‘Tron: Ares’ is a curious film, arriving forty-three years after the original ‘Tron’ and fifteen years after the first sequel – and while Jeff Bridges returns for a small but pivotal role, the film’s real focus is on Jared Leto’s Ares, a digital being crossing between the virtual and physical worlds. Like ‘The Matrix’, ‘Virtuosity’, and even ‘Jumanji’, it explores what happens when characters from the “real” world are thrust into a game-like universe – and how, for many, that simulated space feels more vivid, more exhilarating, and perhaps more real than reality itself.

This time, the story feels distinctly of the moment, tapping into anxieties about artificial intelligence. The central conflict is essentially a ‘Terminator’-style battle between good and bad AIs, set against the backdrop of a ruthless tech corporation. The irony, of course, is that a franchise born in the early age of computing is now addressing the very questions it once only imagined – about consciousness, control, and the limits of digital life.

Visually, it’s dazzling. The boundary between digital and physical is rendered through a “generative laser”, allowing characters to move between worlds in a way that’s both conceptually fascinating and visually sleek. There’s an almost philosophical wonder in Ares’s first encounters with the human world – he’s wide-eyed, curious, almost childlike. In one standout scene, he talks with Bridges’s character about music, trying to explain why he prefers Depeche Mode to Mozart – and realizing he can’t articulate why. It’s a moment straight out of ‘Blade Runner’, when a nonhuman being begins to grasp the contradictions of emotion and taste.

The film’s central conceit is that AIs like Ares only exist for 29 minutes before they disintegrate and must be reconstituted. Their quest for the “permanence code” – a way to exist indefinitely – drives the plot. But as Ares experiences the human world, he becomes corrupted by it, developing empathy and hesitation. Like David Bowie’s alien in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, or Will Smith’s conflicted robot in ‘I, Robot’, he begins to question his mission and his makers.

The result is a film that’s visually hypnotic but dramatically uneven. It looks like a high-end techno music video – all neon glare and pulsing synth – but beneath the sheen, it struggles to say anything truly new. Still, in an age of accelerating AI anxiety, ‘Tron: Ares’ couldn’t feel more timely. Its questions about what makes a being “real”, and whether consciousness can survive beyond code, are as unsettling as ever – even if the answers remain elusive.