So my main concern when Tron Ares was announced was would it function as a sequel to Tron Legacy in any way.

Never saw Tron. But I really, really, really liked Tron Legacy and was always disappointed it never got a sequel.

It became pretty clear during Ares' promotion that it was not a sequel to Legacy in any meaningful way, nobody from Legacy was gonna show up except Kevin Flynn again, cause like, it's Tron, as long as Jeff Bridges is alive, if you're doin' a Tron movie, you're gonna have Jeff Bridges in it.

So I was actually a little surprised during Ares that Sam Flynn got mentioned multiple times. Then at the end, they even showed a photo of Sam Flynn and Quorra.

So Legacy was not only still canon, they seemed to have some kind of designs on making another film with the characters from both Legacy and Ares.

And they even set up the villain of what would be that next movie.

AND THEN THE MOVIE CAME OUT.

Gosh. That is unfortunate.

evan peters was a very good antagonist. (and gillian anderson as his mother? chef kiss. you can totally see how he got where he ended things)

Julian was a very good evil CEO jerkass who gets in way, way, way over his head.

Leto was......I dunno. I'm still kinda figuring out how I felt about him. I thought early in the movie he rode the line of "Program figuring out his own personality" pretty well, but near the end when he started trying to wax philosophical, he kinda lost me. Overall, I think I liked the idea of Ares more than the execution.

The 80s nostalgia went back and forth between cute and, "Alright, I get it."

I thought the first half of the movie was kinda weighed down by the amount of exposition it had to do. It felt like every other line for the first 20-30 minutes was clunkily trying to get some important character or story information across. But once all of that foundation is laid and Eve gets sent to the grid, I think the movie starts to pick up.

And by the end I was just genuinely enjoying it, and when I saw it teasing a sequel, I was kind of disappointed, cause I realized I would probably quite like a Tron 4, and uh.

That ain't happenin'.

the music was forgettable, but the Grid sequences were great. i get why there werent more of them, given the nature of the plot. but also: more Grid plz.

It definitely wasn't as memorable as the Daft Punk soundtrack from Legacy, but I thought the Nine Inch Nails stuff fit the vibe of this movie.

But, yeah, definitely not enough Grid. Maybe they felt like Legacy took place entirely within the Grid, so this one should take place mostly in the real world? I dunno.