Disney Reportedly Pulls the Plug on TRON 4 After TRON: ARES Crashes at the Box Office, Is Jared Leto to Blame?

Disney pulls the plug on Tron after it bombs at the box office.

Disney puts future Tron films on hold after Legacy disappoints.

Disney cancels Tron Uprising after one season due to poor viewership.

Disney cancels Tron 4 after Ares underperforms…

I’m pretty sure the problem is Disney.

Or Tron itself. It's also named in every sentence of yours...
- It's the same problem that every mid 80's zeitgeist based resurrected IP faces:
  The zeitgeist the movie is based on has been dead for at least 30 years.
  For Tron, personal computers aren't new anymore. The concept of a digital city is so much less exciting once you've lived with the internet for 20 years and heard mark Zuckerberg wank endlessly about the "metaverse."
- I liked Tron and Tron Legacy (haven't watched Ares), but Disney has spent the last decade plus killing good franchises with shitty scripts, so I'm leaning more towards Disney being the problem.
- The concept of Tron,is a good one. And the first movie, while not perfect, is pretty good. Theres enough there, that Disney could have created its very own Star Wars franchise. Instead they bought Star Wars, and gave it the Tron treatment to make sure that died as well.
  The problem is very much Disney. With Marvel, they got the right creatives together to make mostly solid movies that people liked. Over the past 5 years, they have pissed all that away with being Disney things. And a few months ago, I read that they were looking for another ip to buy so they could bring the gen Z male audience back... Which is telling as fuck, when they have Marvel and Star Wars, but dont know how to make them appeal to the younger male audience so much that they need to buy another IP.
- The original Tron apparently actually made decent money (which is weird because everyone just assumed it bombed?)
  Legacy made $410m on a $170m budget.
  The problem is legitimately Disney and Leto...
  And also Legacy was in 2010 so what exactly is happening here? You can't turn this into some kind of decades-long franchise with a doofus like Leto as the star, it's a "well the last one was kind of fun" movie you can't have a sex pest cultist as your face while trying to rake in casual nostalgia cash.
Leto certainly didn't help, but historically this is how this is supposed to go.

I 1000000000% didn't and won't go see this movie because of him.

And after cancelling D+ and Hulu last month because they fucked up the Kimmel thing, it may be years before I see it, who knows!

But, initially, when I saw Leto in the trailer that was a quick "nope" from me, dawg.

Creativity at disney is moribund and nothing can fix it without getting rid of the old dead growth. Get rid of iger and similar execs like kennedy. They degrade any project. They dont love the products they produce. I remember one time kennedy commenting on star wars that there wasn't enough source material. Her problem was she would have to pay for it and thinks the writers are not important. That kind of weak thinking is stagnating disney. It will continue until these fossils are gone.

they also pump out so much low-quality garbage too, rather then focusing on 1-3 IP movies , but streaming cost means it demands more content each year.

I'm not a big Leto fan. He's not the worst actor, but he's by no means great. But Gary Oldman couldn't have made this movie work. The problem isn't the acting, it's the script. The movie felt like it was designed and written by a marketing committee. Everything about it is formulaic and hollow.

That's something that Disney regularly has a problem with. They used to find interesting, compelling stories that writers were excited to create.
Now, most of their films are being pushed from the top to expand their known IPs or messaging. The story has become secondary to the product.
Bob Iger said just a couple years back that they had a few flops with new ideas and we're going to focus on existing IPs and brands. He's leading Disney into a second direct to home video sequel era. Just like the one that nearly killed the company in the 80s.
Disney is riding high on nostalgia and brand recognition but is quickly burning their capital of good will. The youngest generation isnt getting that same nostalgia that's going to turn them into Disney fans like the 90s kids had. We're 30 something's with a bit of disposable income, and Disney is bleeding us dry after making us their primary demographic. They no longer cater to families, and they no longer are looking to make new, young fans.
It's honestly depressing to see how much that company has fallen. I got hired to work at Disneyland back in 2008 and spent 8 years of my life trying to bring happiness to the guests that came there. I agreed with and worked hard to bring their message to life. But in my time there, and since, I've seen a continual shift from taking care of their employees, making it a great place to work, and to make the best entertainment they can.
Leto was a long term producer of Ares. He had a say in all those things.
I mean, he’s also a sex pest. Maybe that’s why people didn’t want to see it.
- That's certainly never affected box office receipts before now...
But Gary Oldman couldn't have made this movie work.
You could think the same about the 5th element.

Tron never was a thing and Disney keeps trying to make it a thing. The concept was cool in the 80s but no one has cared since the property.

I'm just glad Hollywood hasn't made remakes of Flight of the Navigator and Neverending story.

Neverending story
Hate to be that guy but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NeverEnding_Story_II:_The_Next_Chapter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NeverEnding_Story_III
II is though more of a shitty sequel but III is a shitty original story.
And finally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NeverEnding_Story_(film)#Possible_remake
- Ackchtually... :-)
  The first movie is the first HALF of the original book, and the second movie is the second half.
  They sliced an (awesome) ending into the middle of the book, and the vibes of the second movie were different, but it was authentic to the book.
  Now as for the THIRD movie, your point is legit. (Also fun to note, it has Jack Black as a street punk.)
- Those are shitty sequels. I saw one of them. I mean full out reboot.
But neverending story has limitless franchise potential - it's right there in the title! Lol
- And that is specifically what the original novel warned children against.
remakes of Flight of the Navigator
Dude, don't give them ideas!
I cared.

Yes. let's start with that.

After that we can go and have a look at the people green lighting new movies these days.

Something Tron fans seem to forget, and Disney forgets it every so often, the first Tron was a significant failure as well. Yeah, flashy effects and a cool concept, but it wasn't as relevant to a wider crowd yet. And Legacy wasn't exactly a success in the box office either. Many forget that Tron appeals to a smaller crowd and isn't the blockbuster franchise it should be.

Disney dont know how to market to boys. I was a kid when the OG Tron came out, and I loved it. But the marketing was non existent. There was very little in the way of pushing the movie into the hearts and minds of kids, the same way Star Wars, or heman, or transformers, or even fucking gobots had.
In fact, when I say Tron for the first time it was part of a disney kids double bill. That other movie being Something Wicked This Way comes... Which was, to say they least, creepy as all fuck. These movies went together like peanut butter and a sloppy dogshit.
Tron is a masterclass in how to fuck up a franchise.
A lot of people think that, but it turns out a lot of people are wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron
$17m budget, $50m box office, and it basically created CGI on the way.
I think people just assume such an acid trip of a movie with such a goofy costume has to have flopped, but nope.

Disney didn’t know wtf to do with Tron. I thought Legacy was a great addition to the universe, but this time around it was nothing more than skipping to the end of the Marvel universe with the Boss Battle bent on world domination with flashy CGI characters. It added nothing. Plus a controversial actor like Leto might be an indication that nobody else wanted the gig for the budget or the poor writing. Couldn’t have possible chose a worse or more boring addition to the franchise. Ruined it, IMO, and I have been a Tron fan since forever.

Legacy was good and a fine launching pad for squeals. They should have used Tron: The Next Day as a starting point for any addition. It's not as well known, but The Next Day was a bonus added to the physical release of Legacy to pitch the next movie.

Yes Jared Leto is to blame. BUT not only him. The writing and directing are still going to determine the bulk of how it plays out. A good director will be able to direct Leto into something usable if imperfect.

Leto was a producer. He pulled rank on the director.
- Didn't know that. That definitely makes it fall much more squarely on him. Dude has been such a let down for me after starting off so well, both with the band and with requiem.

Is Jared Leto to Blame?

Yes.

I'll watch it eventually for the soundtrack, but Jared gives me the creeps.

I caved and saw Ares last weekend. Tron legacy is one of my all time favorite movies so I’ve always been wanting another and would occasionally look up rumors about sequels. When the Ares trailer dropped I was super excited…until the end when it showed Leto. I had forgotten the rumors had mentioned he was involved.

Still, I went and saw the movie. It’s by no means as good as legacy, I scored it a 6/10. Something that I’d rather not watch again, but also something that I felt wasn’t a complete waste of time. But I’m easy to entertain.

What stood out to me while watching Ares was how well legacy holds up today compared to current special effects and CGI. Doesn’t really seem like much difference in that regard between the two movies. Of course, Daft Punk’s soundtrack is second to none, but I think NIN still did a good job.

Guess I’ll just need to continue rewatching legacy whenever I feel the Tron itch, which I’m not complaining about.

I was disappointed when I found out Leto was in Ares. I was surprised when he wasn't going to be the villain.

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.

Yes.

I mean no one likes him but if it was good that wouldn't be a deal breaker.

yes! but Disney won't learn the right lesson

They should've never stopped with Tron Uprising. That was peak cyberpunk.

This just looked sooooo bad lol I cant even imagine getting my ass up, going to the theater, and shelling out $40 for tickets and a popcorn to sit through it. Also I cant fucking stand jared leto and I really cant fathom why they keep putting him in things when there is a pretty good talent pool out there

This is a funny headline after getting a commercial for 'Tron: Ares, the best selling movie this year"

"If they believed the last ad, they'll believe anything"

Leto has done some great roles. See Bladerunner. His problem is his manager that signs him up for every turd script Hollywood can generate. He's the new Nicolas Cage paying off his IRS bills. Why does Greta Lee have a job in acting? Because she's an Asian female?

Blaming an actor for a bad movie is like blaming one plumber when a building collapses. The problem is movies are now so expensive to make that they are made by a committee of risk averse accountants. If Quentin Tarantino tried starting today, he would never get to touch a film. The recent trend I do not understand is high audience scores for really terrible movies like F1. They recycled the script from Stallone's Driven, even the main character. Both were terrible movies misrepresenting the sport. Fantastic 4? Proof that COVID-19 was a brain infection if audiences thought that crime fighting with a newborn was a plot line.

Leto was also a producer and put funding into the movie so he had a much larger hand in the movie than just an actor.
- The script was written by bad AI. Not even a hint of a sensical plot.
They recycled the script from Stallone's Driven, even the main character. Both were terrible movies misrepresenting the sport.
actually, they recycled Days of Thunder.

Looking at the comments, maybe. Though not because of his performance which was honestly fine. The film is fine, his performance is fine and I honestly left happy and excited for the next film.

If anything my biggest gripes were the beginning and a couple scenes in the middle where the sound was a mess and the pacing went weird. Have a theory as why but at the end of the day that only matters if you showed up to see it and seems like no one was interested which sucks for Tron fans.

Disney doesnt appreciate people actually loving the movies and are just looking to try and squeeze more money from consumers.

They are not handling it carefully and staying true to the original because they simply dont have love for the end product. They want to push their shitty agenda about genders and grab money from people who will put up with their endless shit.

Also Disney is evil.

Tron has always been awful.

Shit writing was to blame. Leto may be a plank of wood, but its the writing. Disney has been repeatedly hiring based on anything but merit for a long time, and this is the latest result of it. I mean, for the big return for Star Wars to big screen was supposed to be a Rey movie. And they choose a woman with zero, ZERO, feature experience. Never mind big hollywood tent pole experience.

In the case of Tron Arse, they went with a writer whose only claim to fame is the run of the mill Terminal List, and someone else who has mostly shorts in their resume. And as for the director, they went with the guy who directed the worst pirates movie and the Maleficent sequel. And thats it.

Where are all the big talents? Why does almost everything Disney do look very pretty, but little else? The problem with Disney, is its higher ups who keep on making stupid choice after stupid choice. If youre spending a couple of hundred million on a movie, maybe throw some of that money at established genre writers, ffs. Stop making slop, and thinking the fact it looks and sounds pretty is going to do the heavy lifting. Not everything can have the luck of a shitty dinosaur movie...

I blame him not saying "It's Tronning time" in the movie.

I appreciate the Morbius reference ;)
Bust down a door and say, "Heeeere's Tronnie!"
- The name's TRON. James TRON. And I'm TRONNA make him an offer he can't refuse.
Its not all letos fault, the movie didn't even have him tron one time. Missed opportunity fr
Then he tronned all over everyone

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 liking 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

As someone who loves sci-fi films and the Tron aesthetic, and who generally enjoyed the two previous films, a sequel should have been an easy sell to me.

Unfortunately, the whole "Tron bikes" and "Tron jets" IRL was - to me - such a huge red flag I skipped opening weekend. It gave the feeling of big action set pieces in the real world where the least amount of creative work would be needed and I had no desire to watch the military or the rag tag group of heroes fight computer programs IRL.

My favorite part of Tron was going into a new world and seeing the digital landscape. I want the lore, I want the "computer program's are people and mechanics" vibe, I want the fantasy portion of the sci-fi. I do not need another boring ass marvel / Star wars movie with a Tron paint job.

We need an actual trilogy, an actual story with actual arcs, we need actual stakes. This movie convinced me from its trailer alone that it would say nothing, fail to surprise me, and play out in a safe and predictable fashion and do it in such away that it wouldn't even be fun. I'm all for repetitive dime store movies, but they have to be compelling, well paced, and self-aware. I doubt this movie was any of those.

There are no writers left that can world build. They're all momentary hype linked by and-then storytelling.
- There are plenty of good writers out there working on smaller stuff. The problem has always been they get stifled and overruled in every part of the process in these attempted large blockbusters because the suits 'know what works' best apparently.
- I think it's more of a studio/money problem. There are tons of great, well-written movies no one hears about and lots of other creative media. But Americans have low IQs and terrible taste which can only be satisfied by shitty sequels that play on nostalgia and existing IP.

I think the bigger problem is that it's just moved away from what Tron is supposed to be about. Like the whole point of Tron is it happens in the computer world what is the point of bringing it into the real world. Then it's just a weird sci-fi movie with sort of but not really aliens invading, and the market is saturated with sci-fi films with alien invasions.

That's just it. The money bros are spineless. Alien invasion movies have a track record of making money. Making Tron true the source material is a gamble insofar as there's no movie said money bros can point to and use as citation for projected revenue.
Having seen the movie, I think it’s actually a decent setup for the plot. The crux of the conflict is that programs can only exist in the real world for 29 minutes before dissolving, and the good mega corporation and bad mega corporation want the “permanence code.”
This time limit adds tension to the real world scenes in a pretty compelling way, because the good guys only need to escape capture for that half hour before gaining some respite. This is reinforced by the moments of viewing the world through the programs’ eyes, which always include the countdown to how much longer they have. There were times I thought “oh they only have a couple minutes” without stretching my suspension of disbelief beyond what’s required to watch a movie where flesh and blood can be digitized by a laser.
It also allows more interplay between the real and digital world that I felt was lacking in the older movies. Those ones call the digitized humans “users,” but it never feels like they are that different when they are in the console rather than at it. This movie has a lot of scenes that cut between the bad guy sitting at his desk typing in commands and the programs in the grid of his computer hearing them as orders and treating him with reverence appropriate to a machine. There’s a hacking scene where you see the programs from one server grid break through the literal firewalls and cut through antivirus programs that does a good job feeling like an abstraction of what is happening in the real world scenes.
All that said, I went to this movie for the soundtrack and pretty visuals, and while the light bikes and such in the real world did look cool, they would have looked a lot cooler in the digital world. There’s one action scene that is, and it is the coolest part of the movie.
This film is a weird mix of pokemon and superman 2.

I actually enjoyed this movie. They needed to do marketing, but it came out and I only found out because I get emails from my local indie theater.

Honestly, can they just sell or license Tron to someone who cares about the franchise?

That question should be asked of every franchise Disney owns.
- Honestly, if the FCC and FTC weren't controlled by corpocrats, Disney would have been broken up years ago.
Honestly, can they just sell or license Tron to someone who cares about the franchise?
PLEASE!!!
I'm just now hearing about it, then again I didn't know there was a tron 2 or 3. I just knew the first one came out
- So far in the Tron franchise, we have:
  Tron
  Tron 2.0 & Tron 2.0: Killer App (non-canon)
  Tron: Uprising (really cool CGI cartoon)
  Tron: Legacy (second movie)
  Tron: Ares (this new movie)

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.

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Yes, because they made it all about him, and not about any of the previous characters.

The Called it Tron for fucks sake and Tron isn't even in it. It's like making an Indiana Jones movie but you just have some random dude that also happens to be a professor/archeologist or Jaws without a shark. Did Disney just think "oh the world is called Tron" no, Tron is the main character, it's ABOUT Tron. Even Legacy the whole thing was that Tron was corrupted, Flynn was trying to SAVE Tron and then at the end we get the tease that Tron had turned back
But no...the film makers decided "hey remember in Legacy when Sam and Quorra returned to the real world? yeah lets do a film about that but not include Tron...or fuck it lets also skip Sam and Quorra."
He was a producer on it I believe, pretty much just bought the role for himself.

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 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.....
- That's the thing, he's good when he only has to act adjacently to how he is normally. Then he nails it haha
- 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

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 mean, I loved the first film, and the second one was the second best daft punk music video (it's not close though) but who really cares? Why did anyone feel like we needed endless shit Tron sequels?

The second one is a glorious movie to have in 4k bluray when you want to sit there and say "ooooh pretty" for 90 minutes.
- Soundtrack is great workout music too

The original movie was a pretty solid OK. Now we're on a 4th retread of that, why should I care. Plus fuck Disney.

Disney is to blame for making this crap and screwing an entire legacy for A quick buck.

Not that they got a quick buck out of it.
Honestly Disney has been doing some really dumb things the last 10 years or so. They hardly even score hits with Star Wars these days.

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.

TIL we all hate Jared Leto now.

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.

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.
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…
How old do you think I am?
- 666?
- Old enough.

I lost all interest in this movie when they announced he was in it. He fucking sucks.

Everything I’ve read says the soundtrack is good so we get that I guess?

there was a post on reddit how the frontcover the tron movies always had a woman with the lead male actor, but for jared leto no woman wants to be next to him, so hes alone on the front cover.

I mean, if a headline asks a yes or no question, the answer is always no.

But at the same time, I mean Jared Leto is a bit of a weirdo, and he seems to only put out movies that tank.

I've never actually seen a movie that he led that didn't tank.

Blade Runner 2049 did well didn't it?
- He didn't lead that movie.
- I feel like calling Leto the lead in that is a bit of a stretch…
- That movie is carried hard by Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas. Part of their marketing was obscuring other actors participation like Dave bautista and Sean Young. Leto didn't feature in most marketing material either. Some were a pleasant surprise, others were sort of a resigned acceptance. Wallace is also a weak performance from Leto, even though the character had more potential. Gary Oldman would've been a fine choice instead.
- Nope. Budget of $150-180mil, domestic total box office of $92 mil, worldwide $259 with a 4.5 week theatre average for showings. I really like the BR series, and Tron, but I was pretty bummed when I found out Leto was involved in both

All I want to know is if the soundtrack is a good as the last one

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.
Compared to daft punk's work on legacy it's not even close. There's nothing reaching the heights of Derezzed or Son of Flynn.
- Appreciate the review - I'll give it a shot but (as a huge NIN fan) I never really got into the Ghosts stuff.
- 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 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.
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.
- Seems like that’s the franchise’s real legacy (no pun intended)
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.
Ive been told yes, the soundtrack is fantastic

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.

My favorite snarky critic review:

https://nypost.com/2025/10/07/entertainment/tron-ares-review-sci-sequel-is-fun-even-if-jared-letos-just-doing-morbius/

"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?
- Been years since I watched it, but I'd guess more or less?

the first TRON film in 15 years

Holy shit, I truly did not realize Uprising came out in 2012. That is SO MUCH longer ago than I would have guessed... I think COVID really did fuck my perception of time, but maybe everyone in their 40s says something like that

Yes.

I saw the movie. I enjoyed it. The effects and soundtrack were the best part of the film. Jared Leto was NOT the worst part. The script had little story and character development. That was the main problem. Jared made use of what he was given.

That said, they did set it up for a sequel so it does suck that they may not pursue that. Maybe they need to work more on story/characters and less on effects. It costs less.

Set up a sequel and apparently used characters that everyone wanted to see in this movie, right?
I've learned that the most important part of a story is the character and what happens to them. This may be a good example not only of ignoring that, but also not using characters already established as interesting and with potential growth. Maybe there's a back story there and they couldn't get the actors, so they ran with something different?
- I've learned that the most important part of a story is the character and what happens to them.
  Not if you're Disney. Their actual goal is to print money with...
I'm not so sure the effects cost more than paying a room of skilled writers to come up with story ideas. Not anymore.
- Wait fiver isn't a thing anymore? I mean really how hard is it to try and pull plot points from random bullshit that we've been randomly reading it's not like we're worried about trying to steal anybody's intellectual property anymore artificial intelligence is already done the hell out of that..... And no I'm not abdicating to stealing people's intellectual property but realistically how freaking hard is it to pick and choose little plot points from random s*** that we've been reading and just ask people hey that was a really cool idea you mind if I pay you a couple grand for it?

Disney has more than enough money to own all the popular IP in the world. But cannot do a single thing with it. I am old enough and fan enough of the original that I still have an original Tron action figure. The original was wildly stylistic and visually appealing. But even the story on it wasn't all that stellar, just serviceable.

The second was a big upgrade on the style and visuals. But the story was its weakness, setting up so much, paying off so little. It still had promise if they had continued on with those storylines for another move or two. But Disney got cold feet and chickened out.

From what I've heard of this one, there wasn't an upgrade to the style. Nor hardly any tie-ins back to any of the original storylines. Just McGuffin for the sake of McGuffin. Oh, and Morbing Time. At least Morpheus now no longer holds it's nefarious title. Even if Leto does.

The truth is, this property could have a lot done with it when put in the hands of even a good fan-fiction author. There's so much to explore. Unfortunately, Disney's lost the interest of all the original actors at this point, I think. Well, Bridges might be back for another I suppose. But today's Disney is not the Disney that green lit the original. Far too risk averse just a grand dragon sitting on its massive horde as it rots beneath it.

Dude creeps me out.

He's a creepy ass cult leader, so it tracks
- Really?

I didn’t even know there was a second and third one. And don’t use question marks in a headline..

Fuck Jared Leto.

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 think Red Letter Media summed it up best. Each movie has a great concept and looks fantastic for the time, but the overall story is not very compelling to larger audiences and therefore needs to build up a cult following post theatre release before they can justify making a new film. Sounds about right to me.

I know everyone is focused on Leto but bloody hell, the film news sites all seem to be jumping on the lets bash Tron bandwagon in the last few days.

They’ll probably revive it again as a TV series (animated, CGI, or live action). Gotta have something to fill up the empty spaces of their streaming channel.