The legacy of the “Tron” franchise is complicated. On a consistently positive note, the series has always been a feast for the eyes and ears, with pleasing, if not groundbreaking special effects and musical scores that heart-pumpingly convey that technological developments are happening every minute. But the films have never quite stuck the landing critically or commercially. The 1982 original is a “cult” movie that defenders see as ahead of the curve and not appreciated in its time. The 2010 follow-up “Tron: Legacy” was given every chance to succeed, yet only performed middlingly on all fronts. And new installment “Tron: Ares” is going to go down as an even bigger disappointment than the second film. Disney keeps insisting that they have a major franchise here, but the original wasn’t the hit that they pretend it was, and the weirdly-spaced-out sequels keep playing as ambitious money pits.

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The new film opens by filling viewers in on the feud between tech giants ENCOM and Dillinger Systems. Since “Tron: Legacy,” ENCOM has passed from longtime protagonists the Flynn family to Eve Kim (Greta Lee), who wants to use the company’s resources to do good things like cure world hunger and protect the environment. Dillinger Systems is now run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), grandson of original antagonist Ed Dillinger, who wants to do things like build weapons and turn humanity’s problems over to artificial intelligence. His big new breakthrough is Ares (Jared Leto), a program that manifests itself as a superpowered humanoid to do its owner’s bidding. For now, that owner is Julian, but he’s happy to make that owner the military – for the right price, of course.

The problem with the tech is that Julian can’t build live beings that can survive more than 29 minutes without disintegrating (though their essences go right back to living in cyberspace afterward). His mother (Gillian Anderson) admonishes him for defrauding investors, but his claims won’t be fraudulent once he obtains an object permanence code. As it turns out, Eve has already discovered the code while toiling away in Alaska. This is both good news and bad news for Julian, good because the code exists, bad because the competition has it. But Julian has Ares on his side, and he can use the crude supersoldier to kill Eve and take the code.

Juian instructs Ares to study up on Eve and humanity for the mission, which turns out to be a mistake because Ares decides he likes Eve and humanity. Most movies would have this shift in loyalty occur gradually, this one has it happen in an instant. The rest of the film sees Ares and Eve trying to outwit and evade Julian and backup soldier Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith). Ares’ adventures will take him from a cyberworld attack on ENCOM to the real world to a different cyberworld in the ENCOM mainframe, where a certain former company leader now resides.

“Tron: Ares” does just fine when it lets its visuals and Nine Inch Nails score do the talking. I’m sure the designers had fun developing geometry-based aesthetics that probably contain Eater eggs that appeal to math nerds but go way over my head. And everyone knows that NIN is indeed the band you call when technological happenings are afoot. But then the film stumbles when characters do the talking. Leto is yet another artificial being that wants to be human (a comparison to Disney classic “Pinocchio” is made at the first opportunity). Lee is yet another generically-smart do-gooder. Peters is yet another tech-bro villain. Turner-Smith is yet another supposedly-competent assassin that wastes time being dramatic. Despite Peters trying to have some fun chewing scenery, none of these characters bring anything new to the table. This unsolicited sequel manages to do a disservice to a franchise that wasn’t much of a franchise anyway.

Grade: C

“Tron: Ares” is rated PG-13 for violence/action. Its running time is 119 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.