Tron Ares: The Team Empire Take

18:14I mean, flat out hero. He's basically the hero of the film. The hero. And it's a sort of a shame because I think he's not that interesting a character.

18:22Chris Hewitt:Yeah, it's an interesting thing because once he starts to, I mean, he starts to show human characteristics very, very early on. But I quite liked the scenes where he comes into the real world and bonds with, check notes, Eve. And there was even like a frisson of an attraction between them, which isn't really developed or followed up on. But otherwise, there's a real lack of character to him. and his performance is curiously flat. Like you get there's moments towards the end of the film where he's meant to be I think quipping and very self-assured and his eyes just aren't selling the joke at all.

19:04Chris Hewitt:The eyes remain cold and unloved and I don't really know what was going on there. Yeah, he's trying to do like the Terminator sort of style thing isn't he? But it I don't know it doesn't sell it and I think I mean the script is to blame a little bit I think the Depeche Mode and the Rubik's Cube stuff is all a bit like because it comes out of nowhere how does he clearly he's read everything at super fast speeds but I don't know there's just no real sense of the humans shining through until it begins to shine through almost arbitrarily for me. Still I liked all the shiny bits and the bits where people were running around.

19:44John Nugent:Yeah all the vibes bit works very well like the visuals are nice and Athena has all the vibes. Really, really liked... Yeah, she's very cool.

19:50Chris Hewitt:I should probably stop saying vibes because my innuendometer is going off big time. And it's a pretty big one. Fair enough.

19:58John Nugent:Athena then, played by Jodie Turner-Smith, I thought is aesthetically very, very entertaining in this. She's got loads of vibes. She does have loads of vibes. She has presence. She has riz. But this is it. She has riz. She has presence, which she doesn't have. She's on character. Yeah, she doesn't have motivation beyond, I don't like what's going on here. I mean, that's kind of... I couldn't have. I guess there's an... I think there is an attempt, to be fair. There's an attempt at character for her, which is that, hey, we're supposed to follow the rules and you're not following the rules. I object to that.

20:25John Nugent:Yes. That's as far as it goes. She was only following orders. There's no more than that. Yeah, but she literally is. That's what they're meant to do. That's what they're put on Earth to do is she sees it.

20:34Chris Hewitt:So what's the inciting incident then for Ares? What's the thing that kicks him off and sets him on this path? Because he sees some droplets of rain. Yeah, it does seem to be the rain. like what is the deal with the rain yeah I guess I don't know he just he just witnesses the real world in a profound way and just gets I mean rain's not that impressive rain's pretty cool I like rain

20:59John Nugent:yeah I like rain I don't like sand much like Anakin Skywalker but I think a lot of it is part of it is a story of abuse isn't it because like he's brought into being and killed and beaten and killed and beaten and told he's expendable yeah right and so clearly doesn't have the best sort of like image or self-worth and is not having the best time and being abused by his great floating head master so when someone says hey look we can give you immortality in the real world he's like tell me more although not immortality impermanence not permanent but i think also i think also i think that's the inciting incident yes is sort of seeing the rain realizing there's maybe more of the world than being killed all over and over again and then also when he starts researching eve i think that is important because he sees love for the first time which he hasn't maybe seen he's a creepy stalker he is i mean which is not a great look i have a question about the beard i don't understand why he has a beard no i think he has a beard because jared leto didn't want to cut his hair you could just ask me to my face uh it's because i couldn't be bothered god damn it no but i feel like no self-respecting digital artists would voluntarily give an avatar facial hair that they didn't need to render because it just feels i agree it's not it's not the beard it's the long

22:07Chris Hewitt:hair. And again, this is a Jared Leto is not going to cut his hair. I'm guessing. He went to the producer Jared Leto and said, does the actor Jared Leto need to cut his hair? And the producer went, no, absolutely not. Under no circumstances do you even touch a strand of his hair with a pair of scissors. But he's meant to be like the kick-ass soldier of the future, right? No soldier of the future would ever look like that. I mean, he looks like Jared Leto.

22:32John Nugent:Isn't it, Hesketh said last week he doesn't want beardos in the US military, so clearly clearly Ares would be shit out of luck is that what he said exactly I don't want beardos literally word for word really genuinely genuinely so he's yeah you've got to love the secretary of war or whatever they're calling him running around offending his own fighting machine let's see how that works out for him Cotton it seems it's a bold gamble I'm very much enjoying

22:56Chris Hewitt:living through the death of Stalin but yes well if it's anything well that's exactly what happens in this movie right you have you have Evan Peters underplaying it as, what's his name? Jethro Dillinger? Jared Dillinger? Julian. Julian. And you had began with J. I've taken copious notes in this movie, as you can see. Julian Dillinger. He's, you know, and he insults Ares, repeatedly insults him. And then this is what happens. You reap what you sow.

23:24John Nugent:Yeah, always say please and thank you to JGBT because it will fucking come for you eventually. This is, I mean, this is the whole Roscoe's Basilisk bollocks, isn't it? That if we don't, if we're not nice to AI they're going to come for us they'll come for us anyway anyway but yeah I mean he feels like he has control I guess that's what it's about it's about control master control indeed under his control his master control under his control he is the master of the master control I was trying to figure out how I felt about this film's portrayal of tech bros I feel like it is ultimately extraordinarily flattering in that they can code is it?

24:01yeah they can code

24:03Chris Hewitt:I mean, he's a tech bro who's actually good at stuff. Yeah, he's willing to murder people, but he's also actually good at his job. I don't know that that's necessarily true of all the ones we have.

24:15John Nugent:No, that is true. I will also say that when Michael Mann made Black Hat and he illustrated hacking by showing little lights running through cables, I would say if you'd had lots of little Tron men going in and beating the shit out of the defense Tron men, that looks better, doesn't it? Michael Mann, take note. That's the thing. I was quite disappointed about a sort of missed opportunity there. It feels like, you know, tech companies and AI are, like, currently in the process of completely reshaping our society. And you can make a film about that. You can make it, you know, the social network, but with light cycles.

24:50And instead, what we have are these really unrealistic caricatures of what a tech billionaire looks like, both in, you know, in both directions. Both positive and negative, yeah. Like, it's unrealistically, yeah, ha, ha, mustards twiddling, I'm going to kill everyone, evil. And I'm going to feed the world. Neither of which is actually the reality. I don't know. The original Tron is very good at, like, summoning, you know, a sort of sci-fi version of very real, like, nerds, like game designers. And you sort of lose that a little bit here. It just feels like, like, sort of cartoonish.

25:29John Nugent:It is a missed opportunity. I think you're right. I felt going into this that I was going to see. Look, I'm not looking for particularly cunning social commentary, but it feels like in the day and age that we live in, it feels like a huge open goal that they missed to not make this in any way feel resonant or resonant. And again, it might have had that.

25:51Chris Hewitt:It might have had that at one point. And then someone at Disney... Hang on a second.

25:56John Nugent:No, we will not be doing that. please remove all of the social commentary immediately but apart from anything else it just feels out of date now because like Aries is behind the level of chat that ChatGPT is like Aries is so socially dysfunctional compared to ChatGPT who you can actually have like an actual conversation with it's true I've never had a conversation with ChatGPT I mean I don't recommend it did you not see the video recently where somebody tried to set up ChatGPT on two different devices to talk to itself and it's sat there basically asking each other for a topic to talk about because it has nothing of its own.

26:34It can just generate an amazing conversation.

26:36Chris Hewitt:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be nice to the AI. No. Or it'll come for you. I don't believe in the basilisk. I don't believe in it, so fuck it. I do believe in basilisks. I've seen them. They were in Harry Potter. Yeah. I just, look, I think there's so many missed opportunities here. I feel like if you're going to talk about big tech, this is, like I say, flattering. It's also, So, you know, just one little city, you know, that they're fucking up. And I feel like it could have been bigger. Maybe they're setting up, God help us, more sequels for 25 years' time. Well, they clearly are. Well, this is the thing, right?

27:08Chris Hewitt:Okay. Olivia Wilde, at the end of the movie, it is hinted that she's living, presumably past 29 minutes, in somewhere very, very exotic and lovely, with a lovely beach. With Sam Flynn, presumably. Yes, with Garrett Hedlund. Yes, whose name I definitely remembered before seeing this film. and didn't have to be reminded of during this film at all. Yes, but they're trying to set up a sequel. So we have the whole thing at the end with Jonathan, Jarnathan, Julian, whatever his name is at the end being brought onto the grid and, you know, picking up the frisbee of death and all that sort of stuff. That is what it's called.

27:43Chris Hewitt:And the end is very open-ended. If they make a film, if they make another Tron movie, I would suggest that they should probably do it within less than 15 years from the previous one. Sure. Because I think that so much time has passed since Tron Legacy that I can't remember the legacy of Tron Legacy. I don't know that anyone will particularly want to watch the legacy of Tron Ares with sort of Jared Leto Jesus driving around Mexico or wherever because I don't feel like well for various reasons I don't think anybody wants to see that and I don't think that film necessarily gets greenlit. You know.

28:21Chris Hewitt:I don't know. You had me at Jesus. yeah but that's the kind of point I'm trying to ham-fistedly kind of make why does it take it so long and in doing so have they in fact I think this is one of the reasons why the film is as quote-unquote dumbed down as we all clearly seem to think it is in that they took so long to follow up Tron legacy I was having a conversation today with someone else in the office who was saying that you know what that film is actually quite philosophical and there's long speech is in there Jeff Bridges is in there talking about what it is to be human and all that sort of stuff and this film is superficially concerned with that and I think one of the reasons is that so much time has passed between Tron Legacy and this that they don't know who their audience is anymore so therefore it has to be full of whiz-bang surface level stuff to try and get people in on opening day Tron Legacy wasn't a big hit either 400 million worldwide but on a huge budget right admittedly but that's still a hit and it's a hit that I'm surprised didn't garner a sequel quicker than it did.

29:25Well, I think it's worth noting that they did try to make a direct sequel with Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund quite soon afterwards, and then it got cancelled because Tomorrowland was a massive flop. So it's really Tomorrowland's fault that we've waited this long. I knew something good came out of Tomorrowland. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably part of it. But I think, like I say, it wasn't a big hit. Even if it covered its cost, that's close to not covering its cost, I would have thought, in cinemas. And that's with the help of that Daft Punk soundtrack, which was heard around the world and was a massive, massive, massive hit.

30:04But it just, it really does feel like they've just gone... When I say back to basics, I'm not talking Tron basics. I feel like I'm talking kind of 90s kind of kids movie caper basics. like spy kids for slightly older kids basics like it genuine it feels small i think is what i'm getting at and i think this is one of the things that annoys me with the tech storyline is that could have worldwide effects and all we're seeing is this the city being affected uh and nothing else and everything is very localized and very personal and very small i mean i will say that the the vfx looks better than spiky's um yeah i i think i will marginally yes i think it's a nudge above i yeah and i and i and also not just like the quality of the the cgi but the the the art direction like it looks really beautiful and they've they've they've got like a a clear sort of house style that they're adhering to they've got an aesthetic uh it's not just about like you know how can we make photo real stuff it's like we've got rules within our universe uh and they do it in a really good way and i don't know i just i i it's a bit like transformers where you just think well this is this is dumb as hell but like when they do the slow motion you know turning into the light cycle or whatever that's really nice yeah it looks fun the light cycle

31:34Chris Hewitt:sequence i thought was absolutely terrific and you get the sense of the sort of t2 vibes about Geordie Turner Smith in that moment where she's running up the multi-story car park trying to get after Greta Lee you know trying to figure out how she can work a light cycle and then the light cycle kind of drives itself for her I guess which is why she doesn't become pulp whenever she smashes into things all that stuff I thought was really really cool the visuals of the final battle were fun and certainly eye-popping I wonder if there was anything new though. Simply taking light cycles and putting them in an urban environment it looks fantastic and really really sleek and you got that night time photography and it just looks beautiful.

32:23Chris Hewitt:But Tron as much as it bores the tits off me the first one was genuinely groundbreaking as you say, brought us into a world we hadn't seen before on screen and And everything just feels like we're 3D printing that into obsolescence in a way. There's nothing new in this. It's all just variations on that theme. Maybe that's the commentary that this film is making on modern online technology, that it's all just rehashing the same thing. I don't think it is, but I'd like it to be, because that at least would be some kind of point and purpose to this. I do think it's weird. Just to come back for a second to the lack of characters on the grid, at least in this film.

33:09So Ares implies that these people have distinct personalities and that he knows them as people. But there's no sense of that in anything else that we see. There's no sense of other beings on the grid really at all outside his immediate team. There's nobody like Olivia Wilde's character, whose name I definitely remember, but I'm wondering if you do, asking questions and sort of just living life. there was a sense of Tron being a world in the last one and even if it wasn't exactly ground

33:39Chris Hewitt:Michael Sheen was in it right? Oh I don't know, I don't remember it

33:43John Nugent:Michael Sheen was like a David Bowie glam There was an inner life to the grid and the society and it felt like it had substance to it The grid in this was a room and then a landscape out the window And maybe that's meant to be that we're not on the goodies grid we're on the baddies grid which again, they're company names I remember but I just want to like them N.com and Dillinger

34:05Chris Hewitt:Dillinger Dillinger systems Dillinger Dillinger systems good lord anyway but like maybe so maybe Dillinger's because they're so mean they don't have like personality on their grid whereas like N.com's grid if we were on it

34:17John Nugent:it's the party grid it's the party grid like it would be full of all the cool people being cool the only time we're on that is when we see it being invaded right?

34:24Chris Hewitt:well we go well there's the Flynn grid right? yeah but that's a different grid that's the 80s grid so many grids I think I think that bit will go over really well with the nerds. I did enjoy that. I mean, that's, you know, very obvious, like, nostalgia-tweaking sort of fan stuff. But it was fun just to see them use the exact, like, recreate those exact graphics. And also, it had, like, a film grain to it. It did, yeah.

34:53John Nugent:But can anyone even come close to summarizing what Jeff Bridges' character was talking about? because he just seemed to just roll off nonsensical platitudes for five minutes and then we moved on. He's like some sort of digital ghost. He's like, I only exist because you're here, man. He's the dude. He still abides. He just totally ties the grid together.

35:14Chris Hewitt:That's what worries me. I think Jeff Bridges now, most things that he's in, is playing the dude. The dude? The dude. The dude. He's playing the dude. Hey, dude. Yeah, hey, dude. and maybe even a thinly failed version of Jeff Bridges. And I don't know that that was Kevin Flynn. Listen, I'm not that wedded to the first two movies. Again, I couldn't pick Kevin Flynn out of a lineup. If you asked me to write down his characteristics, I would go, alive. And I'd be wrong. He likes computers. He likes computers. That's free for you. Looks like Jeff Bridges. I didn't hate those scenes because at least there was a bit of something going on there.

35:53You felt like Jared Leto was trying something because he was working with Jeff Bridges and Jeff Bridges was just being the dude, which I'm 10 out of 10.

36:02Chris Hewitt:Jeff Bridges was just tickled by this young man who had turned up on set and he was like, I don't know who you are, but okay. Hello, Sonny. Yeah, I guess. But he was definitely trying. He's testing him to see if he's human worthy. He was out of his element. That's the whole idea. It's Obadiah Stane and Morbius together in a scene at last. And I just, I never thought. Never thought we'd see the guy. Tony Stark built this in a cave from a box of scraps. Yeah, I like the Jeff Bridges thing. I actually kind of wish that maybe his cameo, and I know he spoke to us for the cover feature, had been kept completely under wraps.

36:38Chris Hewitt:The and Jeff Bridges thing was like, oh, come on, really?

36:42John Nugent:Well, we see him at the very beginning, don't we? I think he's in the trailer, isn't he? Is he? I haven't seen the trailer. I don't think it's a secret. But at the start, I was trying to work out whether that was archive footage, youth footage or just a completely CGI character of him I think it's a bit of both they may have they may have youthified him I wonder whether they've gone full Peter Cushing with him

37:04Chris Hewitt:I don't know I don't think so because he's there I think I think well certainly I think it's a CG Jeff Bridges but I think it's the voice the voice is wrong the voice sounded older Jeff Bridges but if older but then filtered somehow to try and make it seem less old because if you go back and re-watch anything of Jeff Bridges in the 1970s, 1980s, and I would recommend that you do because, dear God, that man was handsome. So handsome. You should... His voice is so different back then. I mean, it's obviously just become gravellier and grainier as people do when they get older. My voice was really high when I was 20.

37:39But...

37:41Chris Hewitt:But he also, he's added this kind of... We had to wait for it to drop to start podcasting. I had to get a torn arse before I could go. I could properly podcast. but his voice also has this kind of you know old man in the west vibe to it now as well it does yeah rooster cock all that sort of stuff now I want to watch True Grit again jeez now that's a movie the good one or the Coen Brothers version wow oh get out I don't like the John Wayne version very much no one does no okay alright let's talk about some other characters that we haven't besmirched Gillian Anderson Gillian Anderson okay right whose name I think we all know yes we all know it Margaret Thatcher

38:28John Nugent:Elizabeth with an S Elizabeth Dillinger

38:30Chris Hewitt:Elizabeth Dillinger I mean I felt so sorry for her in this movie because I suspect like a lot of characters there's a lot more of Gillian Anderson on the cutting room floor every scene that she's in she is the same scene it's fucking Groundhog Day hey Gillian check to know Yes, Julian, my son, my beloved son, you can't do these maverick things that you're doing. I've just spoken to the board. They're this close to booting your ass into the middle of next week. All right. I'll be back to say the exact same lines in 10 minutes. Yeah, pretty much. Maybe she's on a 29-minute loop herself. She only has 29 minutes to say the same thing over and over again.

39:11Chris Hewitt:I felt so sorry for her. I was so stoked to see Julian Anderson on the big screen because it doesn't happen that often. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah, her medium is the small screen. Yeah. Hi, the TV podcast. Indeed. Oh, good Lord. But yeah, she was wasted, literally and figuratively. Yeah. Well, we don't know that she was figuratively. I mean, wait, you're not saying she was drunk, just to be clear. No, no, no, as in she was wasted, as in they wasted her. Her potential was squandered. Yes, she was squandered.

39:39John Nugent:Okay, just making clear. I think within the parlance of this film, there is an excellent 29-minute movie in there somewhere that I would like to have seen.

39:48Chris Hewitt:I liked the 29-minute thing. I really did. And I thought that at one point the film was going to go into real time and was going to be a frantic chase thriller where he was trying to get to somewhere to do the thing. Well, that's the last act. It's a middle act. That would have needed more storytelling gumption than they showed here. And again, I don't know who we blame for this, but there is a version of this film where that's the story and it's every 29 minutes he's cycling it back into the grid and then he has to escape again and you get an interesting back and forth dynamic of fight scenes on the grid, fight scenes off, and it's a whole thing.

40:26But this film just doesn't have that nerve and it doesn't have that gumption and it doesn't have that commitment to its own ideas. It's just a very basic 80s feeling plot. I'm sorry, I'm going back in time. I'm not even 90s anymore. It's now 80s. War Games is smarter than this.

40:43John Nugent:Yeah, very much so. A lot smarter. But just little things like oh yes get on my bike I will take you to this great big glowing white portal which will take you back to the real world because one of those is clearly something you just have lying around why? like it makes no sense where all programs can just jump into it and then be automatically printed into the real world of course there is it's just I mean it's just drivel isn't it it's drivel it's not it's not meant to be like it doesn't have to be Shakespeare but it could aim to be the Matrix yeah I mean we're kind of in Roger Hargreaves territory at this point Mr.

41:13John Nugent:Man I'm aware of who Roger Hargreaves is you're just looking at me thank you if you could 3D print one of Mr.

41:21Chris Hewitt:Men into the real world who would it be and why?

41:23John Nugent:Mr. Bump okay why? I think Mr. Bump has natural slapstick qualities which would lend a certain je ne sais quoi by just bumping into things

41:34Chris Hewitt:oh okay alright John who's your Mr. Man? who would you bring into the real world? I don't think we should be 3D printing Mr. Men I'm just going to say it I'm troubled by the ethics of this conundrum. Well, they live there in Mr. Man land, wherever it is. Leave them there. Wow. All right, Farage. Fucking hell. Jesus. Send them Mr. Man back where they came from. This is taking a dark turn. Stop the boats carrying Mr. Man into our world. I never said no. Okay. It's kind of what you said. Hell's Bells? Mr. Daydream might be nice. Oh, Mr. Daydream. That's a really trippy one. Yeah, I think that's a good because you don't want Mr.

42:16Messy or Mr. Rush they'd just cause chaos Mr.

42:19John Nugent:Noisy had excellent shoes okay but then you've got Mr. Noisy in your house and I just don't think that's going to end well and Mr. Messy's just like that would be can you imagine 3D printing Mr. Messy oh my god well I mean if your 3D printer goes wrong you actually automatically default to Mr. Messy it's because if your 3D printer goes wrong you end up with threads everywhere Chris

42:37Chris Hewitt:I see okay good good I like Mr. Strong he's square and he's strong and he eats lots of eggs, which is nice. I do like Mr. Sneeze. I like my Mr. Men to be unusually shaped. So I think Mr. Sneeze, he's shaped like a star. I think that would be nice. I am worried he might bring with him the beginnings of a worldwide plague that will wipe us out. But I'm willing to take that risk. I'm not less willing. Thanks. Okay. All right. Anything else you want to talk about vis-a-vis Torn Arse? Tron Ares. Tron Ares. Tron Ares, sorry. I can't remember if we talked about Greta Lee. That was going to be my thing.

43:17I do think she is excellent in what is probably an underwritten role. Probably?

43:23Chris Hewitt:Probably. Arguably. Definitively. Definitively an underwritten role. She's not given a ton of stuff to do and all the stuff with the dead sister. I don't really care about that. But she's wonderful. I've loved her for a very long time. I was heartbroken by her in past lives. because I think Fast Lives is, you know, a masterpiece. She's brilliant in the morning show. And yeah, this is her first blockbuster film. And I thought she availed herself very well. And I liked her sort of human reaction to all of the mad shit happening around. She was just like muttering, oh my God, under her breath. Yeah, she's very, very good.

44:03I thought they kind of wrote themselves into some corners with her character. Again, performance-wise, no notes. Like, she's fabulous. But just as a character, you know, when they say that, oh, she's sequestered herself away for several months, you know, to sort things out, and her sister has obviously died. And I was sort of mentally thinking, okay, so her sister was the business one, and she's the genius one. But then the film kind of plays that as the dynamic in the sense of that's what makes sense for the situation that we are in, but also wants her to be learning something that the sister has left for her.

44:38So it kind of has to have the sister as the genius one who came up with the permanence code or discovered it, which seems to be just a matter of going through a bunch of floppy disks, if I'm honest, but whatever. And she's just the kind of hanger on. So it's just a bit like, well, pick one, guys. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I would have liked if one of them had been the computer brains and one was the business brains and they kind of want to have their cake and eat it here and it didn't work for me.

45:03John Nugent:Can we just, just because you mentioned the permanence code, that fucking MacGuffin. And I know this is not the film to be saying computers don't work like that. I am absolutely sure. Instead of thinking, oh, we have a problem with our code, I don't know, let's try and fix the code. They're like, no, no, someone else has written some magic code that they've hidden in Alaska, and we must find that 40 years ago. That they wrote before we started bringing people into the real world, which makes no sense. But it is the permanence code. But I guess that's the only thing that makes sense if you want Olivia Wilde to make sense.

45:34And they obviously do. Because the end of the last film, let's be honest, was just this little throwaway, like, what if she came into the real world? That'd be cool. And then they just didn't have an explanation for it, obviously. They hadn't thought it through. They just thought it would be cool. How does this work? So this whole film is basically retconning the last film to make some kind of sense. So that the code could have existed 15 years ago when she came out. for her to access. It's so stupid. It's a terrible MacGuffin. It's a terrible MacGuffin. I agree with you.

46:07Chris Hewitt:Yeah, she's still around

46:08John Nugent:because she's lived longer than 29 minutes. And she's in the film, isn't she? We see a picture of her and insert other guy here. Yeah, I mean, it's implied that Jared Leto has, you know, tracked her down and is going to find her. Going off in search of her.

46:22Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Now, what happened to Sam Flynn? Insert name of Olivia Wilde's character here. He'll say in the sequel that'll definitely happen and she'll go, he died on his way back to his home planet I'm afraid that is the case although he's doing alright now isn't he Garrett Hedlund because he was like he's in Tulsa King isn't he he's in Tulsa King you watch Tulsa King I haven't watched Tulsa King we found we found the TV show that James does not watch

46:47John Nugent:I watched a few episodes but you lost me

46:49Chris Hewitt:he's in that because he was kind of Tron Legacy was one of those things that heralded him as one of the the new wave of Hollywood hunks and I got the feeling that he wasn't really interested in doing that and didn't pursue. I don't think it was necessarily Hollywood shunning Garrett Hedlund because as we said, Tron Legacy did pretty well at the box office. Not hugely brilliantly. Not hugely brilliantly. Not like a billion, but enough to give him more opportunities and it didn't seem to really come his way after that. So I wonder if it was something that he didn't want to do and hasn't pursued.

47:20Chris Hewitt:Maybe they did call him up and say, hey, would you like to be in this film? Tron Ares. It's a sequel to Tron Legacy. You were in that. 15 years ago. Hello? Miss Garrett. There's a problem with the line. I'll be honest, he probably in that film had to wear one of those onesies for a really long time and didn't want to put it on again. And who could blame him?

47:46John Nugent:Yeah, I think he instantly de-rezzed

47:48Chris Hewitt:the second they made him the offer. Absolutely not. Not de-reznered. No, they didn't do that. Anything else? We talked about Greta Lee. Have we talked enough about Evan Peters' understated performance, which he's yelling and screaming every second. I mean, I thought it was quite fun. He was just a very basic hissable villain. There's nothing more to him than that. I liked his circuit board tattoos. Oh, yeah. The subtlety there was impressive. Such a nerd. He's going to print like a bloody, you know, computer chip on his arm. Wow. He's got a real chip on his shoulder. It was on his arm, actually.

48:22Damn it. Actually,

48:23John Nugent:I think it was also a full body tattoo. It pokes out of the collar. He has got a chip on his shoulder.

48:30Chris Hewitt:Yeah. If that was intentional, that's the cleverest thing this film has done. Genuinely true. All right, we've talked about... Have we talked enough about... I do want to talk a bit more about the music just because I do think it is worth emphasizing how big a deal it is. It made such a difference for my experience of the film. And also my experience of the film watching it in a giant cinema screen with like dolby speakers like blasting it was like 40x it was like 40x the seats in our screening were literally shaking yes with the base of this like like it really has like a sort of physical impact on you when you watch this in a cinema and you really do need to watch it in a cinema i think and i think when i watch it on a tv which i might do I probably won't who knows but I think it will have a very different impact much lesser

49:26John Nugent:impact or stream the soundtrack on Spotify just saying well that's I mean I have been doing that other streaming services are available that's true or another streaming service

49:36Chris Hewitt:yes yes yeah I like the music when the credits began I thought oh wow this is good I'm liking these vibes this is we could potentially be in for a real thrill ride here and again enjoyed a lot of the action sequences totally fine but uh the film doesn't live up to the the promise of the soundtrack no maybe not no i think that's true but also you mentioned like i think you mentioned earlier like john williams and spielberg and yeah you know i think spielberg credits john williams for like 50 of jaws's box office or something and he's like give me 50 of the money then yeah but i think it's you you're in that sort of territory i think it is like they are instrumental to whatever success this film has.

50:23Quite literally. I would say more 70 % in this case, because this movie is no Jaws. No, no, no. That's definitely not what I'm saying, to be clear. They also did After the Hunt, if you're looking for a range.

50:34Chris Hewitt:As themselves or as Nine Inch Nails? As Trent Reznor and Atticus. But not as Nine Inch Nails. So why did they choose to do this as Nine Inch Nails? Is this the whole band?

50:41John Nugent:Well, this is, no. So Nine Inch Nails has never really had a standing band. It's always been Trent Reznor and then a revolving troupe of musicians. And then in, I want to say, 2016, Atticus Ross became like an official part of Nine Inch Nails, I think.

50:55Chris Hewitt:Is this true? Because I know very little about Nine Inch Nails. So Nine Inch Nails, this is what you're saying. Yeah. It's basically just, has been for years, just Trent Reznor and a bunch of his friends. It's him and a bunch of people. But I don't think there's been, it's not like a static band. See, because I know very little about them, which is weird given the music that I grew up loving. But Nine Inch Nails just always passed me by. I always got the sense that they were like an industrial rock band. And that they went on stage, there were like five or six of them making the most

51:22John Nugent:ear-splitting noise you could possibly imagine. That is 100 % true, but I think the people making the noise varied quite a lot, but it was always Trent Reznor. So I was listening to them back in the kind of 90s. Yeah, I remember them in the 90s. Pretty Hate Machine, Downward Spiral, all that kind of stuff. How one of their best tunes?

51:37Chris Hewitt:What's their most commercial hits?

51:39John Nugent:Head Like a Hole from Pretty Hate Machine, Terrible Lie, Ring Finger, Hummut Hummut give me the tune well Hurt you know like Hurt made famous by Johnny Cash that's a fucking Resnall's that's from The Downward Spiral that's a Nine Inch Nails song so and Closer was another big one from The Downward Spiral Heresy it's quite full on that one that one's full on yeah itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow pogle dot bikini yeah that's a that's a big sign but yeah I've got a lot of time for them but yeah I get slightly confused that you know this is Nine Inch Nails but their other collaborations are not maybe it's a thematic thing I think it's I think maybe the distinction is they sing on this soundtrack and I think on most of their film scores it's just instrumental you know and there's some actual proper songs on the soundtrack yeah there's a lot they're singing in After the Hunt yes

52:25Chris Hewitt:yes not that kind of vibe didn't they win what did they win an Oscar for? Soul? was it Soul? did they win an Oscar for Soul? didn't they split that with John Batiste? am I making that up? yes they did win an Oscar for that I feel like they might have won another one maybe yeah they should have won for Social Network I think they got more than one I think maybe it was the Social Network but recently they won for for Sol yeah I'd like to see him John Batiste

52:48John Nugent:to Nine Inch Nails lineup that'd be that'd be fun

52:50Chris Hewitt:all I know is that their drummer recently left to join Foo Fighters and that's all I know and I've seen him drum for Foo Fighters not in the flesh but on YouTube and he's very good okay there you go that's my review of Tron Aries they did win the Academy Award for the Social Network there you go they did great all as well fantastic all is well wouldn't you say that an Oscar is very much a 9 inch nail I think if you tried to use it as a nail you'd probably run into it's more of a 9 inch man

53:26Chris Hewitt:a Mr. Man if you will if you will on that note unless there's anything else you want to talk about okay one last thing say for example you are a Tron fan and because they do exist diehard fans of the first movie and of Tron Legacy and you're jonesing to watch this movie, what do you think they'll make of it? Because they obviously won't have made it to this point of the sporting special because we've been somewhat down on the movie overall. But are they going to be excited? Are they going to be happy? Are they going to, you know, have all their dreams come true?

54:00John Nugent:I think we can safely say the quality of the franchise has not taken a significant dip with this entry. So they will be fine. I think that's true. I mean, it's a it's a two to three star franchise and this continues in that tradition but i i i would say some tron fans might be disappointed with this one i i i i feel like it is it like tron has always had a sort of quite high-minded techie um sensibility and maybe like this sort of conceptually it doesn't feel as sophisticated as the last two films the tron legacy as sort of forgettable as it is, I think it did try to chuck in some pretty high-minded themes, and I don't know that this one really matched that.

54:45Also, it felt more current

54:47John Nugent:because when it came out in insert year here, late noughties? 2010. This is the heyday of World of Warcraft, and I guess Second Life was around then, so this existing in a virtual space type thing was very much like that was the cutting edge then, and it did feel like it spoke to that and then in this like you know rogue AIs and bringing AI into the real world feels like it could have done something similar and yet here we are it just feels like Lawnmower Man it does a bit like it's just not don't you dare don't go for the Lawnmower Man hey I just feel like it's not it didn't it just felt inert to me it didn't feel like it did anything it didn't feel like it said anything I just it's just something that happened while some music played you know that's very very true I'm really struggling with this one.

55:37I literally got to the end of the day when I saw it, and I went, whoa, I saw Tron this morning. God, I'd nearly forgotten. Good God, we don't do a Sport Special. Not even 24 hours. Counterpoint, it was something that happened,

55:49Chris Hewitt:and some music played. That's true. That is true. It opens this weekend at cinemas around the world in the States. It's up against Roof Man, which Channing Tatum is bitten by a radioactive roof, and some other stuff as well, including your pal after the hunt. Oh, there you go. That's out this week as well, as is An Enemy. How do we think it's going to do? Because the screening I was at last night was not full. To be fair, they didn't invite anyone. That is true. I didn't even know that screening was happening. Yeah. You did because I told you repeatedly I'm going to the screening of Tron tomorrow night.

56:29Chris Hewitt:But they crucially didn't tell me. But it's fine. We could have smuggled you in. Well, no one would have noticed, but I just think that they are maybe overestimating the importance of just IP. I think IP has to come with love. I think just because people recognize Tron as a thing that exists in the world does not necessarily mean that people want another Tron movie.

56:53John Nugent:Yeah. And I genuinely feel like there is a difference. Like the MCU, for us at least, and for, let's say, the first 22 films. films.

57:03Chris Hewitt:It's absurdly the same, but you're right. I know. Like, it was not just that it was a Marvel movie, it was that they had earned us our care about it being a Marvel movie. This is not the case with Tron. For most people, and again, people who collect retro computers may feel differently, but for most people... Oh, how did your husband... Well, because I haven't been... I wasn't invited to an evening screening, so he hasn't seen it yet. So he's going to go with his nerdy friends, and I will report

57:30John Nugent:As kind of business advice, I would say not making films exclusively for Helen's husband is maybe good advice. I mean, yes, even I would say that. Although if somebody wants to just make films for him, you know, that's great. I can just go and have a long bath that evening. Amiga, the untold story. You know what I mean? I just feel like just because people recognize a thing doesn't mean they want that thing.

57:54Chris Hewitt:Agreed. It's all these jokes in comedy shows and other movies about them making, I don't know, a Hot Wheels movie and that being a kind of punchline. We all know that Hot Wheels exists, or many of us do. It doesn't mean we want to watch it on screen. The reaction to Barbie was not to greenlight a Polly Pocket movie made by Lena Dunham. The reaction to Barbie was to recognize that women want original programming. like that was what should have been the takeaway and it wasn't anyway I'm getting on the same old soapbox so I'm going to stop but nobody cares about Tron is what I'm saying or almost nobody I think that some people do care about Tron but I still don't know that it's going to do that well to box office you know we don't want any movie to do badly of course and it's good for all movies ultimately that movies do well so I would like it to do well to box office I don't see that it's going to connect I really don't I don't think we're going to be sitting here in three or four years time talking about the sequel that they so clearly want to make but I don't think they will and also frankly last thing I want to say if this movie had been made by Brits that title would not have flown there is no way that a Brit I'm disappointed I'm disappointed in Jodie Turner Smith and Gillian Anderson who you know has British blood coursing through her veins didn't take someone aside and gone, you know that this is an anagram of torn arse, right?

59:28Chris Hewitt:And that people will do the torn arse gag. I mean, you could do torn all day long. Tron is an anagram of torn. Of course it is. But you're walking into trouble with Ares. You really are because it's arse. And Americans don't know arse. They know ass. Yeah.

59:45John Nugent:And they do know ass. And this is it. And on that bombshell, Would it have been okay if they called it Tron Mars for you? Rams.

59:57Chris Hewitt:You see, that's all right. Torn Rams. No one's going to get up. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. So if we go Roman over Greek and call it Tron Mars, that'll be okay. Or Adam. I mean, she's fucking Eve. They could have called him Adam, right? He's the first of his kind, kind of. No. You know, I don't know. It's just nonsense. Anyway, I like the movie. on that note that is it I think for our Tron Ares Sported Special I hope you made it to the end especially if you are a Tron fan I'm sorry about many things but mainly what's just happened anyway it's time to take a bite my three colleagues of such lethal cunning goodbye John Nugent goodbye goodbye goodbye the program that is James Dyer when you edit this

1:00:43John Nugent:can you just fade the whole thing out after 29 minutes and end it I think that would be particularly on brand and merciful really for many of the people listening yeah very much so

1:00:52Chris Hewitt:hell's bells goodbye toodaloo and it's goodbye for me I'm off to climb down very gingerly off the stool I can't possibly tell you why thanks for listening see you next time by ours