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"Tron: Ares" is the Third-Best Tron Movie · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

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Kicking off in 321. Hello and well cough came out of
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me right as I started. Like the what?
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Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature.
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My name is Thomas, joined as always by my brother Frank.
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Frank, how's it going? Excited to be here.
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Excited to be here now, Frank, this is a special episode.
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We're calling this a bonus because normally on our show, we
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talk about two movies at a time, giving each other
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recommendations for films that neither of us has ever seen and
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essentially just seeing which of us can make a better blind movie
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pick for the other host. But tonight, we're doing
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something totally different. We're talking about a movie
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we've both seen, yeah. Yeah, throw me a freaking bonus
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here. It's Tron.
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It's Tron Aries. We've decided to innovate our
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program by doing the thing everyone else.
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Does. Yeah.
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Yeah. It seemed to just make sense,
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you know? Seemed to just make sense.
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This was not originally planned. I didn't know you were going to
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see Tron Aries. I didn't know I was going to see
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Tron Aries. But then I did because I got
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invited. And on the way back, I was like,
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hey, you've seen Tron. And you were like, yeah, I saw
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Tron. So there you go.
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Well, I mean, I would say we're both fans of the previous Tron
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films, especially Tron Legacy. For me, that's I really like
1:21
that movie. Yeah, Tron Legacy is great.
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I think that this one, people wanted another Tron ever since
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that one came out, both because that one was decent, ended on a
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solid cliffhanger and had awesome music.
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But then this one I feel like did not have a good, did not
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have good vibes on the way in because people were like why is
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Jared Leto the star? Yes.
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Mostly just that, actually, yeah.
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No other notes really. But also, why did it take so
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long? But yeah, why did it take so
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long? What I heard, unsubstantiated,
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but this is the information that I've gathered, is he, he was a
1:55
producer on a film That is, that is true.
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And I think I did say that the he was the one that was pushing
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to make this film and produce it and essentially cast himself as
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the lead. So that's why he's the lead.
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Living every little boy's dream of financing and forcing
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yourself to be the lead of Tron. Yeah, yeah.
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I mean, it's kind of like a odd situation where it's like a new
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Tron movie may have otherwise never been made.
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It reminds me of like like when Jason Segel was like super down
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to make the new Muppets movie and so he was the one that got
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that movie off the ground and made that.
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Seems like a similar push here. I I think Jared Leto himself has
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been trying to get this movie made for a very long time.
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Well that's interesting, I did not know it was such a push from
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him but that definitely explains it because I feel like popular
2:48
opinion about Jared Leto is down both because of but also he.
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Oh yeah, yeah, for sure he is. And like there's other, there's
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other recognizable actors actually.
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Sorry, I'm paused. Can we say, is that libel that
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we can we say Jared Leto is? Like, I don't think we're
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allowed to. Say.
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That I guess I probably shouldn't.
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That's a good catch. Good catch.
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Legal Jared Leto may or may not Yeah, it's weird to see Jared
3:23
Leto in this at all. Especially it's like the only
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name behind the movies marketing.
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It's not like him and a bunch of other people that are they're
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trying to sell the movie on. There's recognizable actors, but
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he's like clearly the lead and I don't know that he's ever
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successfully helmed a movie like that by himself.
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No. Well, I mean, there was Morbius
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there. Was oh, there was Morbius, which
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if what would you call Morbius if not a success, it was a.
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Success in a in a very particular way, in that it
3:53
became a meme on the Internet. Everything notable about that
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movie had nothing to do with him, it was just a bad movie
4:00
that people made some good bits off of.
4:02
Yeah, absolutely. I've never even seen it and I
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feel like most of the people making fun of it hadn't seen it
4:07
either. Yeah, true, But we have seen
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Tron, so I guess now we can judge fairly whether it was a
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good idea to let Jared Leto anchor this entire movie.
4:16
I'm going to say no. Yeah, yeah, of course.
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I mean, like there are other recognizable actors in the film
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as well. I mean, Evan Peters is the main
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antagonist of the film. And also, I might not have even
4:29
caught this, but the person that I went to go see the movie with
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pointed out to me there was a scene where I don't know this
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actor's name. So my apologies for that.
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But it's it's the guy who does the mocap for the Star Wars
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Fallen Order video games. Oh, the guy who plays I know the
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character is named Cal Kestis. I don't remember the actor's
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name offhand. Yes, but him, he had a very
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minor role in this movie and I I think he just died.
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Like, gosh. Oh, also, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm
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burying the late. There's not a lot of names in it
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that you would sell the movie on, but they do have 1/2 of The
5:01
X-Files team. Dana Scully in here.
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Gillian. Gillian Anderson.
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Yes, Yeah. Doing a doing a a highfalutin
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accent that makes her sound kind of British.
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Yeah, yeah, that was interesting.
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And she's great and there wasn't really enough of her in the
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film. I guess let's, I mean, I don't
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know if people listening will have already seen the film or
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not, but essentially Tron Legacy comes out 2000 tens early 20
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tens. There's an immediate sequel bait
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at the end of that movie about what happens to those
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characters. And then Tron Aries, 10 years
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later, acknowledges that those events transpired but is about
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other things. Yeah, and really kind of had to
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struggle to work its way around those other plot elements or
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possibly like fan expectations of seeing those other characters
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again, because I'm not. Going to say that?
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Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, even
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the returning Jeff Bridges is not really the same version of
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that character that we saw in the previous film.
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Now we get a a representation inside the machine of the
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character that Jeff Bridges played in the previous films.
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And then there's a like some continuity that carries over
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because the end of Tron Legacy Spoiler, I guess, involves one
6:14
of the people from inside the grid making it to like the real
6:17
world on the outside. And that ends up being like a
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huge element of the setup for Tron Aries is about how to take
6:23
digital constructs and essentially manifest them
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through lasers so that they can be like in the real world.
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Just 3D printing stuff essentially. 3D printing people
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and Tron bikes mostly. Yeah, which I did.
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I guess like that ticking clock element in the film that like at
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least for the first half or majority of the film for some of
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the characters where they could only be in the real world for X
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amount of time. Right.
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That's like you're Mac Guffin throughout the story is that
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that technology is emerging both for the company forgetting,
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forgetting the two company names off the top of my head, but
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essentially the the good and the bad guy organizations from all
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the Tron movies. They're both trying to figure
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out a way to make these 3D printed beings permanent and not
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something that will disintegrate after like 30 or so minutes.
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And so they're both chasing down this mathematical equation that
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will allow them to do that, and that is a lot of what drives the
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conflict throughout the whole story.
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Yes, yes. Which felt unfortunately similar
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to the plot element in Tron Legacy where they were trying to
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when they're trying to get a little wild disc because it had
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some, you know, important information that the villains
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needed in that film. This felt like such a retread of
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that, Like we got to get the thing, which I know it's a
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common thing just in these types of films, but like for it to be
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so specifically similar to just the previous Tron film felt like
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quite the rehash. It did.
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I do think that that initial premise in Aries, because it's
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like so focused on is like explained well enough and it
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creates an interesting set of stakes.
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Like you said, 'cause if they spawn somebody on a Tron bike to
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come chase you down, you could theoretically outlast them
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rather than have to defeat them. But I do think that the movie
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suffers right off the bat from the like previous continuity of
8:09
Tron. Cause the grid, you know, inside
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the machine is super cool. That's the main thing people
8:14
liked about Tron Legacy was all that interesting imagery.
8:16
But we've established that the world on the outside is not
8:20
futuristic in any capacity. It's just like normal cities.
8:24
And so because you have to get outside and spend time there,
8:27
you're like, wow, there's nothing interesting out here, is
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there? I mean, I don't know, I I think
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you can make it interesting like.
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No, they can, but they have to start from a place of like Tron
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exists, but the outside world's very normal outside of the Tron
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technology so far we don't have we don't have like other world
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building things to play off of. It has to start from like a very
8:49
known space. Sure, Yeah, yeah, 'cause I
8:52
remember there's a lot of like nighttime cinematography both in
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Legacy and in this film that I thought did look nice and I has
9:02
kind of visually become a hallmark of the series, I guess.
9:06
But well, to rewind a little bit, I mean, this is the third
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Tron movie. I've seen the original Tron
9:13
maybe once and did not really care for it.
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It it's just visual style. It was like a little nauseating
9:21
to me honestly. Like, it was like a
9:23
technologically impressive film that had some strong imagery.
9:28
But yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not a movie you'd watch to be
9:31
entertained now. It's kind of just the launchpad
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that gave us the subsequent films.
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Totally, and I'm sure there's there's there's enough in there
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that people may be a fan over latch on to, but I, I just was
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never a big fan of it. But it really was Tron legacy
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for me that made me a fan of the series.
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So I I was somebody that was excited for a new Tron movie.
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I think I would have been significantly more excited if it
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had been following the characters from Legacy and if it
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didn't come out maybe like 10 years ago, but.
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Yeah, that's what's funny. Like I understand that a direct
10:05
sequel to Tron Legacy is just as hard to market as Tron Jared
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Leto. In terms of like, what's the
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hook? There's none.
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There's no obvious. This is what's going to get you
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in to see the movie other than did you like the imagery from
10:19
Tron and can we sell you on 9 Inch Nails doing the music?
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Yeah, so we should talk about the music because that, for all
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three of the films has been kind of a distinct selling point or
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feature of them. I think that like the score of
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Tron Legacy is amazing. The the Daft Punk music in that
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movie is just like one of the best film soundtracks out there,
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I think. And so I feel like they knew
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when they were making this one that they needed that element to
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the film. And Daft Punk is not together
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anymore, so. One of them blew up, if you'll
11:00
recall. One of them blew up.
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What do you mean? The The Daft Punk always were
11:05
like a costume band in the sense that they had the robot outfits
11:07
they would wear. And when they announced that
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they were splitting up, they released a music video where one
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of the robots walks away from the other and explodes and then
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the other one keeps going. I don't know if we lost Silver
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Robot or Gold Robot, but one of them has been compromised.
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Wow, that is some sad Daft Punk. Laura, I didn't know that.
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Yep, he's in the grid now. He's.
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In the grid, yeah, OK, good for him.
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So yeah, so they clearly were like, OK, we got to, you know,
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and tapping 9 inch nails. I believe it's almost said Brent
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Spinner. That's data.
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That's data Trent Reznor. Trent Reznor Yeah, that was a
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good as any backup choice. But I just felt like the the
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score did not match the visuals, like very often.
12:06
It just felt like you were playing music, almost like a
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music video, like a, you know, YouTube MV just.
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Like my notes, I think my experience watching Tron Aries
12:16
because I saw it in theaters. I saw the IMAX screening.
12:19
If you think of the movie not as a film with a story and
12:22
character, but as a series of music videos that have little
12:26
lulls in between, perfectly good theatrical experience.
12:29
There was multiple points, right?
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Be like kind of like nodding off and then a music would start and
12:33
I would just actually be bobbing my head like I was at a concert.
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So I was like, yeah, I like this.
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It's more of a industrial electronic sound than what Daft
12:42
Punk was doing, which is fine. You know, it's trying to suit a
12:44
different environment. The music's awesome, and I think
12:47
it's fun to listen to. But yeah, I would agree that it
12:50
felt like someone was aware of the movie was a little a little
12:52
boring. And so they were like, just play
12:55
music, play music over, play score over as much of this film
12:58
as possible. Totally, totally.
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But like, it just felt incongruous.
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It was like the score of Tron Legacy fits the scene like it it
13:09
elevates the story being told. Whereas here it was exactly like
13:13
you said, we're just, it was like drown out what you're
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seeing with The Sound of Music. Yeah.
13:18
Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music.
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No, the I said also, after I got done watching it, that I would
13:25
watch a version of this that was a silent film.
13:27
Like you leave in all the sound effects in the music, but just
13:29
take the dialogue out and that's maybe a better movie also.
13:33
Sure, sure. I mean, visually I didn't hate
13:36
it either because because I, I kind of see your point there.
13:39
It's like I, I like a lot of the visuals of Tron, like
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specifically Tron Legacy and this one.
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I did kind of like that. Like Tron, Legacy felt very blue
13:48
and this one was very red. Yeah, they did flip the the
13:52
color balance because I think in Tron Legacy it was like light
13:56
blue opposite kind of a yellow. Yeah.
14:00
Whereas this was like deep red against like kind of the same
14:04
blue but not really like they they definitely made sure to
14:06
have a separate color palette, which for this colorful of a
14:08
movie was a good idea. Yeah, totally.
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And yeah, I don't know, I, I think it's like, I, I see your
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point that it's like they're, they're coming from this
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interesting digital world to just the regular world.
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And then there just wasn't enough of a distinction, maybe.
14:25
There wasn't any new storytelling opportunities in
14:30
the space that they moved into. Like the initial premise
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benefits from that, that the Tron people can come outside,
14:37
but only for 30 ish minutes and then they kind of fall to
14:39
pieces. So it creates these interesting,
14:41
like, timed objectives and chases, but the actual spaces
14:45
they're navigating is some of the most, like, familiar things
14:49
you ever see on screen. It's what, what city are they in
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for most of it? Is it New York again?
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I don't know if they say. I think it's like a vaguely
14:56
ambiguous metropolitan area. But yeah, that imagery you get
15:01
the contrast of like a Tron bike driving between regular traffic,
15:05
which works, but a lot of the movie takes place off outside of
15:09
the grid. And so it's like that's your
15:12
fantasy world is inside the machine and then you mostly stay
15:16
outside of it for this one. And it's just it's I understand
15:19
why they did it. It's a good inverse, but it's
15:21
just not. There's not a lot to benefit
15:23
from leaving the grid as much as they do.
15:26
Sure. And and like, I don't know what
15:29
percentage of people are going to follow this reference, but
15:32
like. Can't wait.
15:35
It's the concepts of Tron I think have been done in in
15:40
similarly in other media as well.
15:42
I was thinking of like Digimon for example.
15:45
Ah yes, Digimon are digital monsters that are that live in
15:50
their own digital world. So when they come into the real
15:53
world in that show, it's jarring because it's like a giant dragon
15:57
or or some other kind of creature that doesn't belong in
16:01
that space, just visually. But in this.
16:03
Like a Godzilla. Moment exactly.
16:06
Yeah, in this, it's like, well, that's just dear little.
16:09
That's just a guy like that's. Just a guy I know.
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That's kind of what I mean. Like if the world outside of the
16:16
grid was also a more fictional space that they had less
16:20
continuity to adhere to, they could have done more to draw
16:24
parallels. But as it stands it's not really
16:26
that weird. Honestly, people do dress like
16:29
Tron. I've seen it.
16:30
Absolutely. I mean, even the sequence at the
16:32
end, it's like, oh, they got these flying spaceships and then
16:35
it's like fighter jets fighting them.
16:37
And it's like, this is not that far outside the realm of
16:42
reality, I guess, like. It's not an escalation of the
16:46
imagery from the previous film. And if you if you take Aries
16:49
less as an actual sequel and more of just another iteration,
16:53
I guess that's fine. But a lot of people's
16:55
expectations were Tron Legacy was like a visual ride.
16:59
It's been 10 plus years. This is technology to make these
17:02
movies is better. What do they have?
17:04
And it's like less complex imagery than the last one.
17:08
Yeah, yeah. And just like unfortunate
17:12
dropped plot lines that the previous film set up too,
17:16
because like killing Murphy was had like a sort of interesting,
17:20
like cameo role almost in that film that was supposed to set
17:24
up, you know, future installments.
17:26
And then there's just there's so much dialogue has to be
17:29
dedicated to like dancing around those things that they'd set up
17:32
previously. Oh, the whole thing is a nympho
17:35
dump because Tron Legacy is about like, who's going to
17:38
succeed the heads of these two companies that were at the
17:41
center of the original story with in the case of Legacy, it's
17:44
like, is Jeff Bridges character's son going to take on
17:47
this mantle? And then this one starts and
17:50
it's like, yeah, he's gone. These twins took over a while
17:52
ago. One of them is also gone now.
17:54
And then the head of the other place is just some other dude.
17:58
Like, if there's no lineage to that, they act like there is and
18:01
literally there is, but it's not dramatic.
18:05
There's no weight to that. It's just like, here's a new set
18:07
of characters. Also, they're all very, very
18:10
wooden characters. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
18:14
Like. Like can we, can we talk about
18:16
Eve? Can we talk about Eve?
18:18
Can we talk? What's the deal with Eve?
18:20
Who's Eve? I don't know what you're talking
18:22
about. Which character is that?
18:24
That's a great sign. So Jared Leto is one of the main
18:30
characters, but I would say the main protagonist at the start of
18:32
the story is the head of the company that was founded by
18:35
Kevin Flynn. You know, the original guy from
18:37
Tron? Oh, she's Eve.
18:39
She. She's Eve, OK.
18:41
She's part of a set of twins that like inherited the company.
18:44
Her twin sister, I believe, was more like, I don't remember.
18:46
I think she was like the CEO for a time, but then she passed away
18:49
very young from cancer, I think is the implication.
18:53
And so Eve, who was working in a different division, became the
18:56
CEO and became obsessed with finishing her sister's work,
18:59
which is to find the permanence code, like the mathematical
19:03
equation that will help them make the transfer from the grid
19:06
into the real world a permanent thing.
19:09
Like, that's the Mac Guffin. She's chasing it down to honor
19:11
her sister's memory. Beyond that, Eve has no
19:15
characteristics of any kind. You cannot describe this person
19:19
and the role in the movie without just saying things they
19:21
did in the story. Yeah.
19:23
She's not brave. She's not scared.
19:26
She's not funny. She's not anything.
19:29
It's not funny. It's not funny, but like, do you
19:34
know what I mean? I don't think I've ever seen a
19:36
character in a modern film like this.
19:38
Like I've seen a lot of these movies that are made for a
19:40
global audience where you have characters that can appeal to
19:44
any crowd and you even have people that you can feature more
19:47
heavily. Maybe like you'll have a diverse
19:49
cast and then you can emphasize certain characters to appeal to
19:52
their home country market or something.
19:55
Eve just feels like she's there for nobody.
19:56
She has nothing to say or do the whole time other than to like
19:59
move the plot, but with no discernible character to speak
20:04
of. Oh yeah, no, I 100% agree.
20:07
And I feel like that's the problem with kind of all of
20:12
these Tron movies. Like I, I, I like them, I like
20:16
one of them and like, and like, I think conceptually there's
20:22
interesting ideas in there, but you need the freedom with these
20:27
films, I think to get weird with it to, to take it down more
20:31
interesting, like sci-fi elements with the story.
20:36
And like this film is the result of trying to take something that
20:40
is kind of weird and almost niche and then cram it into this
20:44
like mainstream appeal. And it just doesn't, like, it
20:47
winds up appealing to no one because it's not that inherently
20:51
interesting if you're not really expounding on those concepts
20:55
that make it interesting. You know what I mean?
20:57
You can't just be like, it's a, oh, it's an action movie with a
21:00
guy with a disc like whatever, we got Captain America over here
21:04
and all of his buddies like. You have to be able to connect
21:07
to the character archetype. At least I understand wanting it
21:10
to be broad so that you can more easily translate it.
21:14
Like, this movie is built for like a worldwide audience.
21:17
There's a lot of ADR dialogue spliced in and a lot of
21:19
opportunities that they created to dub over dialogue so that
21:23
everybody knows what's happening no matter what language you're
21:25
watching the movie in. But some of Eve's dialogue in
21:28
the English version, which is what it was filmed in, is so
21:32
flat. Some of her lines in the movie
21:33
include things like what's that and who are you?
21:37
And I know that those are normal things everybody says, but like,
21:39
that's it. That's all.
21:40
The tone of all of her dialogue is just basic Dora the Explorer
21:44
conversation. Like, where do you think it is?
21:48
What's that over there? Well, and it's it's tough too
21:52
when she's opposite Jared Leto, who's playing this purposefully
21:56
like wooden robotic character. Yes.
21:59
Jared Leto is supposed to be Pinocchio in this story, but
22:03
he's acting opposite someone more wooden than Pinocchio.
22:06
Get the do the thing. Got her.
22:12
Yeah, exactly. Like maybe that actor playing
22:16
Eve is awesome and gave a great audition.
22:18
I have no idea. We didn't get to see them even
22:20
attempt anything resembling a. Performance.
22:23
Sure. Yeah, and I mean to take it back
22:25
to the script as well. I also was confused as to what
22:30
Jared Leto's character was supposed to be going through and
22:32
experiencing. Like, they made the Frankenstein
22:35
connection and I was like, OK, yeah, I guess.
22:41
But it's like they didn't really pick a lane with his character.
22:44
Like, it's like, was he supposed to be?
22:46
Like, he wasn't? Didn't feel like he was
22:48
gradually becoming more human as things went along.
22:51
He seemed pretty static actually the whole time.
22:54
And what development he does get is off screen in a way.
22:59
Like the setup for him is that he is built at the beginning of
23:02
the movie as the master control for this evil organization's
23:06
presence in the grid. They bring him into the real
23:08
world to like, conduct missions for them and all this stuff.
23:11
And he slowly learns to question why he was created.
23:14
And he has feelings. He's gaining sentience.
23:17
But some of the more like humanizing characteristics don't
23:21
come from his experience in the story of the movie.
23:23
Like, there's a bit where he's in the car in the real world
23:27
with Eve and he's talking about music and he puts on is it
23:30
Depeche Mode? And he asks her like, or he's
23:33
just starts talking to her about how much he loves Depeche Mode
23:36
and he's trying to like, put it into words.
23:37
And then that comes up again towards the end when the way he
23:40
proves to Jeff Bridges that he's kind of like a real boy.
23:43
Is he? He acknowledges that he cannot
23:45
put into words why he likes Depeche Mode so much.
23:48
He just feels it, which is a story beat that I understand.
23:52
You know, what would have helped is if he heard Depeche Mode on
23:55
screen and we could see him react to it.
23:57
But no, that happened. You weren't there.
23:59
We didn't see it. He just had this experience by
24:02
himself and decided not to talk about it until later.
24:05
Oh yeah, yeah, totally. The film did not show us.
24:08
That he just, I didn't even make him listen to Depeche Mode.
24:11
Like they had this sort of like very sterile relationship angle
24:17
underneath their interactions that never comes to fruition,
24:19
which is fine, but why couldn't his experience with her, a real
24:23
person, give him that human emotion as opposed to him just
24:28
being like no, I was busy browsing files before and I just
24:31
like this song. Yeah, Yeah.
24:34
It's like, it's exactly like you said.
24:36
He already did. He already went through that
24:38
change if there was one, like we didn't get to experience it with
24:43
him or or have it like. That's not like the.
24:46
Course of the film. That just seems like a basic
24:49
scripting idea. First off, just have him say he
24:51
likes 9 Inch Nails because you're playing their music gold.
24:54
Just stare right at the camera like.
24:57
Camera and he's like I love 9 inch nails new.
25:01
Album available now. But yeah, I just found that so
25:06
strange that that's his character.
25:08
He's coming to life by having experiences.
25:11
He's a, he has a moment early on where he sees the rainfall.
25:15
And even though he doesn't have like, the sensation of touch,
25:17
he's like, I could almost feel it.
25:19
And it's like, OK, cool, they showed us that.
25:20
And then that pays off later with someone else.
25:22
Why? Why have these other things
25:24
happened? Why do you think this wasn't
25:26
interesting enough for us to feature, given that the things
25:29
you showed us instead were like hollow action beats with nothing
25:33
underneath them? Yeah, and I mean, honestly, what
25:35
you're proposing is such a quick fix to the same scene.
25:38
The scene could play out the exact same way.
25:40
And like she could just be the one be like, oh, I like this.
25:42
And then she puts on the music and then he like, maybe he's
25:46
interrogating her like, oh, what do you like about it or
25:49
something, You know, just some anything.
25:51
Anything, any time I try to do the like they shouldn't do X,
25:55
they should do Yi, try to fit within the framework of what's
25:58
already there, because you can't just say like, well, they should
26:00
do the whole movie differently, like whatever, that's not
26:01
feasible. But you already had this scene
26:03
in here at this time. And the scene as it exists
26:06
communicates a bunch of worthless dialogue where he is
26:09
trying to lure dump about Eve because we haven't had time to
26:12
learn about her either. So he just says out loud what
26:14
her deal is instead of it being a conversation.
26:18
I don't know. That just feels like an easy
26:20
thing, looking at the big picture.
26:22
You know, we didn't edit the movie.
26:23
That's hard. But looking at what was there,
26:25
how can you not just be like, why don't we just put this here?
26:28
Yeah, yeah, that that whole scene just felt like AAI text
26:34
summary, which I think was like literally what was happening in
26:37
the film too. He was just like, yeah.
26:38
Because that's what he is. Yeah, exactly.
26:40
He's like, yeah, I read all your texts.
26:42
Here's my AI summary of of you and your life like.
26:45
That's really weirdly though, those are the parts of the movie
26:47
that have the most character. Like Jared Leto does find a lane
26:52
for his. I think his character is called
26:53
Aries, by the way. That's that's where the title
26:54
comes from. Well, yeah, I know, right?
26:59
Which is weird because the other guy wasn't called Legacy.
27:01
But I don't get it. His performance reflects like
27:08
that. He has an idea of what this
27:09
character is going through. The script doesn't support it,
27:11
but he sort of plays with it in an interesting way where he has
27:15
like a quirky quality to his humanity.
27:18
He's not just a nice Pinocchio boy.
27:22
He is kind of like a rude guy, but he has wants and likes and
27:26
that makes him feel human. We just don't get a lot of
27:28
chances for that to be like the focus of the scenes we're
27:30
actually watching. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's like you
27:34
said, you can't just obviously you'd be like, oh, why don't you
27:37
do this and then just write a completely different film.
27:39
But if you take what's already there, I feel like that's what's
27:41
frustrating when you see it on screen.
27:43
It's like you had all the tools at your disposal in the story
27:46
that you have written. It's just you didn't execute
27:49
them in a way to take the audience along for this ride
27:52
with you, like in a way that made sense.
27:55
And it's like the easiest thing in the world.
27:57
It's archetypal. Like it's full of tropes.
27:59
Just follow the tropes. Sure, sure.
28:02
Yeah. And it's, and it's it's like
28:04
more shocking because it's like I can't even articulate what you
28:08
did instead. Like what?
28:10
What else was the rest of this like?
28:12
I mean, I think there was some fun action sequences.
28:18
Like, I kind of liked near the end, like the climactic battle
28:22
where he's fighting his friend, you know, and they were doing
28:24
some, I guess, like little Tron tricks, you know, where they
28:28
would like, leave the light streak in the air and then,
28:30
like, they would be like a physical thing, right?
28:33
It's all about, it's all about like hard light, which they have
28:36
like Tron choreography, which is good.
28:38
That's specific. Yes.
28:39
But there also wasn't a lot of that.
28:40
I can only really think of, like two instances where that was the
28:44
case outside of like, you know, not counting like, I guess the
28:47
bike chase. And so it's like, yeah, I feel
28:51
like you're not even really like leaning that heavy into what
28:55
makes this unique because I was just kind of going into this
28:59
thinking like, you know, if you're not like us and you have
29:02
you haven't enjoyed either of the previous two films, what is
29:05
going to be appealing to you about this movie that's you're
29:09
like, oh, is this part of the MCU?
29:11
Like, I don't, you know. Like why is there a post credits
29:16
scene with Thor at the end? Right, exactly like.
29:19
Oh there is though. There is like a post credits
29:21
tease. Did you see that?
29:22
I did, I did. It wasn't Thor, but it was.
29:25
I guess we won't say, but there is one if you're curious.
29:28
Sure. Yeah.
29:29
Which again, it just felt like they were trying to capitalize
29:32
on this other thing, which is funny because it's also Disney.
29:35
This is the same company putting this film out.
29:39
So it was just like, I don't know what I went in expecting,
29:44
which is almost why I wanted to go see it.
29:46
I was like, you know what? As I've said, I like Tron
29:48
Legacy. I'm just curious as to what this
29:52
could even be, this new movie. And so it's like hard to say.
29:55
I was disappointed because I didn't really have any
29:58
expectations in the 1st place, but it was still confusing in a
30:04
way what actually was done and put on screen with this movie.
30:10
It somehow gets through like an hour and 40 minutes.
30:13
It's not like a crazy long movie without almost anything
30:16
happening or changing. I mean, I'll give it credit for
30:19
not ending on some sort of massive battle between two giant
30:22
armies of Tron people. Like it was a fairly small
30:26
climax in terms of how many people were involved, but it's
30:29
just the way we got there. I was like, nothing's happened.
30:32
We've gone in and out of Tron a couple times.
30:34
We've changed the dramatic stakes a couple times because at
30:37
first it's like, who's going to get the code?
30:39
But then Eve gets dragged into Tron World and she eventually
30:45
becomes the Mcguffin. It's dead because they're like,
30:46
well, we can't get the code like we were going to, so we need to
30:48
just get you and like steal it out of your brain.
30:51
And that's kind of it. That gets you through the rest
30:53
of the way. It's just like 2 chases tonight.
30:57
I don't know where else to put this, but I have a couple notes
30:59
about the technology here. Sure.
31:02
There's a scene near the middle where Evan Peters character, the
31:06
like evil CEO guy who's just like the young brash move fast
31:10
and break things kind of guy who's messing everything up.
31:13
He's trying to hack into the files at the other company, like
31:17
to find information about Eve because he wants to know where
31:19
she is. This is represented by him
31:22
typing on a computer and just doing movie hacking stuff.
31:26
But then it's literalized in the grid as like a siege from these
31:30
like 5 or 6 red Tron guys trying to break into this physical
31:35
place to like steal the files out of the network, which is
31:39
very Tron. But the amount of time it takes
31:42
makes the whole thing really funny to me.
31:45
Like Can you imagine if you were at work and you clicked to open
31:48
APDF? Several minutes pass and not
31:51
only do you not get the PDF, but you learn that several men have
31:54
died. Several digital men have died
32:00
along the way. Several digital men are are
32:03
deleted and you don't even have the thing.
32:06
It's just like, that requires an immediacy that I'm just
32:09
picturing the lived experience of these people being like, all
32:11
right, I'm trying to open this e-mail invite, but my Tron Mega
32:15
Man guy has to go fetch it from like a physical mountaintop.
32:18
So I guess I'll get back to you in an hour.
32:21
I I'm glad you mentioned Mega Man really quickly because like,
32:25
as much as I like the concepts of Tron, I think for anyone
32:29
who's familiar, it's just a not as good version of the Mega Man
32:34
Battle Network series of video games in terms of the like lore
32:38
and visuals and everything that it establishes.
32:41
It's so almost one to one, but those are better so.
32:45
But I still like it for what it is.
32:47
But yeah. My other what the heck are you
32:50
doing? Note, and this is more just to
32:52
complain about how a lot of modern big blockbusters are
32:55
made. It's kind of the whole second
32:57
screen experience idea. People are convinced that most
33:00
folks watch movies while looking at their phone and so their
33:03
solution is to constantly restate information because
33:06
they're worried that they've lost people, which I've never
33:09
quite understood because you're admitting that you think people
33:11
put the movie on and are just letting it go, which means you
33:14
don't need to hold their attention.
33:16
They've already decided they just want noise.
33:17
So I don't know why we need to cater to these people instead of
33:20
the people watching. I'll assume there's data to
33:23
support this, but there's a scene about midway through the
33:26
the motorcycle chase where they send to Tron people including
33:31
Jared Leto to chase down Eve, who's riding like a normal
33:34
motorcycle and the scene plays out for like 4 or 5 minutes.
33:37
At this point in the movie, she has the permanence code on a
33:40
thumb drive. It's the Mac Guffin.
33:41
They have to pursue her. They have to get it.
33:43
The scene goes on for a few minutes and at some point in the
33:46
middle, Eve just stops really slowly, unzips her jacket.
33:49
We get this really loud Foley noise of his of like a leather
33:52
jacket being unzipped. She takes the thumb drive out of
33:55
her, out of her pocket, stares at it.
33:58
We get a shot of the thumb drive, she puts it back in her
34:00
pocket and she zips the coat up again and then carries on with
34:04
the scene. I was like, what on earth?
34:07
What's that? Did you think that in the midst
34:10
of a very simple motorcycle chase, I just forgot what the
34:13
movie is about completely? Was somebody in a test audience,
34:16
like, why are they trying to get her again?
34:18
Like we just told you about the thumb drive and they're like, I
34:20
guess we got to show it again. But why male models?
34:24
Why male models? Yeah.
34:26
Just takes one person in a test screening to say that though,
34:30
and they're like, well, we got to put it in.
34:32
This guy didn't get it, Steve. Steve did not understand.
34:34
Steve did not understand big stupid Steve.
34:38
The other thing to me is that there's a more elegant solution
34:40
already because Eve doesn't have any dialogue during any of this
34:43
other she literally has lines during that action scene that
34:45
are just like whoa she just says like nothing she can't do like
34:49
the Iron Man thing of like snapping jokes because she has
34:52
no one to talk to. All I think you need to do is
34:55
place a character in this scene who can talk to her via like a
34:58
headset. That's basically just Tyrese
35:00
Gibson's character from Fast and Furious, you know.
35:03
Or. Literally Tyrese.
35:05
We need a loud dumb guy to communicate this information
35:09
through like silly dumb questions because then at least
35:13
things keep moving and we don't have to stop for her to just
35:16
hold it up to the camera. Like we forgot like we're a dog
35:18
who needs to be reminded. Like if this whole sequence was
35:22
like Roman from Fast and Furious on headset who was like, so
35:25
you're telling me they're after some kind of pinky drive and
35:28
they're like no thumb drive Roman and he's like a what
35:30
drive? And that's like 5 minutes of
35:32
dialogue then at least the scenes moving.
35:35
Yeah, well, honestly, I it would have been kind of cool and this
35:40
would have been aping off of the Mega Man Battle Network games a
35:43
little bit. But it's like what if like you
35:44
had like a person like what if you could communicate with
35:47
somebody in the avatar world? Like like Evan Peters character
35:50
was doing it. He was like talking to Jared
35:53
Leto's character, like what if she had like sort of AI don't
35:56
know she lives in the same technological spaces.
35:59
Then why does she not have like a little Tron buddy too?
36:02
There was no Tron in this movie, by the way.
36:04
Like Tron was an actual character in the previous two
36:07
films. That was just another like loose
36:09
thread plot. That was at the end of the
36:12
second movie that it was like Tron had been like turned into a
36:15
bad guy, but then he fights for the users and then they turned
36:18
him back into a good guy at the end of that movie and then he
36:20
like maybe died. There is no fight for the users.
36:24
I mean, the arc of the movie, predictably, is that Jared Leto
36:26
starts out as the avatar for the evil corporation.
36:29
He discovers his, you know, he becomes sentient and then ends
36:33
up helping the good guys to the point where, believe it or not,
36:36
he he turns from a red Tron to a blue Tron.
36:39
I know that's maybe that's A twist reveal.
36:41
I shouldn't have said, but there's no punctuation to that.
36:44
Like you said, he doesn't get to say I fight for the users.
36:46
He doesn't get to say anything. By the time the movie's over, he
36:49
doesn't even really know what he's up to.
36:50
He's just like, ah, I guess I, I guess I'm going to go to the
36:53
Middle East or something. Where is he?
36:54
He's. Like there's a lot of problems
36:59
over there. I was a little confused, like I
37:05
I thought it was interesting. I don't remember this
37:07
character's name but his his friend turned enemy other red
37:11
Tron woman. Athena.
37:14
Athena, thank you. She was like, look at you.
37:16
You're so dumb. Why did you turn into a blue
37:18
Tron? But like, what did she want?
37:21
I was like, she wanted the code too, but she was like already
37:24
rebelling against Evan Peters at that point.
37:25
So I'm like, do you want it for yourself?
37:28
Do you want it to bring it back to him?
37:30
And you've just kind of like, it was just a weird, like I just
37:34
lost track of her motivation at that point.
37:37
Because it was very unclear. Because it was unclear and, and
37:39
I was confused about like, I mean, I guess this is spoilers,
37:43
but whatever. When Jared Leto turned into a
37:48
real boy and a blue Tron and then he was back in the real
37:50
world, he was still like immortal I guess, or like had
37:54
super strength or something. Because like, you know, he was
37:58
getting like blasted into cars and stuff.
38:01
And I was like, OK, so he's not like a flesh and bone human.
38:05
He's just I. Think he's still superhuman?
38:07
I think he did not. He is still made of like lasers,
38:13
yeah, but he is a sentient pile of lasers.
38:17
Yeah, wow. All right, That's cool, I guess.
38:20
And then yeah, like he wanted to find Olivia Wilde's character
38:24
because she was also a pile of lasers and they could like high
38:27
5 over that. Like I just.
38:30
Like she had a permanence coat I guess she just spawned regular
38:33
like 10 years ago. No, that's that's why they're
38:36
not in it 30 minutes after they left at the end of Tron 2.
38:38
She just disintegrated and. They're like, oops, it's the
38:43
post credits. They're just collapsing and
38:45
screaming. And he's like, oh, oh gosh, why
38:47
did it? Oh, I should have left you in
38:49
there I guess. That that didn't work, Dad.
38:52
Like Dad, I need you to pick me up.
38:56
It's like you're on the bike, but Dad.
38:58
Just stick me. Up just didn't make sense.
39:03
There's just stuff that did not make sense and.
39:07
What also can I say, Jared Leto does not have a lot to work
39:11
with, I don't think. I think he's giving the most
39:13
performance in the movie and thus the best performance
39:15
because he has one. But for someone whose whole
39:18
thing is mostly visual, he doesn't even have a lot of
39:21
dialogue. At points, he didn't seem to
39:23
know how he was supposed to walk.
39:25
Does that make sense? Like, you know how, like, as an
39:28
actor, you make a lot of choices.
39:29
You're like, well, how would this character carry themselves?
39:32
Like Christian Bale one time, like slipped a disc in his back
39:36
because he was playing a character who he just decided
39:39
would not have good posture and would always be hunched over.
39:42
So he just did. In every scene, he was like a
39:44
little hunched and legitimately like lost an inch of height in
39:47
real life because he overcommitted.
39:49
Or like the T1000 in Terminator 2, like walks like a robot.
39:54
Like it's very stiff and robotic.
39:57
Jared Leto seemed to just not know what his legs were doing in
40:00
any of these scenes. There's multiple shots of him
40:02
walking around where he's not playing it.
40:04
Like he's big and imposing. He's not.
40:06
Increasingly walking with like a more human gait.
40:10
He just kind of Moses around, like he's uncomfortable in the
40:12
suit the whole time probably. Because he actually was like
40:16
just uncomfortable in that suit, like, but it but that's what
40:19
that's what I mean. It's like they didn't.
40:20
It's like the people writing the film didn't know the answers to
40:25
these questions. So it comes off that way on
40:28
screen. It's just like somebody needs to
40:31
have a better under. Someone somewhere in this
40:33
process needs to have a better understanding of what is
40:36
happening and what's supposed to be happening so they can be
40:39
communicated that way. Like in the in a lot of those
40:42
superhero movies, they have the benefit of relying on decades of
40:46
comic book stories that they can just cherry pick from and have
40:49
people kind of summarize into film scripts, which both satisfy
40:53
the rabid core audience who just wants to see things repeated
40:56
that they're familiar with and gives you a story that already
40:58
had a beginning and an ending and has been evaluated.
41:00
You can be like, oh, people liked it.
41:02
You know, like we're going to take the critically acclaimed
41:04
Secret Wars storyline and put it in The Avengers movies.
41:07
I'm sure there's a ton of Tron media in comics and novels.
41:13
Why not just ape something from that?
41:15
Maybe they did, I haven't seen the rest of their media so I
41:18
know there was a Tron like animated series so maybe the
41:23
narrative of that ties into this movie somehow.
41:25
I I really doubt it. But like, yeah, you're exactly
41:28
right. There's there's more they could
41:30
have done to keep this cohesive because like it felt like rules
41:36
were being made-up as they went along and rules that did not
41:38
line up with either of the previous films.
41:42
And it's like there's such a small subsection of people that
41:44
even are going to care about that part.
41:47
But like, this movie at least needs to make sense.
41:50
The rules you've set up in just this movie need to be followed
41:52
through on. Yeah, like you don't.
41:54
You didn't need to hold to the lore of the original in the 1st
41:57
place. Where?
41:58
Why not just soft reboot? Why not just do the same story
42:01
again? Yeah, especially because there
42:03
were so many things they had to. Avoid.
42:05
Yeah, they had to dance around a whole movie's worth of stuff.
42:08
Why not just forget about it? Know what?
42:10
Like the people who are going to care about that probably still
42:14
aren't happy because you're not talking about those characters
42:16
anyway. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
42:19
Yeah. I mean, I wasn't like, I was
42:22
just so. Yeah.
42:23
I it's, it's a weird thing because like I said, I didn't
42:27
really have like, high expectations.
42:30
I was just had a curiosity about this film and I was still
42:35
perplexed by what it was and how it was executed.
42:39
I didn't hate it overall. There was some like, you know,
42:43
if you cherry pick elements out of it, like you'd be like, the
42:46
music was good, didn't fit the scene at all, but good music
42:49
like and just didn't didn't do enough with this unique setting
42:57
like you had. That's that's what I think it
42:59
is, was the biggest like just missed opportunity.
43:01
If you're going to make this movie at all, you have something
43:04
that is different than other comparable superhero action
43:08
movies, but you didn't do enough to use that to its full extent
43:13
in an interesting way. Yeah, I think it was.
43:17
There's so much opportunity to tackle the ways in which this
43:21
friction happens from putting Tron world into real world and
43:23
just coming up with like interesting variations on it.
43:26
Like how come I think there's like 1 instance in the whole
43:29
movie of a Tron person killing a human person.
43:33
And the way it plays is that there are little Tron discs
43:35
which in the grid will just shatter you into the cubes just
43:38
are like a blade. Why not just make that some sort
43:41
of like weird thing where like, it causes a human body to just
43:45
like break into data and some like creepy kind of way, you
43:48
know, just like some bizarre imagery of like putting these
43:52
two things together as opposed to just doing the most like
43:55
simple literal version of it. Well, that's yeah, that was a
43:59
point I was trying to get to earlier.
44:01
I think it's just like, like this property, you need to get
44:05
weird with it. And they're never, they're never
44:08
going to do that. They're never because, I mean,
44:10
they might as well have because the movie bombed anyway, to my
44:12
understanding and as I think all of them have.
44:16
Yeah, which is the real legacy of Tron.
44:18
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, but if it's a passion
44:22
project, if you're that invested in this, just get weird with it.
44:26
Do interesting things, do atypical things, because
44:31
otherwise you're just making like a less good version of
44:37
things that already exist and has no appeal and no one's going
44:41
to go see it. Which they did not.
44:43
Which? They didn't Yeah.
44:44
So it's like get just I always advocate for this, but get weird
44:49
with it. Just make.
44:50
Get weird. Like interesting choices, like
44:53
what if you made a Tron movie that wasn't even inherently an
44:55
action movie, you know, like make it a horror movie or or
44:59
something. So it's, you know, like a
45:00
psychological type of film, but you have all those kind of
45:03
elements in there still. Make it a legal drama, Your
45:08
Honor. We cannot charge this collection
45:11
of ones and zeros for these crimes, for he does not have a
45:13
soul. Thank you for Gordon.
45:16
Like Gordon? We we spawned him right after
45:22
Tron. It was an opinion poll.
45:25
Do that do do Looney Tunes X Tron like give me something
45:30
like. Do a Tron sports movie.
45:32
I want to see like this can be entirely in the grid but do a
45:37
Tron ball like sports, uplifting, sports drama.
45:45
Yeah. Anything.
45:46
Just like anything. Do something.
45:49
Do something. Because what we have is a weird
45:53
collection of like half baked ideas and the tireless efforts
45:58
of 6000 animators to bring it to light.
46:00
Gosh, yeah, it looked, I mean, it looked good.
46:03
It visually like, I think had strong visual effects.
46:09
Not as, I don't know, groundbreaking maybe as some of
46:13
the visual effects were in the previous Tron films.
46:15
But you know, it was like it had all the tools.
46:19
Like we said earlier, it had all the tools to to do something
46:22
more interesting than what they did.
46:27
So obviously, and like you're saying these pictures to make it
46:29
a whole different movie, they were never going to do that.
46:31
But like optimally that would give it the most appeal.
46:35
And if you're going to do the boring version, at least do the
46:38
like a plus boring version. You know, there's been a lot of
46:40
movies that did not take any chances, but at least like, did
46:43
their homework, like made it, made the script work.
46:46
Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting they have that
46:48
little post credit scene and it's like, will this actor
46:51
return for another one? Will this will, will Tron, the
46:55
movie franchise ever returned? Was this the last one?
46:57
Like we'll we'll have to wait and see.
47:00
Yeah, I guess we're on track. For 10 to 20 years from now, we
47:03
get yet another unrelated Tron that casually skirts around
47:06
whatever happened to Jared Leto, and that's it.
47:09
I. Thought you meant in real life.
47:13
Yeah, actor Jared Leto flops the loot of Tron Aries.
47:18
Yeah, his character, yeah. Yeah.
47:20
All right. Well.
47:22
Any closing thoughts or does that kind of do it?
47:25
No, I feel like I honestly like ran out of momentum with Tron.
47:30
Like, yeah, just like watching the film and then talking back
47:33
about it, I'm just like, gosh, there's just like, I feel like
47:37
my biggest take away is just that it could have been more.
47:39
It wasn't offensively bad, but it was just offensively like not
47:46
adventurous enough or interesting enough to be
47:51
something that that lives up to to that IPI guess because you
47:55
know, there's the previous films are are, as I mentioned before,
47:59
like cult classics in a way to some people, and I don't know if
48:02
this one's going to fall into that same.
48:04
I can't. Imagine not for those same
48:06
people at least. I mean, Tron Legacy is not a
48:08
fantastic film top to bottom either, but it has like a
48:12
baseline level of adventurous spirit behind it.
48:16
And if you make a sequel this much later, that's this like
48:18
sleepy and just, you know, not even remotely compelling in ways
48:23
that were so avoidable that I, I don't know, I got nothing.
48:26
I'm in the same boat. I've just run out of steam
48:27
talking about trying. I'm going to fall asleep in the
48:29
middle of this. Yeah, that's good.
48:33
Well, anyway. Well, again, this was a bonus
48:52
episode for us, for listeners of our regular Meet Your Double
48:56
feature program. Let us know if if you want to
48:58
hear Frank and I talk about new releases in the future.
49:02
If you want us to just stick to the older movies, you know, let
49:04
us know your thoughts. Follow us on our socials, which
49:07
will be in the episode description or just go to our
49:09
website, meetyourdoublefeature.com.
49:11
Spelled in full, just like the name of the show.
49:14
And yeah, we'll catch you later. Thank you for listening.