I just returned from seeing (hearing) Tron:Ares and boy are my eyes and ears tired... but in a good way.
I was about eleven years old when the first Tron movie came out back in 1982. I did not really like. I know I was supposed to like it. I was an eleven year old boy with an Atari who wanted to go to the arcade any time he could get a ride and who had HBO (not hideous body odor). Tron was on all the time but it just wasn't good... but I still watched it because it looked kind of cool for the time. To be honest, the only thing I really liked about Tron in the 80s was the awesome Atari 2600 video game joystick that came with a bad Tron game.
Although I know I saw Tron:Legacy that was released in 2010, I honestly don't even remember it and had no urge to ever see it again.
So why was I so eager to rush out and see Tron:Legacy? That is simple, I found out Nine Inch Nails was doing the music for the movie. As soon as I heard that a few months ago, I was in. I love industrial music. NIN is one of my favorite bands of all time. In addition, Trent Reznor (who is NIN) has become an amazing music composer for movies. He really knows how to set a mood and punctuate cool movie scenes. Although he won an Oscar for his score on The Social Network, I feel his best work is in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. So when I heard he'd actually be going back to industrial for this movie, I absolutely had to see it in the theater with the best sound I could find.
Knowing that it would also have stunning visuals, I decided to go all out and see it in LieMAX (that is not a typo, I did not see it in real IMAX as there is only 1 in my state... and most likely yours). I was not disappointed. The visuals were incredible. The only problem is that after playing some video games lately, these visuals simply looked like expensive and well made cut scenes from a sci-fi video game. The big difference was seeing them from a LieMAX projector on the (relatively) big screen did make them way cooler.
But the star of this movie for me was Nine Inch Nails original soundtrack (with a little Depeche Mode love tossed in for fun). The songs reminded me of why I fell in love with NIN when I was a teen. The bets were hard. The guitars were distorted. The BPMs were perfect for stomping. I'm actually a bit surprised I didn't just get up and dance. the songs were that good. They were also a ton of them. I would say there was cool music playing about 70% of the time. Nearly every scene that did not have dialogue was accompanied by incredible electronic music.
If it were not for the visuals and music, this movie would have completely sucked. Every second there is dialogue is wasted time. Luckily there is not much. But what little dialogue exists is so cliche. There was actually one pretty cool and insightful line late in the movie... but then they repeat it and explain it so it lost all of its coolness and meaning. This caused a serious eye-roll by me. Luckily then another song started so I was fine. For me, that is what this movie was: killing time until another song came on. I enjoyed it when the time killing method was a cool visual but most of them were along side cool music rather than instead of it. The only thing that disappointed me was that a secondary reason for my excitement was that I love Jodie Turner-Smith who plays Athena. Sadly, she barely speaks so she was totally wasted.
There is a McGuffin that they chase throughout the movie to at least provide some kind of reason and urgency for the action, but honestly, that didn't matter. The creators clearly wanted an excuse to show really cool special effects while vehicles chased each other and blew up real good. If this was indeed their goal, they definitely accomplished it.
So do I recommend this movie? If you like Nine Inch Nails, you must see it in a theater with awesome sound. If you think it would be cool to see a bunch of real awesome video game cut scenes projected on a big screen, see this in a premium theater. If you like movies with a plot, never watch this. In fact, if you aren't seeing it in a theater, I have no idea why you'd watch.