How come Star Wars gets a fuck ton of shitty sequels but the first TRON film in 15 years is a flop? I was waiting for this film since I was a child.
It’s a franchise built on boomer/Gen X understandings of video games and technology. We are in 2025 now, young people don’t give a shit about this stuff, yet they still try to pitch these films to a younger audience. The actual base concept of being trapped inside a video game has been incredibly popular with younger audiences in the last decade or so - look at all the stuff that has come out of Japan. The difference is that those films and TV series used modern video games as their inspiration, so younger audiences intuitively understand and connect with their worlds. TRON as a franchise is like some 50-year-old dad forcing his teenager to play some shitty 2D video game whilst rambling about how much fun he had with it back in the day. Your audience doesn’t care and it’s embarrassing that you haven’t worked this out yet.
How old do you think I am?
Honestly a lot of the problem is that TRON is one of those pregenitor medi that hasn’t adapted over the decades. It has a really solid design that could’ve been updated and adapted with the gaming media as a whole every ten years or so. But unlike say Dune, Mad Max, or westerns/samurai films it didn’t have a timelessness to hold it over. If it had taken a multimedia approach like say star wars it could’ve held up a lot better. But it’s calcified and the people at Disney are too inept to do something truly interesting with it.
Imagine a TRON series that follows different genres and settings that have been popular over the years. The RPG boom of the late 90s, the RTS craze of the early to mid aughts, or the shooter take over of the late aughts early teens. But alas that’s more likely to come out of fucking SAO than TRON at this point.
Yeah, they seem to be stuck between the nostalgia bait of the original and special-effects driven attempts to capture younger, modern audiences. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a good example of how you can update the look and feel of a multi-generational product whilst retaining enough nods to older fans for them to feel included.
It does help that Nintendo out of everyone knows just how bad adapting media can get, just look at the OG live action Mario Bros movie. That’s not even the worst adaptation out there of the characters it’s actually a fun if a bit deranged movie especially when accounting for the CDI games.
The only true Mario in my book is Captain Lou Albano.
This was the big thing for the sequel for me - it kind of just treated it as a fantasy world. An actually interesting film would have been written with the question of how computers have changed in mind. What would the concept of Tron look like in the modern age?
Ralph Breaks The Internet is actually s better sequel…
I liked the previous movies but this just looked like another summer action blockbuster. I don’t see a lot of movies in theaters anymore, though.
I hate Jared leto. Still went to see it because I like every other aspect of the film.
I was overall disappointed. Theres loads of good stuff in it. Like lots. One part I audibly went “oh wow that’s cool” involuntarily. However, the dialogue absolutely ruined it. And the actor for the main female was somehow more wooden than leto.
When usually, for me, Leto is the worst part of any movie he’s in. This time he was fine in it.
Also it ends on cliff hanger. I knew Disney were never going to continue it though like they never properly followed up on legacy. Disney are just too risk averse since to try hard enough to make something good. It’s irritating because almost all of the pieces were there, even with leto.
I’ve seen exactly one thing Leto was in that I thought he was very good in. WeCrashed. He NAILS the whole head-up-his-ass narcissist grifting everyone role. Hmmm…
Now that you mention it he was pretty good as Paul Allen in American Psycho. A despicable white collar criminal who is overtly racist and abuses their secretaries, then ends up murdered by his coworker who is jealous of how good he is at being a piece of shit
That’s the thing, he’s good when he only had to act adjacently to how he is normally. Then he nails it haha
Probably why he nails the performance in Lord of war too.
Fuck Jared Leto.
TIL we all hate Jared Leto now.
He’s been despised for many years now
All my homies hate Jared Leto.
My favorite snarky critic review:
“Forty-three years later, “Tron: Ares” is groundbreaking for being the first “Tron” film with a discernible plot.”
Wasn’t the first about a programmer getting his game back from the evil corporation?
I went to the cinema to see the original and loved it. It blew my mind. It’s iconic.
Then I went to the cinema to watch Legacy and I really enjoyed it. It’s not as good as the original but it still had great aesthetics and the music is brilliant.
Then it was “oooh, they are making another one?!! Yes! I can’t wait to…what? No, wait. Leto? Really? Oh well, maybe if I’m alive when the next one comes out I’ll go see that instead”
The guy, to me, is just plain unlikeable. He’s ok in very small bit parts in films, but when he’s the main character then I can’t watch it. When I go to the cinema I want to be entertained for a few hours, not annoyed.I myself was hyped until I saw Jared Leto, i just don’t wanna see him in anything
Same for me. I didn’t see 2, but this one looked good until I saw Leto was in it, then it was a hard no
I keep hearing that there was no marketing for the movie but I’m not even interested in the movie and I saw a lot of marketing, I assumed it was going to be popular
I haven’t seen it yet, but have heard the plot wasn’t good either. So while he didn’t help, many films have shown even having great actors can’t rescue a bad movie. He’s just the rotting cherry on top of the melted sundae.
I saw it. Honestly it was just ok. Nothing to write home about. The soundtrack is pretty decent if you like NIN. Leto is robotic enough to pull off being a just awakened AI. The plot was so-so. I really, really liked Athena and if they do another Tron I hope she comes back but doubtful that will happen. There were some cool fight scenes and new tech. I wish more of the movie was set on the Grid instead of IRL.
IMHO watch a telesync or wait until it’s streaming.
All I want to know is if the soundtrack is a good as the last one
Ive been told yes, the soundtrack is fantastic
It’s basically NIN Ghosts VII, if you’re into theatrical melancholy ambience as a genre you might like it. However I feel it’s phoned in and mediocre. Not something I’d go back to.
Finally someone who gets it. That NIN album for this movie was just mediocre. They had no reason to be doing this score other than name recognition. The biggest reason Tron: Legacy was so damn successful in my eyes is because that Daft Punk album was a legitimately POWERFUL album. The way they made it feel like a crashing of digital and physical through the use of electronic music interlaced with orchestral/woodwind instruments felt like a leap for movie scores.
I’ve only listened to the album for a bit and not seen the movie yet, but this whole thread pretty much reflects my initial impression. I completely agree with your assessment.
I’ll be honest I was pretty hyped when I heard NIN got the score. I enjoy basically everything they release, I’ve been a long time fan, and I really believe they had the potential to do something great with it… but the end result just wasn’t it.
Maybe it works better in context of the film (I haven’t seen it) but the magic of daft punk’s soundtrack for me was it stood on it’s own merits and transported you directly to the tron universe, no visuals necessary.
It doesn’t even feel fair comparing them.
I remember reading a comment a long time ago that Tron: Legacy is a 125 minute Daft Punk music video and I find it hard to disagree.
With Daft Punk disbanded, I was hoping it’d be handed to Deadmau5. Maybe some Kaskade/Adam K.
But yeah, DP is what made Legacy an earworm that could keep coming back. Basic plot, great visuals, excellent musical integration with the scenes.
Fortnite has had a Daft Punk experience the last couple weeks that feels as close to Legacy as fortnite can be lol. A concert area, a digital shootemup, a dj zone with some maxing capability, and I forget the other one. All it needs are light cycles, but that’s different IP
I figured if they wanted to keep it to a French house duo that they were going to look to Justice. They had been gaining a TON of hype over the last few years so I figured them, I agree Deadmau5, or I would have enjoyed even Skrillex working on it. Someone that was “digital” with the idea being a chance to hear what a computerized mini colony was listening to. I hope this doesn’t kill the Tron franchise entirely and instead makes them realize we want a digital mini world with the sounds and feel of being digital, not in a physical realm.
I’d dare say better. I fucking love Daft Punk though. The original soundtrack by Wendy Carlos is amazing too of course. All TRON soundtracks slap.
Well that seems like a hot take after reading all the other opinions.
I genuinely like it, but it’s nowhere near the same level as the Daft Punk album. That thing was a masterpiece, this one is just good-to-great.
I don’t think so, and that is as a huge NIN fan. It’s ok, it has a Tron feel to it, but nowhere near as good as Daft Punk.
Mostly yes.
I might stream the soundtrack someday, but I’m just not going to pay to see Jared Leto sleepwalk through another performance…
The film was actually pretty good. I get not like Jared Leto but he isn’t enough to ruin a film for me. Then again, I waited for a franchise revival since I was a kid and now that’s dead and done.
Let’s hope they do another one in another 15 years. I think that’s a good cadence for something like Tron (which was in my top 3 favorite movies as a kid). We don’t need to milk the cow dry.
My best friend was looking forward to the movie, until I asked him if Leto being Ares would change his opinion. He was no longer interested from that moment.
Same with me. I somehow didn’t register him in the teaser. As soon as the second trailer came out and I saw him, I concluded I won’t even pirate this one.
By the way, the NIN soundtrack is not good either. Quake’s is much better.
Core memory unlocked
I wish more bands would do the soundtracks to games, if only to see their logo on ammo pickups :/
As a NIN fan, it pains me to say you’re right. Having only heard it in the movie and not standalone, I’d say this was basically NIN’s “paint by numbers” soundtrack. Worse, it actually detracted from some scenes (somewhat specifically, the tracks with vocals).
Of the 19 soundtracks I have by Trent Reznor (& Atticus Ross), I’d probably place this somewhere in the vicinity of #15 (I’d need to give them all a proper listen first though; I don’t really have a current ranking for them. Other than Quake probably being #1.)
Jared Leto signed on in 2017. At the time, it made sense. It’s Disney’s fault for letting production stall for so long.
Jared Leto was in active controversy the near entire time. The only reason it made sense to do, is because it was never going to remove him from the role.
I waited for a franchise revival since I was a kid and now that’s dead and done.
I felt the same way after Tron Legacy. Give it like 15 years and we might get a 3rd soft reboot.
I mean no one likes him but if it was good that wouldn’t be a deal breaker.
It’s not always Jared Leto’s fault when his movies bomb. Easy scapegoat for the everyone else involved, fron the writer to director to producer, to just blame him and pretend no one else fucked it up.
Given some of the bad dialogue (e.g., Ares talking about why he likes Depeche Mode), my impression is that Jared Leto used his role as producer to push the production in certain directions that appealed to his personal preferences. I went in wanting to like the movie (I love Tron: Legacy and NIN so I was definitely excited by certain aspects of the movie), but the movie felt too much like a Leto vanity project. So yeah, I think that, in this case, it’s fair to blame Leto for the movie’s failure, even though, like you say, there were failures across the board, from many people involved.
Seeing how much of an egomaniac the dude is, and straight up like psycho levels of self absorbed, this rings true to me as well. When I saw the poster in theaters I was beside myself as I LOVED Legacy, but the second In started to see the posters with Leto I noped the fuck out. I still had lingering hope, but the lashback from opening week makes it apparent I should wait to stream it.
Star Wars gets a fuck ton of shitty sequels because they make bank at the box office. Same for Jurassic World and any other crappy big budget franchise you can think of.
Tron doesn’t have enough broad appeal to sell tickets on the name alone like Star Wars and Jurassic Park, and if they aimed for that it would lose the charm of being Tron. They could certainly improve attendance with better stories and marketing, but chose to focus on spectacle.
Also, Leto being a prominent character is why I didn’t bother to go see it. He is also the main reason it was even made, so him being cast was inevitable. I’ll watch it when it hits streaming.
