel followed in 2010 with Tron Legacy. At the time, it was the first blockbuster for Disney to be shot entirely with 3D cameras. The hero Sam switched from monoscopic reality to a stereoscopic 3D arena in the computer – like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when she first saw everything in color in the land beyond the rainbow.

Short process

In Tron: Ares, the computer programs now invade reality. Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), head of the Dillinger Group and grandson of Ed from the first film, shows that crime is in his family's genes. He wants—Palantir sends its regards—The company has created the ultimate weapon for the military from computer programs and presents the astonished generals with a super soldier in the form of “Ares” (Jared Leto). He is supposed to carry out every order, and if he is killed on the battlefield after all—no problem; Dillinger can replace him with a new one straight away.

However, Dillinger conceals one small detail during the presentation: Ares and the other tanks and weapons from the 3D laser printer only have a limited lifespan. This is not four years, as with the Nexus 6 replicants in the Blade Runner universe, but only 29 minutes – then they disintegrate into bits.

Appearance Eve Kim (Greta Lee) – programmer of the “good” Encom corporation, which Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) once headed. In the first few minutes of the film, she discovers an old code belonging to Flynn. The “Permanence Code” stops the self-destruction and allows the computer programs to remain in reality without an expiry date. A trick that Sam had already managed to pull off at the end of Tron Legacy but had probably been forgotten meanwhile.