Tron: Ares is so bad it makes you wish AI would hurry up and destroy Hollywood
telegraph.co.ukI also went yesterday. I'll share my contrary review[0].
[0] My review of TRON: Ares on Letterboxd https://boxd.it/bjIHvX
I think this review is harsher than reality. Your scores are pretty close to the critic and audience rotten tomatoes scores [1].
You: 3/5 (60%) for general and 4/5 for (80%) for "interested".
Rotten tomatoes: 58% for critics and 86% for "interested enough to go watch it early".
It was as good as it needed to be. It's not high art, there were a few "pasted in" references about the exponential rise of AI (a "newsreel" blurb at the beginning, and a scene or two in the middle).
The original was panned as off-putting and janky to "normies", there's no reason to expect anything different here. Some of the effects were cool, but I think the original had a bit more of a plot and characters compared to Ares.
In the original, it flirts a bit with avatars, power dynamics, and sacrifice... and how humans and computers (programs) were going to be relating together as the importance of computers would continue to rise.
This new one is more like: computers and people... they can be both good and bad? (shrug?) There were lessons and morals at times, but there were also some boring facepalm moments. With some slight tweaks and nudges (eg: a "directors cut") maybe it could be 30% better or make 30% more sense, but it would still be off-putting if you weren't really into a movie about red LED's in the first place.