Tron Ares 2025

Polyhedra appear in this cyperpunk movie. The graphics animations in the cyber space is quite nice. The story is ok. It definitely is not like one of the other recent Disney disasters. It did not draw me in too much personally. There are cyberpunk movies which did that: the "Matrix" and "Terminator" come to mind of course; also "Lucy" or the "latest Mission impossible" explored the topic of AI better. The "Matrix" and "Terminator" were franchises that were not only successful but had cultural impact. Tron Ares unlikely will have that. It is hard to say what is missing. Maybe it is the lack of humor which "terminator" is full of (and Schwarzenegger had to be given much credit for some dry maybe also unplanned humor. Similarly as Keanu Reeves, also Arnold Schwarzenegger had character as they did not talk too much, but could make a point with a few syllables: "I will be back", "Yeah" and also because both are down to earth human beings not taking themselves too serious) or the presence of countless iconic new ideas in the matrix "bending the spoon", "dodging bullets", "you are a virus", "red pill or blue pill", "the women in red" (one of the only places in the movie, where the color red appeared, most part was greenish), "you are the One", "follow the rabbit" etc, etc. Tron Ares also feels like a story generated by AI: a bit loveless and generic, but especially humorless. Hollywood and especially Disney still seems to be under the impression that humor is too risky, as it might offend. There is a point to that: I wrote about it here. But we also still live in a time, when tiny, well networked and organized groups on social media can build storms that pretend to express the sentiment or outrage of an overall population. Which is not. Most folks (and I'm one of them) primarily want to see good entertainment and fun when watching a movie. Less politics or worse, see that entertainment seen hijacked to push some sort of "urge to educate the population about some issue" (aka "agenda"). It sounds brutal or materialistic, but also in arts, a major thing which still is important: to make enough money to survive. This is not only true for arts, it is also true for journalism or education. You can not alienate 80 percent of the population with nonsense and think this is going to work out. We have seen industries implode because they took directions driven by ideologies, rather than reason. The car industry in Europe is an example, peaking maybe with the suicidal Jaguar rebrand of last year. Or traditional journalism who have gone off the rails, especially during the pandemic times. You can not improve the world any more if you are dead. Hopefully, the industry will revive. I myself love movies. In particular, if there is some math in it. By the way, it would have been a real opportunity here to make the math more exciting. The polyhedra in Tron representing a "bit" were a bit "generic and unimaginative" like the entire movie. Here is the clip with Tron in a "game environment":

M4V, Ogg Webm. IMDB Entry

Oliver Knill, Posted December 8, 2025 ,