Brief Story Line
Fifteen years after the events of Tron: Legacy, ENCOM was now led by its CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee - Russian Doll TV series, Past Lives etc) and competing against Dillinger Systems headed by their CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters - Mare of Easttown mini series, American Animals etc). They had been in competition to seek for codes that would revolutionize the tech industry. While Eve sought them through the old data from Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges - The Old Man TV series, True Grit etc), Julian had created a sophisticated Master Control program that could be constructed into real world which he called Ares (portrayed by Jared Leto - Haunted Mansion 2023 reboot, House of Gucci etc). In the digital world referred to as Grid, Ares was assisted by another program named by Julian as Athena (portrayed by Jodie Turner-Smith - Bad Monkey TV series, White Noise etc).
Things got complicated when Ares seemed to grew more conscious and despite Julian's mother Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson - Sex Education TV series, The Last King of Scotland etc) disapproval, he still used his intelligence to find Eve's important data and resort to the unethical & dangerous ways.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
For years I have known about the classic even cult status of the original Tron movie that was released in 1982. Even when the sequel Tron: Legacy was released back in 2010, I was still not interested to see any one of them cause I felt it was too weird (and probably not impressed with the special effect). As I said above, I saw the trailer to this third movie and thought the effects looked impressive, plus it seemed to touch on AI that has recently been quite popular. So I read a bit on this movie and found that it was like a soft reboot. However, the night before I saw the film, I decided to watch the first and second movie (available on Disney+) just to familiarize myself.
This movie started off with a brief but quite clear background story of what happened during the 15 years period which was a good way to provide simple introduction for those who have not seen any of previous films like my wife. But things became really interesting when Ares was first introduced and his consciousness started to grow. Plus obviously when there were more action which frankly were really well executed, from the intense motor chase on the streets, to the fights inside the Grid and to the quite explosive finale. The wonderful visual effects combined with awesome sound effects perfectly heard in the studio with Dolby Atmos system made it an amazing experience for me and my wife.
I also thought that the story telling was well done cause it was not hard to comprehend. Since I have watched the movie's predecessors, I was able to spot the references and appreciate them better than my wife. Although even without seeing them, it is still quite easy to understand the story and entertained (as proven by my wife who was so caught up that she did not even have spare time to glance on her handphone). I thought this was due to the good job of the director Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Kon-Tiki etc) along with the writer Jesse Wigutow.
To me the cast, particularly Evan Peters and Jared Leto were convincing in their parts. Apart from those names I mentioned, there were also additional support cast like Hasan Minhaj (The Spy Who Dumped Me, It Ends With Us etc) as Ajay Singh the CTO of ENCOM, Arturo Castro (The Menu, Narcos TV series etc) as Eve's trusted colleague Seth and several others including real life reportes portraying themselves & two members of Nine Inch Nails band who provided soundtrack for the film. It's too bad other than Jeff Bridges, no other people from previous movies appeared in here.
Overall, I thought that this movie was entertaining. Combination of the well executed action with cool special effects plus the interesting story made this enjoyable. Now even though it was a soft reboot with focus on different characters instead of a full sequel, but the relevance of two previous movies was quite strong. It did not make the film difficult to understand, however it would be better appreciated if you have seen them. I personally thought the reference (easter egg) to its original was nice. Btw the film had duration of 119 minutes which might seem long but just nice to tell the whole story. There was a mid end credit scene that would surely excite fans of the movies. So if you are into an action movie with attributes I mentioned above, I think you would like this. If you are worried you would find it weird, just think of it as any other films that would throw you into a unique & different kind of world. But if you are in doubt, you could always watch the first two movies to get yourself ready. Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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