Tron: Ares review round-up: Worst film of the year... or one of the best of 2025?

Tron: Ares lands in cinemas this week and, yikes, some of the critics haven’t been kind to this third film in the series.

In a break from the series norms, Tron: Ares is about an AI that escapes into the real world, rather than someone getting sucked into computer-ville. That AI is Ares, played by walking red flag Jared Leto.

While the rest of the cast includes great names like Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson and original Tron star Jeff Bridges, they haven’t managed to raise Tron: Ares to a Rotten Tomatoes freshness status. The film sits at 53% fresh at the time of writing.

But you know what pretty much all the critics do agree on? Tron: Ares’s soundtrack is a banger, provided by Nine Inch Nails. They follow in the footsteps of Daft Punk, who made Tron: Legacy’s soundtrack, and synth legend Wendy Carlos who made the lion’s share of the original movie’s tracks.

Tron Ares: What the critics say...

“Great soundtrack, shame about the film,” says The Standard in a 2-star review. It says Tron: Ares “has a lot in common with the Transformers films in its affectless posturing, empty action sequences, cipher characters and total lack of cool.

The Independent went even further, granting the film just a single star in a review that calls it “the worst film of the year."

While the reviewer still loved the soundtrack, actually watching Tron: Ares is described as a loop of “from despair to euphoria, despair to euphoria, on and on,” between getting to hear one of Nine Inch Nails's new tracks.

The Times also gave Tron: Ares a 1/5 rating, and called the film a "gaudy, pointless, multimillion-dollar bowel movement" that features "gasp-inducing lapses in logic."

It’s not all bad news, though.

Inverse gave Tron: Ares a largely positive write-up, advising us to "deactivate your cynicism programming before entering this game grid” and suggesting that with the right mindset the film will leave plenty of folks “smiling ear-to-ear.”

Roger Ebert’s Matt Zoller Seitz’s views are pretty much the polar opposite to the current critical consensus too, and gave Tron: Ares a 4/4 rating. He says it puts director Joachim Rønning on his list of “must-see filmmakers.”

The review calls Tron: Ares a “a stunning movie to watch and listen to, and unexpectedly rewarding to think about,” despite also describing it as “a maelstrom of ideas, images, and adrenaline-pumped action scenes that would probably translate well to a video game,” which some other reviewers highlight as a strong negative.

And for a bit of balance, Radio Times fell between the two poles, giving Tron: Ares a 3/5 review and calling it a “a beautifully designed, if slightly hollow, blockbuster.”

One of the best films of the year? The flat-out worst? You can find out where your tastes from Friday, October 10th when Tron: Ares arrives in cinemas.

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