"Tron" has always been one of Disney's strangest, yet visually striking franchises. The 1982 cult classic and its 2010 legacy sequel were largely experimental "what ifs" about a digital dimension beyond ours that could produce societies, religion and the concept of free will. We could only dream of the technological possibilities looming on the horizon, and with the troubling rise of AI breakthroughs, "Tron: Ares" seemed like an ample opportunity to really expand upon its concepts of the two worlds converging. Sadly, the Joachim Rønning-directed entry is a thoughtless sequel that's more interested in moving thinly-written characters from point A to point B without much introspection towards the implications of such a merger.

Taking place 15 years after "Tron: Legacy," "Ares" sees tech companies ENCOM and Dillinger Systems in a race to perfect a 3D printing machine that can successfully pull digital constructs from their servers. At the center of this conflict is Ares (Jared Leto), a Master Control program who grows weary of being one of Julian Dillinger's (Evan Peters) expendable soldiers. Anything transferred from the Grid can only last up to 29 minutes before deresolution, which leads to an escalation in company warfare to retrieve the Permanence Code. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) discovers it in one of the files of the company's former founder Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), but breaks it when first confronted by Ares. In refusing orders to retrieve Eve's internal Permanence Code, Ares helps Eve escape Dillinger's Grid back to the real world where they seek to upload Ares into Flynn's original Game Grid to obtain a backup.

Upon being digitized, Ares comes face to face with none other than Flynn himself. "Ares" doesn't give easy answers as to how he's still alive after "Legacy," but we can make some assumptions.