It’s either brave or foolish of Disney to consider Tron a viable franchise after only offering three entries across its forty-three-year existence. Then again, Top Gun is now one of the most lucrative series despite being comprised of two films with a thirty-six-year gap in between. Disney hoped that the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, would make his return to this franchise after getting his Hollywood career started with Tron: Legacy. But he was busy with F1: The Movie, so the director’s chair was handed over to Joachim Rønning, a familiar face to the studio with a resume that includes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Young Woman and the Sea. He’s a steady hand who understands the assignment, which is why this is a well-assembled, yet mildly forgettable blockbuster.

Humans going into the digital world is old news, with digital creations coming into our world being the new craze. Rival corporations ENCOM and Dillinger Systems are in a race to be the ones to pioneer that technology, with the former promising medical breakthroughs and unlimited resources for humanitarian aid, and the latter selling super soldiers to the highest bidder. And if you still can’t tell who the bad guys are, Dillinger’s headquarters is in a top-secret air hangar perpetually bathed in red lighting. The final piece to this digital puzzle is the permanence code, which fixes the bug that limits the lifespan of any creation to just twenty-nine minutes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the promise of that power is enough to push Dillinger CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) to print his cyber soldiers and order them to kill ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee).

As Blade Runner and A.I. Artificial Intelligence have taught us, it’s that robots have a desire to understand the human condition. Why a perfectly engineered specimen would want to join the plight of humanity at this exact moment is an unanswered question, one of many within Jesse Wigutow’s by-the-numbers script. For Ares (Jared Leto), the feeling of rain (but not tears in rain) and a sense of empathy from Eve are enough to convince him that Julian can’t be trusted. Endless chase scenes ensue as the pair avoids capture from Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), Julian’s other unstoppable digital assassin.

If that scenario sounds like a perfect excuse to pump the action full of light cycle greatness, then you’d be absolutely correct. Those beaming bikes are on full display in their shiny metallic glory, speeding along streets and cutting objects like a hot knife through butter. A hacking sequence is visualized like a neon-soaked version of the ending of Zero Dark Thirty, which I’m sure is still more accurate than what they did on NCIS. The whole thing looks and sounds incredible, with DP Jeff Cronenweth (not seen in movies since 2021’s Being the Ricardos) concocting some dazzlingly sharp images.

Speaking of sound, the techno score by Nine Inch Nails frontmen Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross offers the propulsive push this stale story needed. It sits right next to their Challengers score as the best rave music produced in the last few years. I staved off the inevitable question of “am I getting old?” by not being bothered by how ungodly loud the speakers were blasting in the IMAX theater. It’s a shame that Disney was able to hire David Fincher’s cinematographer and composers for this, but not the man himself.

Jared Leto is perfectly cast as a robot, both because of his stilted mannerisms and delivery, and his insane ability to look this good at the age of fifty-three. He’s come full circle in the artificial life cycle, first playing the creator in Blade Runner 2049, and now the created. Good as he is here, one outing with this character is all that I need, especially if it frees Greta Lee to pursue something more worthy of her immense talents.