For a brief, strange time, Jared Leto was a go-to guy for a franchise film. He was the Joker in Suicide Squad, the villainous Niander Wallace in Blade Runner 2049, and Morbius in Morbius. He had every element of a leading man: an Oscar, a rock star alter-ego, and strange actor-brain tendencies that were misidentified as “method.”
But thanks to box office failures just like Morbius, the shine started to fade. Disney was still willing to bet big on Leto, casting him as the rogue AI Ares in Tron: Ares, but a new report reveals that this belated sequel was a mistake from top to bottom.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tron: Ares’ dismal opening weekend box office performance — just $33.2 million domestically — is enough to sink the entire franchise. It’s hard to deny that line of thinking; for context, $33.2 million is nearly six million worse than Morbius’ infamous opening weekend, and Tron: Ares had a much larger budget.
Some of THR’s sources blame Jared Leto, a controversial figure on several levels. “In a world where Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch are having a hard time getting lead roles, why would you even go to a person who can’t open a movie and who has question marks around him as a person?” an anonymous talent manager said.
But the final conclusion most sources came to was simply that Tron: Ares is a bad movie, and a glimpse at its 53% score on Rotten Tomatoes backs that up. “You could have had Ryan Gosling, it wasn’t going to work,” said one source. “No one asked for this reboot. If you say, ‘Tron: Ares is good, we just needed a different actor,’ you’re deluding yourself.”
While fingers can be pointed in several directions here, at the end of the day, it’s likely this will be the last Tron movie, at least for a long time. The original may have been ahead of the curve, but its techno sci-fi world now feels like dated nostalgia-bait for a niche audience. There isn’t a name big enough to change that fact.
