Knee-jerk review: "Tron Ares"

1. There's a curious amount of negative buzz out there, but the movie is not bad at all.  For what it is, it gets the job done.
2. We did find it odd, however, that for a movie called Tron, almost all of the action takes place in the real world.  That makes for a novel approach (when we saw a Recognizer patrolling the skies over a real world city in the trailer, we were 100% sold), but the fun of Tron movies are the scenes on "the grid."  We were particularly disappointed when Greta Lee's kidnapping to the grid was cut so short.
3. Bonus points for retro 1982-era lightcycles.
4. Jeff Bridges... is he playing a wizened old Kevin Flynn here or the Dude from The Big Lebowski?
5. This movie looks really, really expensive.  Not just the digital effects,  but there's a lot of practical stunts and car crashes as well.
6. Gillian Anderson doing a British accent, presumably because she's playing David Warner's (for the original movie) daughter?
7. Bummer not even a Bruce Boxleitner cameo.
8. We were worried at first because the first five minutes or so is a huge information dump recapping a very convoluted background of the Tron universe, which is mostly just corporate backbiting and tedious business intrique.  But in the end, you get the gist.
9. Pundits have correctly noted it's a strange choice for Disney to bet hundreds of millions of dollars on a second sequel to a rather niche 1980s nerd property, especially given the so-so reaction to the last one (Tron Legacy - which was 15 years ago!).
10. There's some pretty cool action stuff in here, especially the extended chase in the first hour.  Top notch.
11. Jared Leto is definitely a solid character actor.  Quirky, smart... but also a little creepy.  We're not sold on him as a leading man hero.
12. Cool to see that the evil Dillinger family still likes to use the flat desktop glass computer keyboard and monitor.  Some things should never change, no matter how impractical.
13. Fantastic music by Nine Inch Nails, as you may have heard.
14. All of the business with the "particle lasers" (which can zap you to the grid or bring grid things to our world because... technology) is completely illogical, but it's consistent in its illogic so it mostly works.
15. The movie tries to be hip with some Depeche Mode and Frankenstein references, which is the right idea in a movie that's mostly way too serious and grim, but those moments are a little cringey.  
16. We're scared to go back and watch the first Tron again.  We suspect is has not aged well at all.
17. Derezzing is still way cool.
18. How many people will get the 1982 movie Sark reference at the very end?  In theory, that moment points to another Tron movie, but the box office results thus far suggest this is, as they say in Tron, "end of line."
19. Space Paranoids is still a terrible name for a video game.
20. Overall, it's totally fine, people.

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