There aren’t many film franchises that have survived for more than four decades, but TRON is one of them, with the third installment, Tron: Ares, hitting theaters this weekend. The film follows the 1982 groundbreaking sci-fi classic TRON and 2010’s Tron: Legacy, though its connections to both movies often provide a few head-scratching moments.
The original followed Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a renegade video game designer who gets sucked into a mainframe computer and tries to find a way back to his world. 2010’s Tron: Legacy focused on his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who was left orphaned after Flynn disappeared seemingly for good, as he heads into The Grid seeking answers.
There will be SPOILERS for Tron: Ares below so read on at your own risk.
While Tron: Legacy ends in an intriguing place that could easily be explored in sequels, Tron: Ares serves as a soft reboot of the franchise, which may be one reason the film has divided fans and critics alike. While Tron: Ares still connects to both movies, it can at times, leave more questions than answers.
Who In Tron: Ares Knows That The First Two Movies Happened?
Perhaps one of the most baffling things about Tron: Ares is both its connections to the first two movies and its decisions to basically ignore them simultaneously. It mentions Sam leaving the company and the post-credits scene shows Ares (Jared Leto) searching for Quorra (Olivia Wilde) from Tron: Legacy. Ares knowing about Quorra makes sense, given his consumption of data.
However, surprisingly, none of the humans seem to be aware of the events from the first movie. How does Eve Kim (Greta Lee) take over ENCOM and not know about the particle laser? Could all this time pᴀssed between Tron and Tron: Legacy with absolutely nobody else at ENCOM learning about The Grid besides Sam?
Why Is Flynn Old?
2010’s Tron: Legacy went to great lengths to de-age Jeff Bridges for his scenes as Clu, which makes it all the more baffling why they’d show him as an older “man” when Flynn is shown in Tron: Ares. While Flynn did seem to age like normal between the time he went into The Grid and when he reunited with Sam in Tron: Legacy, this time is quite different.
Since Flynn sacrificed himself in The Grid at the end of Tron: Legacy, Flynn shouldn’t be actually alive, so whatever version of his presence is shown in Ares wouldn’t need to be aged up. It would also make sense to age Flynn up if he was reuniting with his son, to make the interaction seem more normal.
But Flynn being old when he meets Ares just plain doesn’t make sense.
Why/How Is Flynn Still “Alive?”
Kevin Flynn’s sacrifice at the end of Tron: Legacy — merging himself with his program-gone-rogue Clu so his son Sam and Quorra could escape – was a poignant way to end the film, but now that he’s back in Tron: Ares, it only raises questions. Towards the end of the film, Ares discovers Flynn’s “retro grid” from the original film.
The diminutive Bit even makes a comeback, guiding Ares to this version of Flynn, who is fascinated by this “malfunctioning program” and gives him the “permanence code,” which is a thing that will definitely be discussed later. I get that it wouldn’t be a Tron movie without Flynn, but they just plopped him in there with no real explanation.
Where The Hell Is Tron?
The character of Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) has almost become to the Tron franchise what Jar Jar Binks is to the Star Wars prequels. A pivotal character in the first movie, a greatly-reduced role in the second and practically non-existent in the third. At least Jar Jar had a cameo in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, unlike Tron in Ares.
Tron honestly had barely a cameo in Tron: Legacy, and while you didn’t even see his face, Flynn seemingly confirmed the character was actually still alive. If they could bring Flynn back in the roundabout way that they did, surely they could have brought Tron back as well. Surely he could have a presence on the Retro Grid as well.
Why Were The Programs Programmed To Feel Pain?
The concept of robots or other forms of artificial intelligence feeling emotion or pain is not a fresh one, yet Tron: Ares tries to make their mark on the trope, rather nonsensically. The film introduces Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who basically invents a fancy 3D printer to bring programs from his Grid into the real world.
The problem is they can only last for 29 minutes, and when they “derezz,” the programs actually seem to feel some kind of pain. Why? To make them seem like humans? It’s unclear, but, oddly enough, while it seems purposeful that the programs feel pain, it’s then seen as an anomaly when they begin to develop emotions as well.
When Did The Dillinger Systems Become An ENCOM Compeтιтor?
This bizarre aspect of the film reminded me of the remarkable leap that Cyberdyne Systems made between The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. At the end of The Terminator, Cyberdyne was just a small industrial factory, but more than a decade later in T2, it grew into a major defense contractor. Of course, finding a broken microchip and robotic arm helped that process along, but it’s still quite a leap.
One of the first scenes of Tron: Legacy features a large ENCOM board meeting just before an operating system launch, featuring Cillian Murphy in an uncredited role as Edward Dillinger Jr., the son of Ed Dillinger (David Warner), making it clear that the Dillinger family is still aligned with ENCOM.
At some point between Legacy and Ares, the Dillinger family broke off and created Dillinger Systems, though it’s ultimately not clear why.
Why Was The Permanence Code Retconned Into The Tron Universe?
The addition of The Permanence Code is essentially the Tron franchise’s version of Midichlorians in the Star Wars franchise: an unnecessary thing that somehow becomes a major driving force in the story. Tron: Ares shows Julian Dillinger using a super-duper 3D printer to bring programs from their grid into the real world, but they can only last for 29 minutes.
Why can these programs only last 29 minutes in the real world when Quorra has seemingly been living her best life literally off The Grid for the past 15 years? The answer is seemingly just to create arbitrary conflict, the immovable object that meets these programs’ unstoppable forces for long enough so the good guys can win.
Why Was The Remote Base in Antarctica?
One of the first scenes of the film finds ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Grace Lee) and Seth Flores (Arturo Castro) heading to Antarctica to explore this remote workstation that Kevin Flynn seemingly set up decades earlier with a bunch of old tech, plus a microwave for breakfast burritos, apparently. They are there seeking the location of the aforementioned permanence code.
But why is this workstation in Antarctica? Simply because no one would dare go to the literal bottom of the Earth to sift through Kevin Flynn’s old files except for these two? There’s no real reason this needs to be in Antarctica, and it makes even less sense when we get to the next topic below.
Why Even Go To Antarctica When Flynn’s Office/Shrine Is Still Intact?
After finding the permanence code in Antarctica, Eve destroys the small drive the code is on, when Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) closes in after a thrilling real-world light cycle chase (more on that later). Naturally, this means that Eve and the ENCOM team have to get the code again, but another trek to Antarctica is too time-consuming.
So they fix that in the most bizarre of ways: setting up a Kevin Flynn office shrine at ENCOM HQ.and having Eve obtain the code there. If this office shrine had been there the entire time, wouldn’t that naturally be the first place one would look for the code before booking a flight to Antarctica?
How Is There Still Not An Easier Way Out of The Grid Yet?
The arduous nature of getting into and out of The Grid made sense in 1982 for Tron given how limited technology was overall at the time. After getting sucked in through the particle laser, Kevin Flynn has to trek to this crazy portal that is only open for so long, a race against time that made for great drama.
This device made less sense in Tron: Legacy, but now, 43 years after the original, it makes no sense at all. So they can 3D print programs from The Grid into the real world, but humans still have to get to that portal? Flynn couldn’t be bothered to make an escalator to the real world, or something?
