Director: Joachim Rønning
Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jeff Bridges
Have I Seen It Before: Nope. It’s a long-ish story, but I’m definitely entering an era when the big blockbusters—or at least the hyped, big IP, predominantly Disney ones—are not appointment viewing for me anymore. I’ll catch them later from any number of streaming services for which I’m already paying.
That’s before we even get to my—and America’s?—fundamental reticence to see Jared Leto in anything.
Did I Like It: This thing has been on Disney+ for what feels like the better part of a year, so why not break down and finally watch it?
It’s that Leto, man. I’m happy to say that, despite being the clear lead and one of the creative forces behind the picture—barely makes much of an impression in the film. In other films, that might be a detriment. Here, I’m relieved.
That leaves the rest of the film to be a generic actioner of this era. If the Mouse House decided to jam one of the Avengers in the middle of the movie, I’m not sure most people would notice**. Was anybody else bothered by the entire plot hinging on finding a MacGuffin that allows programs to live longer than half an hour in the real world, when if I remember right Olivia Wilde’s character in Tron: Legacy (2010) was a program who joined the real world?
No? Didn’t think so.
The biggest disappointments are where the film runs a little withholding. The aforementioned Boxleitner-lessness makes the movie series increasingly poorly titled, but there’s more. I was told Gillian Anderson is in the film, and she barely is, doing her trusty Margaret Thatcher impression without the makeup. Excited to see Jeff Bridges again? He appears about as much as Wolfman Jack does in American Graffiti (1973), which is to say, not much. He does appear in a sequence that takes place in the frankly more visually interesting environment of the first film, but both the wisp of Kevin Flynn and the full-retro flashback are gone before you even get the chance to enjoy it.
*Not appearing in this film, by the way. Why this series couldn’t make peace with somebody like Bruce Boxleitner, I’ll never know. Made me want to go back and watch the original Tron (1982).
**OK. People—especially those who really care about all things Tron—might care, but I don’t think the movie would stay around in our memories long enough for it to become any kind of moment about which we all are going to be required to have an opinion. Give it all some kind of multiverse-thing, and those people might even applaud it.