There is a small group of films whose names double as reviews, and Tron: Ares is just a switch of its last two letters away from joining the club. The American film with the most unfortunate title in Britain since Our Souls At Night is a balloonishly pompous science-fiction smashathon, starring Jared Leto as the world’s greatest artificial intelligence programme, who beams out of his evil programmer’s mainframe and into the real world via an enormous 3D printer.
It’s a semi-sequel to 2010’s Tron: Legacy – which, at a time when cinematic universes were springing up everywhere, made a belated attempt to convert 1982’s Tron into a viable Disney franchise. Ares makes an even less persuasive job of this than its predecessor, largely because its one good idea – the series’ signature high-speed motorbikes, the Light Cycles, streaking through a real city – comes buried under two hours of bloated and un-absorbing non-plot, populated by some of the most aggressively charmless characters seen in a blockbuster since the Star Wars prequels.
Leto, who also produces, is merely the most prominent offender, and the Morbius and Suicide Squad star is painted in an absurdly flattering light throughout. His Ares (pronounced Aries) is a sort of Byronic philosopher-ninja, and was developed by Evan Peters’s tech tyrant – the grandson of the original film’s David Warner – as the ultimate soldier for the AI warfare age.
The only catch? After 29 minutes on the loose, Ares’s programming glitches, and he collapses into a pile of pixels. So off he goes to find a mythical chunk of code written by Jeff Bridges’s Kevin Flynn, which can extend his lifespan to that of a regular human. Alas, the whereabouts of this digital holy grail is known only to Greta Lee’s programming whiz Eve Kim, who – double alas – as a heroine, has all the personality of a doorknob.
In the film’s wholly shambolic first act, Leto serves as the villain. But after rebelling against his creator and being supplanted by his former right-hand woman, Jodie Turner-Smith’s Athena, he reinvents himself as Eve’s sworn defender – and soon the two are hopping between corporeal and virtual planes, dodging peril that feels no realer in the flesh-and-blood world than the computerised one.
Elsewhere, Gillian Anderson has nothing to do but tut as Peters’s disapproving mother – one of a number of spots where the reshoot joins are visible – while the Leto-centric epilogue is an unwitting hoot: a David Brent vision of maverick cool. If AI really is about to destroy Hollywood, Ares has certainly got the ball rolling on its behalf.
In UK cinemas from October 10