Jared Leto in “TRON Ares.”
Disney/Leah Gallo
The TRON franchise is back following the 1982 original and 2010’s TRON: Legacy with TRON: Ares, starring Jared Leto. How do Rotten Tomatoes critics rate the third movie in the series?
TRON: Ares shows in previews on Thursday before opening theaters nationwide on Friday. The official logline for the film reads, “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated program, Ares (Leto), who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.”
Directed by Joachim Rønning, TRON: Ares also stars Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges.
As of the publication of this article, TRON: Ares has earned a 55% “rotten” rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 75 reviews. RT’s Critics Consensus, Popcornmeter score and audience summary are still pending.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About ‘TRON: Ares’?
Mark Kenney of The Associated Press is among the top critics on RT who gives TRON: ARES a “fresh” review on RT, writing, “[Jared] Leto does well here as the title character, able to deliver a few good lines while executing a rock star strut in a skintight suit … But it’s [Greta] Lee who steals the show, a very human action heroine for 2025.”
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter gives the film a “fresh” rating on RT, writing, “It’s no sci-fi insta-classic, but there are worse things to be than a surprisingly entertaining post-summer popcorn bucket.”
The film also earns a “fresh” rating on RT from David Ehrlich of IndieWire, who writes, “It’s a film whose only goal is to make TRON into a renewable resource in its own right … If nothing else, ARES might just be relevant, palatable, and undemanding enough to pull that off.
Clarisse Loughrey of the UK’s Independent is among the top critics on RT who gives TRON: Ares a “rotten” review, writing, “TRON: Ares has the visual flair of a mobile game and a thematic depth that makes the 1982 original’s premise — Jeff Bridges gets sucked into a computer — feel like it was written by philosophers.”
Also giving the film a “rotten” rating is Alison Willmore of New York Magazine/Vulture, who writes on RT, “Mostly, when you watch TRON: Ares, you become aware of the degree to which this franchise has exhausted its own metaphor.”
Peter Debruge of Variety wasn’t impressed with TRON: Ares, either, writing on RT, “Whereas the original 1982 Disney film on which it was based felt ahead of its time, [producer] Sean Bailey’s latest attempt to franchise-ify the TRON brand reads mostly as an exercise in nostalgia.”
Rated PG-13, TRON: Ares shows in previews on Thursday before opening theaters nationwide on Friday.