October 20, 2025 – When the first Tron movie came out in 1982 it was technically and visually way ahead of its time. It was not a great movie, but it was a groundbreaking movie. This is the second sequel, following “Tron: Legacy” (2010) and for my money this latest one is the best of the three.

The basic story is well known: artificial intelligences live inside video game structures, and the technology exists to digitize a person and insert them into these computer realms. “Tron: Ares” takes this story idea a step farther so that a digital being can be made flesh and blood in the real world. The only catch is that a being so materialized into the real world can only stay there 29 minutes before falling apart.

Computer programmers are trying to break that 29 minute barrier, thinking it will lead to vast wealth. Julian Dillinger (played by Evan Peters of “X-Men: Apocalypse”) the grandson of Ed Dillinger, the main villain in the first movie, is doomed to be the villain of this movie. He is ruthless and is trying to break the 29 minute barrier by any means necessary.

For some reason no computer programmer can solve this problem, but somehow, years before, Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges, reprising his role from the first two Tron movies) CEO of a computer company, ENCOM, did solve the problem years ago with a program called the permanence code. Both he and the code have long gone missing.

Dillinger, an executive of competing Dillinger Systems, run by his mother, Elisabeth Dillinger (Gillian Anderson of “The X-Files”) is after this code, as is Eve Kim (Greta Lee of “Past Lives”). Eve is the current CEO of ENCOM. Eve and her partner Seth Flores (Arturo Castro of “Road House”) search for the elusive permanence code at a remote Alaskan research station set up by Kevin Flynn decades ago.

Dillinger enlists the aide of artificial intelligence programs to steal the permanence code from ENCOM. His chief program, called Ares, a Master Control Program (played by Jared Leto of “Morbius”) along with other programs, including Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith of “The Independent”) are sent into the real world to steal the permanence code.

Ares, however, turns out to be a better man than his creator, and has ideas of his own. When Dillinger finds out that Ares has turned against him, he promotes Athena to a Master Control Program and instructs her to kill Ares and get the permanence code. However, it turns out that Athena has her own ideas about how to do that. Dillinger learns the hard way about unintended consequences.

This movie requires major suspensions of disbelief because this is all impossible stuff, eons beyond Star Trek tech, for instance. Visually the movie is dazzling, especially in 3D, and it is a great conversion from 2D. The acting is good and the story is compelling.

The story has a lot of relevance to current events because the U.S. is now being run by people like the Dillinger character, with no safeguards. Social media plus artificial intelligence equals Idiocracy. As Sophie McBaine wrote recently (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology) in the Guardian, “Maybe the dawn of the new golden era of stupidity doesn’t begin when we submit to super-intelligent machines; it starts when we hand over power to dumb ones.” This movie rates a B.

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