Midweek Mention... Tron Ares

Tron Ares

Reegs: I can see you going up and down like a little crazy. Yeah.

Dan: Okay.

Cris: Well look, first things first. Happy birthday, Daniel.

let's,

Dan: Bit, bit premature, but by the time this comes

Cris: when I came in earlier, I, I or I could walk past the house, was all I could hear was happy Birthday being sang.

So,

Dan: Ah, that's because, it's my father-in-law's birthday today.

Cris: Ah, okay. My

Dan: birthday's tomorrow.

And the Mrs is the day after.

Cris: is

Reegs: oh three in a

Dan: Yeah.

I'm the sa I am the, the filling between two bits of birthday bread, I guess. Yeah,

Cris: Wow.

Dan: I'm sure that, I'm sure I've insulted everybody with that one.

Reegs: Does that mean, do they go bonkers for the first birthday and then bonkers for the last birthday and you get nothing in between or or is it usually yours is the one that everybody loses it?

Dan: Well, no, he's, he's not here. Father-in-law's in check. So, he has got his his sister around there tonight, I think celebrating But [00:01:00] normally what would happen, it would make me laugh because when Janna was young. Family would go and visit her in a vi village in Czech to wish her dad happy birthday on the 19th, and her birthday would be two days later.

So they would just go and happy birthday for a couple of days time because they're not

coming

Cris: They're not coming. Yeah, they're not gonna

Dan: they're not driving all the way back. So, she used to just get like the,

Reegs: the dregs.

The

Dan: dregs of birthday wishes. I've been. What now? 20 years we yna or so and I've had to get up the day after my birthday every morning Yeah.

To make her breakfast

Reegs: Oh yeah.

Dan: and wish her a happy birthday and be bright and cheerful and like always all about you. Whereas before I met her, I used to get like a, a birthday week. You know, you, you just Yeah. Milk that. It's like, oh, it's my birthday. A couple of days time going out. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Basically, as soon as it hits midnight, she's talking about her birthday

Dan: Yeah. It's like [00:02:00] all not long now. Even before midnight. Even kind of taking the, you know, she loves having her birthday after me because it just means like. You know, you, it's that little bit of sort of the sweets that you've saved and you can eat afterwards on your own.

Reegs: Oh, and the funny thing is, I can imagine that that was fun when you were young and you just first got together. Oh, isn't it fun having our birthdays together and then 20 years of resentment

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: you're like,

Dan: exactly. That. It's like you've been there for each and every one. No, we've had some, some nice ones. What we've said in the past, actually, when it's worked really well, when it's, it's been a Friday and a Saturday and we've just gone away for the weekend and we've had a birthday weekend and we've just kind of, but i'll be working tomorrow and the next day and will be January and it'll be raining. And that is why I am going to Thailand

Cris: next week,

Dan: the week after.

Reegs: Yep. You are going to Thailand and Saudi will be in Thailand I think. Definitely by the time [00:03:00] this episode comes out. Yeah. So I've been on a bit of a

Dan: although not together, we should.

Cris: Yeah. You're not going with him. Yeah. He's

Dan: No. Yeah.

Reegs: A lot of people going to Thailand

Dan: It's, it's, yeah,

Cris: Well, it's the place to go, right?

Dan: One of the most popular places to go. Tourist wise, I think maybe we should start doing Thai films. There is a really great Thai western film I watched at the cinema which was as bizarre as that sounds.

And it was really, really a, a colorful, kind of western with pink in bright yellow shirts and everything.

Reegs: we watched a couple of time movies for the pod as well. We watched on

Dan: yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Reegs: that, with Tony Jar and there's been a couple of other

Dan: so maybe we should check them out after I'm back from

Thailand

Reegs: and

Dan: But for now, we're not doing those movies. We're doing other films that I haven't seen. Yeah. Yeah. I'm quite interested in, in this movie actually, because it's obviously been out a [00:04:00] little while. Mm-hmm. And I remember seeing the first one.

Reegs: Yes. Not when came out.

Dan: came out. Yeah. But

Reegs: it's the story of Jeff Bridges, who is Kevin Flynn, a computer game designer who able, is able to kind of transport himself to a digital world called the grid. And then in the follow-up he, in a sort of two hour long music video becomes a kind of god-like super being that can interact with the real world in

Dan: ahead of its time, though, in many ways, isn't it?

Cris: well,

the first one, apparently I've never watched any of them until this

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: So I, I had no idea.

I kind of had to guess, you know, that Flynn and then obviously you see him in, he was young and then he was older and then he's kind of in this robe at when he

the end.

Yeah, towards the end

Dan: this inspired video games and all sorts tron and a real cult following

Reegs: I think it's mostly the aesthetic for me. Yeah, like that neon on black light [00:05:00] type presentation and the, you know, real simple vector graphics. They were very sort of iconic.

Dan: the branding and everything was, was great.

Reegs: So in this one unlike I guess the other movies, this one predominantly takes place in the real world.

So this explores the notion of what would happen if those AI constructs came into the real world. And it starts with like a digital red laser of the Disney logo, which was pretty cool. And then we get Jeff Bridges, Kevin Flynn talking on tv about

Cris: In a grainy footage kind of.

Reegs: Yeah, I mean, he's explaining it's, it's about 40 years after the original taking place in 2025.

Two tech Giants locked in competition, this en com system who's led by this woman called Eve Kim and Dillinger Systems, which was, if you remember the first movie, Dillinger was kind of the bad guy. So, so, you know, obviously the name has Connotations and that he's played by, is it Evan Peterson?

Cris: I think that's his name.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely

Cris: I've definitely [00:06:00] seen him in movies before and,

Reegs: Well, he was in the X-Ed movies, but also some other stuff as well.

Cris: yeah,

Dan: Actors do that, don't they

Reegs: Play more than one role. Yeah, they do sometimes. Yeah. So, yeah, so the kind of the goodies, the en com run by this Eve Kim, who, she was a computer game designer and she ran it with her sister, who was like a real humanitarian but who died of cancer.

So they were doing it for sort of philanthropic reasons.

Cris: Yeah. They kind of tell us the story of these two, and they're the two tech giants basically, that they're, and they're, what they're looking for now is who it's a race for who can actually get to the,

Reegs: Well, there's a big McGuffin in this movie.

So after we get a little bit of stuff in the grid where we see, we get introduced to Aries, which is Jared Lito. We haven't seen his face yet, but he's doing some fighting against some stuff. He's being trained up as a security program and told he's the master control program. And then we will helmet.

He's got a very cool helmet and then we'll cut to the real world where this Evan Peters [00:07:00] guy what's the character called? Julian Dillinger.

Cris: Julian.

Reegs: He is like doing a presentation to all these military bods, and he shows that he can manifest using these lasers stuff that they designed in the grid, in the ai, and they've got these lasers and they can produce it in the real world trucks, and then they bring in Aries, the ultimate soldier.

Jared Lito and he can do all these tricks and stuff, and obviously the military is super impressed. Wow. You can 3D print an army basically directly on the battlefield. Isn't that amazing? And they all go away. Oh, we'll keep investing in your research. We're gonna put orders in, blah, blah, blah. And then it becomes apparent that there's actually a problem that

Cris: yeah, Gil, Jillian Anderson, she comes out of the shadows, whatever, and then she's like, he, the Aries makes a joke. I can't remember what he says. And then I dunno about the rain or something.

I can't remember. Did you get your umbrellas? I can't remember what he

Reegs: actually said. Yeah,

Cris: Yeah, he said something funny. And then. She's like, oh, how long this is gonna [00:08:00] do you think you can sustain this? Because you know that after 25 minutes they

Reegs: This is it. They've got a built in expiry date of 29 minutes after they're created, so they just crumble into

Dan: their army better finish the job quick or it's gonna be beaten.

Reegs: Now the, well the movie treats this as a colossal problem, even though we've just seen that you can 3D print this shit out of nothing.

So the idea of having a completely expendable, printable army is still amazing. But let's just forget, even if it only lasts for 29 minutes, it's still incredible.

15

minutes. Yeah, exactly. But let's just because the movie treats this as a problem, so we have to as well, right? 'cause we are watching it.

So, as this is also going on and we learn about this, we then see Eve Kim out, there's in the snow

Cris: in the snow, in the snow somewhere. It's Alaska. Alaska, Alaska. Yeah.

Reegs: And

Cris: doesn't tell you initially, but I think when they do the search from the top, it just tells you that this suspicious activity in Alaska and we see the tree later [00:09:00] on.

Reegs: Yeah. And so they end up basically, long story short, you know, some dangerous mo not motor biking. It's so

Cris: it's snowmobile. Yeah.

Reegs: and all the show. She's like an extreme sports type person. So when she needs those skills later, they'll come in handy and they find this remote cabin. Workstation.

That was Kevin Flynn's old

Cris: was a sister. I think it was a

Reegs: his sister.

They're following her, aren't they? But it is Flynn's stuff that they find at the, at the place. And it's got the, this permanence code in it. So. The guy, Jeff Bridges from the first movie actually had found a way

to make things.

Dan: the armies going on forever.

Reegs: Yeah. So it's quite a good, like little sorry. She uses it to manifest a tree, right. Because her idea is to end world hunger. So they get an orange tree. They use these lasers to create an orange tree, and they measure how long it lasts for and she's gonna

Dan: see the tree growing and the fruit coming and

Reegs: it's, it's

Cris: already has fruit on it. Its oranges. The orange is already

Dan: more than half an hour.

Reegs: It, it just [00:10:00] gets constructed. Exactly. You type in a prompt and you have, give me a a 30-year-old orange tree with many blossoms on it or whatever. And

that's what

Cris: And it just shows up in the middle of the snow and it just

Reegs: Yeah. And it stays there for hours and hours and hours. 'cause it's got the permanent code.

yeah. So she's solved everything right with this. Now think about it with unlimited now resources,

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: and

Cris: but we know she doesn't know. We know that Julian is hacking into EnComm en com, mcom and com. Yeah. Into EnComm to look for her and to see where she is and what she's up to because he has suspicion that she will find the permanence code.

Reegs: Yeah. And this hacking is visualized through, like, it's obviously him at a terminal, but it's visualized through like a really astonishing like.

Cris: It's almost like a breakthrough, like a

Reegs: a he a heist scene

Cris: Heist, yeah. That's the

Reegs: But in, in the computer world of the grid.

So led by. Aries

and

Athena. [00:11:00] his second in command, will become the primary villain soon. So they go in to go and break this stuff out and you see him showing compassion for his teammates, something that he shouldn't have done. So he's already starting to absorb because of his interactions with the real world basically.

And also because he's been told about what they're doing. He's gone and looked at Eve Kim. He's gone and looked online. He's found her reading in one of her. Videos that he's seen, she's reading Frankenstein. So he, you know, he reads that and obviously it's like an arc word throughout the movie is the, I am fearless and powerful, something like that.

The quote from the book that becomes his mantra. So anyway, they have this big scene and they escape with the data

Cris: with her where she is, the location of

Reegs: Yeah, the location of her.

Cris: And then they realize she's landing in however many minutes, and at the same time Julian looks on and she, he finds in Alaska that from the satellite, they zoom into with the image and they can see the tree.

The tree, yeah. So he's like, right. She did it. [00:12:00] We're gonna wait for her. Basically when she lands private jet and all, she has the permanence code and a flash drive. Yeah. She's goes, which I found this a bit.

Dan: She's got it on A USB.

Reegs: Yeah. Bearing in mind it came from like a seventies, like A B, B, C, I dunno what kind of machine it was, but you can imagine it was like, yeah, a green, like tiny screened,

Cris: And I found it strange that this billionaire tech, whatever, she just goes on a motorbike by herself. Yeah. And her other, the, the second in command, whatever the other geek, he just drives away with the laser that. Can print 3D. Yeah, just like that. Without anyone else, with her or anything else.

But anyway. And then

Reegs: scene through

Cris: and the,

Reegs: the city on the light bikes, if you remember those.

But with the leaving the trails, but this time in the real world and all the carnage that might cause, you know, cars getting thrown around, a police car getting at one point. He stops. He [00:13:00] could kill a child, basically. Yeah. And he doesn't, he like stops and all this stuff. So you're seeing this awakening of him?

She is eventually, Eve Kim, the, the woman that they're chasing with the permanence code is eventually chased down by Athena, the second in command. And she knocks her out with the bike, doesn't she? And she's able to get away on the, on her

Cris: bike.

On the fancy bike. Yeah. And then they erase her and Aries, and then at the end. Of the chase, which is to be fair, that is

Reegs: it's a fucking great trait. All

Cris: way the line, the way I, I dunno how to explain this very well without seeing it, but basically they're parallel, but the line is behind them. So, so, and he closes in on, yeah.

On and he just kind of pushes

Dan: of see the

Cris: Yeah. Yeah. And narrowing it. It is, yeah. It's really cool the way

Reegs: very cool. It looks absolutely astonishing. This movie. And the soundtrack

Dan: always did as well. That was, as you said at the

Reegs: And Tron legacy as well was

astonishing.

Cris: But then at the end of the race, she [00:14:00] breaks the USB

Reegs: She does. Yeah.

Cris: and throws it into the sea.

And I have to say, this was, I was very surprised that this by this scene, that the helicopter comes and basically throws a laser on her. Yeah. And they just kind of make her disappear.

Reegs: Yeah. You just like, yeah, she's broken the thing and like, all right, you know, she's won and then suddenly she's zapped and digitized straight into the grid.

So she's now inside the Dillinger server,

Cris: and then obviously Aries is massive control there. And he gets all the orders from Dillinger. From Julian. Yeah. And he just goes and he's like, look, you've got, I want the code. He doesn't care about anything else.

Reegs: And this is when basically his self preservation kicks in Aries.

He's like, he fucks Dillinger off. 'cause he knows that if he gives him the code, he's not gonna get what he wants. So he quickly, really quickly works out. Dillinger is not the way forward and that he's gonna try and get Eve Kim out and he trusts her to [00:15:00] like, basically sort him out with the permanence code later, so he starts busting her out.

Another terrific scene where they're diving into this digital water with this, yeah, like and the lights and the soundtrack I was gonna say about its nine inch nails this time. Oh, right. Also similarly like hypnotic and Cynthia and Massive beats. It sounds amazing. And they do eventually get her out again through this like work wormhole thing.

Fallout and then she's manifested back in the real world. And you do think, what the fuck is she made of at this point now? Like the lasers have made her again,

Cris: she shows up in, and that's where Flynn's old office is. Yeah. It's in an abandoned building with a dusty kind of gun, that 3D printer gun thing.

And she just shows up in the middle of the. Dusty basement. Yeah. And then just back again into the real world. But yeah, that, that scene is really cool. And throughout the whole movie, the way he, when, when they see kind of like the [00:16:00] visualization from inside his head. When he sees your face, it reads emotion.

Right. And with her it's always, empathy is always compassion is always this, whereas with Julian is always anger or

Reegs: Yeah. Control. Yeah.

Cris: So it,

Reegs: yeah. And so now it starts a kind of ticking clock element in the plot because Es has got nowhere to go and only 20 mi 29 minutes to live. He's come out with Eve Kim, right?

So you get a chase scene, they steal a Honda Civic, but a really souped up one, don't they?

Cris: From the petrol station

Reegs: a petrol station guy and they're listening to Depeche mode. That's his thing. He really likes Depeche mode and he like completely psychoanalyze her about her reasons for doing what she does and her lack of self-worth tied to her sister's death.

And, you know, trying to follow in her

Cris: Yeah. It's quite a straight face. Things like, you were gonna quit. Why were you gonna quit? You still miss her? You still,

and

Reegs: it's robotic 'cause he's an ai. Right.

Cris: Yeah. But it was, it's just kind of funny that it's, it's, you're almost like, you know, like, you don't even know me.

[00:17:00] Why, why are you asking me

Reegs: And

he knows all this stuff about her and how she works. And so anyway, their objective now is to get to Kevin Flynn's arcade to get to his laser to get Aries back on the grid with the permanent co. 'cause they've worked out some McGuffey. Yeah,

Cris: that he's, that he's definitely gonna have it

Reegs: copy of it. Yeah. In his old server. So they do, you know, there is a lot more. Actions and stuff. But anyway, they do eventually end up in the arcade and put Tron they put Aries into one of Kevin Flynn's, like the first

Cris: Into the eighties.

Reegs: like, so it's like having Jared Lito, but in the first movie

Dan: Right. Okay.

Reegs: down to all of the like stilted graphics and stuff and the bit thing that flashes

and all that stuff.

So this is quite cool. And he meets now Tron.

Tro because he, Kevin

Cris: Flynn. Yeah, Flynn.

Reegs: He meets Jeff Bridges and has a conversation with him, and this is when he gives him the permanence code

Cris: and

they kind of just, they all kind of just get all ies. I like you. [00:18:00] Oh, you, you are not, I dunno. It's just a bit, they kind of get

Dan: it's always gonna end that way though.

Reegs: But meanwhile, in the real world, Julian, there's been a whole, right? His mom was Julian Anderson. She's been killed by accident in the sort of,

Cris: Not by accident.

Reegs: By Athena. Yeah. Well, because, so when, when Aries has escaped, he's got really pissed off and promoted Athena the second

Cris: master control.

Reegs: control, and he's told her do whatever.

By any means necessary. So she takes that to like its logical and like goes completely on the war path. And there's, she manifests this giant space Raider like type thing. Yeah.

Cris: they have it in their

Reegs: It's called a recognizer. Yeah. And it floats through the city. It's the most preposterous looking like.

Cris: yeah, it's like a u u-shape upside down.

Reegs: a upside down U shape. It's trying to navigate through the buildings. It looks ridiculous. It's enormous, but it's obviously really scary and full of drones and stuff. So while all of this is going on with Aries on the Flynn [00:19:00] server, this is going on in the real

Cris: because she basically, she's, she tries to kill Kim.

Yeah. That, that's, that's the purpose of her thing.

Reegs: There's, there's two planes in this sequence. Remember two F 35 fighter jets that was Trent Resner and Atticus Ross from Nine Inch Nails Flying

Cris: Oh, really? Yeah. Will they? Okay.

because one

gets they, they both eject, one gets destroyed fairly quickly and they, again, they have the, the drones that fly with the.

How, what do you call that? The thing behind them,

with a light behind them, but then they fly so close to each other, past the plane and you just see the, the wings just going.

Reegs: It shears the wings of the plane off, like,

Cris: the plane off. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's quite, quite cool.

Reegs: So eventually there's a big fight and boom, smash, boom, blast. And as you'd imagine, it kind of ends up with a fight now between a sort of human Aries who's back in the real world. He's now sort of got the permanence code, which means he bleeds and all that sort of stuff. And having a fight with Athena, then he does eventually best her [00:20:00] and uses his disc or whatever it is to like smash her apart or whatever.

And so, that is that

Cris: but he also comes out because throughout the whole film, Dillinger Enterprises creations are all red and black. Yeah. And and com are all white or black and white or blue and and white. So they're again, that. Good versus evil or whatever you wanna call it. And this time, because Aries was always red and black, now since he came out of the grid, the eighties grid, now he's I think black and

Reegs: white.

He's white like Flynn. Like Flynn is, yeah. So he's got

Cris: so he's

Reegs: godlike powers or whatever, but also the implication being he may have some of those in the real world as well, I guess. I don't know. And then obviously this all traces back. The authorities are going fucking nuts, right? Let's go and arrest.

Dillinger, he's the real source of all of this. And he digitizes himself at the last minute to stop being getting captured by the police into the grid. And [00:21:00] he's starting to like mutate or whatever over the end. Credits into the master control program.

Dan: So we're looking at, we're looking at a, a sequel

Reegs: if they ever make it.

Yeah.

Cris: Well that these days they always leave the door open. No, it's just,

Reegs: they sort of close it off now with I. Aries goes off it on wearing a really cheeky cravat

Cris: Yeah, I know. It's like a, like a scarfy. Yeah.

Reegs: scarf thing going off around the world to look for other computer programs.

'cause he flashes up a postcard of the woman from the second one, Cora, who also got out. Yeah. And so he's, the implication is he's gonna go off and live a bit of a

Cris: because he sends Kim a postcard and she's, she gets it. She's like, who sends postcards anymore? You know? we see him in a, I don't even know where he is. He's somewhere that he's riding a Ducati motorbike. And you

Reegs: like Morocco or some, you know, far

Cris: Yeah. Somewhere

Reegs: Sandy

Cris: Yeah, Sandy and windy I in one of those cities and I think that's how it ends with him kind of driving the [00:22:00]

Reegs: Yeah. And then the reveal of Dillinger getting the SARC program thing.

SARC was the bad guy from the first one, so he's obviously, Dillinger is gonna become the sort of same sort of bad

Cris: Right.

Reegs: guy was. So we get that over the end credits and that's the end. It was just a shade over about two hours, 13 minutes, something like that.

Cris: think

just under, I thought.

Reegs: I watched this.

Cris: just around two hours.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: quite fast paced though.

Reegs: It's the most co, it has the most coherent plot because the 29 minute thing, like, and the search for it may is like the most memorable idea, I think across any of the three of the Tron movies about what might be, you know, an interesting hook for the movie

Dan: because it's, yeah, I mean, it had a cult following at the time when it first come out with Jeff Bridges.

It was, there wasn't many sci-fi future thinking. Computer films around at that time, but there seemed to be a hunger for that kind of thing. So [00:23:00] even though it wasn't that great a movie, it seemed to get quite a cult following because somebody was taking that theme on board and they were, you know, Tron.

It had great branding, it looked great, it had a great name, had video games. Although when I, I remember watching it, I was thinking. Lots of potential, not really delivering.

Reegs: I think the central idea is really silly of the programs behaving like that and security being visualized like that, but they get away with it because it looks so fucking Yeah, and the music is great. It's like a two hour music video basically, especially this one. And if you watch it in that context, because like. It, it should be a movie made today about AI and coming into the world that should, it should have interesting things to say about it. And it just doesn't at all.

It doesn't have anything interesting to say about man, you know, humans relationship with technology or any of those things. It's mostly says they're gonna have nice cheekbones and ask a lot of questions and like [00:24:00] Depeche mode, but it looks great. That's what I think.

Cris: Not gonna lie, I was impressed with this because as you know, sci-fi is not necessarily my genre. And I said to Karara when I put it on, she's like, oh, what are you gonna watch?

I was like, oh, this Tron thing. She's like, are you gonna enjoy that? I was like, well, I dunno. I, I'll give it a go and then. When she, when it finished, she was like, did you enjoy that? I was like, you know, that was actually really good. And I read a review afterwards by some, some of these critics and, oh, not even Jillian Anderson can lift this, blah, blah, blah.

It's too silly. It's too simple. Geraldo is monosyllabic and whatever. And I was just thinking from my point of view that, again, I'm not an expert or whatever, but exactly what you said, you, you have this. Program master control that comes into the real world. It it, it's a, if you don't wanna call it a sci-fi, you can call it an action movie.

Yeah. If this would've had statham or Ramble or someone like that, and, and it would've been just motorbikes and [00:25:00] boats. It would've been exactly the same thing.

Reegs: The plot, the plot was clear. The stakes were, you know, recognizable. And

Cris: have goodbyes bad guys, villains turn coats. This, that,

Reegs: I don't think Jared Lito is very good, but I just don't find him very good at, I like, I find him kind of charisma less as well as a bit

Cris: of always the same. Yeah, no, it's just kind of that straight in the, the face

Dan: What was it? Dallas Byers Club he was in. I think he was, he was good in that. But yeah, very different sounding movie to this. I don't often associate. Him with action films and, you know, in the same breath as Statham, for example.

Cris: Well, Yeah, exactly. He's not, he's not that,

Dan: kind of career doing it, but interesting or the same. I haven't seen it. I don't know whether I'm gonna rush out and see it, but it isn't one of those things that maybe I would turn off or

Cris: it's gonna be on Prime soon

Reegs: it's on Disney. It's, they, they go mad for it on Disney. And if you want a [00:26:00] sort of visual spectacle with a gr, a really fantastic soundtrack and a watchable action movie, then you could do a lot worse than Strong recommend.

Cris: Strong recommend.

Yeah.