The Return of Ares Explained (to the best of our ability)

This article contains Spoilers About “Tron: Ares.”

“Tron” has always been one of Disney’s strangest, yet visually striking franchises. The 1982 classic and its 2010 legacy sequel were largely experimental “what ifs” about a digital dimension beyond our own. That can produce societies, religion and the concept of free will. We can only dream of the technological possibilities on the horizon, and with the alarming rise in AI breakthroughs, “Tron: Ares” seemed like a great opportunity to really expand on its notions of the convergence of worlds. Unfortunately, The Joachim Rönning-directed entry is a mindless sequel This is more concerned with moving thinly written characters from point A to point B without much introspection towards the implications of such a merge.

“Ares” takes place 15 years after “Tron: Legacy,” as technology companies ENCOM and Dillinger Systems compete to perfect a 3D printing machine that can successfully pull digital constructs from their servers. At the heart of this conflict is Ares (Jared Leto), the master control program who is weary of being one of Julian Dillinger’s (Evan Peters) expendable soldiers. Anything transferred from the network can only last up to 29 minutes before the decision is overturned, leading to an escalation in the company’s war to regain the perpetual code. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) finds out in one of the files of former company founder Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), but breaks it when Ares first confronts her. By refusing orders to retrieve Eve’s inner permanence code, Ares helps Eve escape Dillinger’s Grid into the real world where they seek to upload Ares to Flynn’s original Game Grid for backup.

After being digitalized, Ares comes face to face with Flynn himself. Ares doesn’t offer easy answers about how he survived Legacy, but we can make some assumptions.

At the end of “Legacy”, Flynn saves his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) by reintegrating with Claw (Ancient Bridges), thus wiping out himself, the rogue AI program, and his entire army. It creates a partial clean slate of the network. So, if Flynn is definitely dead, how is he in Ares? For starters, the network we see in “Legacy” was a separate experimental center on a private server in the computer genius’s basement. ENCOM and Dillinger Systems both have their own mainframes, but the bridges seen here should come as no surprise to those who saw the original “Tron.” Keeping Flynn’s office near the top of ENCOM headquarters, the original game’s grid in which he becomes trapped is also a completely different space.

Ares seeks to explain Flynn as a digital spirit more than anything else. I suppose this would partly make sense since he was the one who initially built it in the 1980s. It’s easy to imagine Flynn downloading a program that looks like him. What makes it really weird is that he’s cast as present-day Bridges, a guy who looks even older than he did in “Legacy.” Perhaps the most plausible explanation for this lies in Ronning’s unwillingness to address the dilemma of de-aging with a ten-foot pole. Hence, this Flynn is a holographic spirit that gives Ares the symbol of stability he desires. In this way, Bridges is less a real character than a plot device.

Disney was initially slated to hide Bridges in the marketing for “Ares,” however The OG “Tron” star forced his hand and revealed he was being included in the new film anyway. What followed was A movie called “Flynn Lives” Which sparked the return of the big character. However, in the movie, Flynn isn’t really a big character. There is a moment when Ares asks how he lives, and the digital ghost replies, “I exist in this moment because you exist.” Grid’s Flynn is merely a reflection of the existence of the subprogram. It’s the “Tron” equivalent of “Oh, don’t worry about it.” Through a more pessimistic lens, it comes down to being one of the film’s many easy nostalgia distractions that prevent the film from addressing it.

Ares is keen to point out all of the original “Tron” iconography including the primitive grid layout, light cycles, Wendy Carlos scores, and of course, Bit. You know you’re in the OG gaming network because the crack in the light cycle arena is still there. Flynn essentially passes the baton to Ares to continue Tron’s legacy. It’s unfortunate that Leto is the new face of this franchise considering he’s strong on the board hereNot even in a way that reflects his personality. The most notable similarities can be compared between the return of Flynn and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy. The exiled master of their craft sacrifices himself to allow the new generation to build a new future, only to appear in the next film as a white-robed apparition trapped in a unique landscape born of… Sanctification of nostalgia.

“Tron: Ares” is now showing in theaters nationwide.