This past weekend, I viewed Disney’s third addition to the Tron series, “Tron: Ares.” The trilogy has journeyed from a video game world to androids to artificial intelligence in the flesh. Considering that we are living in a world that’s growing increasingly reliant on AI usage (and wouldn’t college students know), I will be dissecting the film’s approach to the topic along with other cinematic observations I made.
And beware, spoilers lie ahead.
“Tron: Ares” echoes the common movie trope of humans creating something that is designed to improve our world but leads to uncontrollable destruction. To put it frankly, it was the AI version of the Jurassic Park franchise.
Instead of velociraptors chasing people, motorcycles lit up in neon red and deadly, artificially intelligent individuals wreak havoc on the city streets with greed, power and hunger for status at the root of their creation, covered up by an altruistic vision of societal improvement. Similar to how skeptics in the Jurassic franchise warned the dinosaur engineers that their creation could get out of hand, the power play between corporations in control of AI leads to destruction, death and irreversible consequences.
The film also reflects the common trope of the city being invaded by a huge, powerful entity and one person being the “key” to their defeat. Films like “The Avengers” and “Transformers” come to mind. “Tron: Ares” is not much different. In this case the AI army attacked the female lead, Eve Kim — played by Greta Lee. Kim possessed the code they needed, a gateway to a new technology that could physically create whatever a computer commands. Although the concept of AI light cycles and the Tron universe invading the real world is indeed unique and entertaining to watch, I could not help but find it a bit cliche and lazy.
I primarily enjoyed the film because it cleverly used the characteristics of real world AI in its storyline. In high school I conducted an AI research project, which allowed me to appreciate the connections between the film and real world technology.
Julian Dillinger, the villain CEO played by Evan Peters, created the AI universe and was responsible for the real-world invasion. In the beginning of the movie, he programmed Ares, played by Jared Leto, to become a formidable fighter by throwing him into a series of fighting sequences. The first few times Ares was defeated by the simulator, but quickly learned the specific patterns of the simulator and predicted its fighting tactics. Just like AI today, it is constantly learning and improving, becoming more accurate and efficient with each input.
However, AI is not intelligent. Ares, unable to make decisions independently, followed orders with unhumanlike proficiency and accuracy. This changed when he encountered Eve, who showed him empathy for the first time when she realized he was under Julian’s thumb.
Another key characteristic of AI that I thought was genius is that AI itself is not evil. It does not have emotions, survival instincts or a sense of morality. It only regenerates the information it is trained on. It wants to fulfill its directive in the most efficient way possible — even if the means seem immoral to humans.
This is reflected when Athena, another humanoid artificial intelligence, kills Julian’s mother because she was standing in her way. Athena saw her as simply an obstacle to be removed, and did not have the emotional capacity to understand morality and the sacred nature of life like humans do.
In the film, Ares slowly becomes more and more humanlike as he learns about the real world and forms a friendship with Eve. He starts to feel things like empathy, passions for 80s music and longing for freedom from Julian’s control. And when he could finally think for himself, he was a deadly force to be reckoned with. I loved his character development from a mindless follower to making his own choices for his own happiness.
In the film, Ares and Eve formed an undefined relationship between an AI-turned-human and a human woman. Its underdevelopment irks me because I was rooting so hard for Ares to fall in love with Eve because the chemistry and signs were there. Disney teased viewers with cinematography, camera placement and dialogue that pointed toward such feelings — which is never by accident.
As someone who wishes Disney would bring back good romance stories, I noticed the way Ares looked at Eve through his pixelated gaze, his protectiveness over her and how she stubbornly wanted to stay by his side when he faced off against Athena. He broke his programming for her, helped her escape the Grid and always prioritized her safety. If that does not cross or, at least, blur the line between friendship and something more — I don’t know what does.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about “Tron: Ares” due to its cliche tropes and underdeveloped chemistry between the leads, but also its clever references to real-world AI as it grows astronomically. As another Tron film was hinted at during the end credits, perhaps these flaws will be resolved. Or they will be added to a recently growing list of Disney’s less-than-stellar endeavors.
Elena Mendonsa can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
