Jared Leto was last seen at the movies as the Joker in a performance we heard a lot about and yet saw very little of. Hopefully, he won’t suffer the same fate with his next role, which reportedly will see him use Method acting to simulate being a piece of sentient software for a Tron reboot.
Tron, if you’re unfamiliar, hinges on a device that allows humans to be turned into data and sent into computers. There they discover their software programs are sentient and worship them as gods, despite the persecution of their religion by a vicious tyrant. So basically it’s the story of Christ, if Christ raced awesome motorcycles and played death frisbee. Interestingly, Leto was rumored to be involved with the followup to Tron: Legacy, but a Hollywood Reporter exclusive says this is a new project entirely that will still draw from work on Tron 3.
Still, it’s worth asking if Tron shouldn’t be left to nostalgia. The first movie was a triumph of effects and design, partly courtesy of European comics legend Moebius, but neither it nor the followup decades later showed there was untapped interest from audiences. And what audience was there, Disney quickly pulled away from, as the fate of the excellent cartoon Tron: Uprising shows. Maybe Disney should consider bringing that back instead?
