[Source: AP]

“Tron: Ares” may have the tagline “No Going Back” but Disney doesn’t like to leave money on the table.

So here we are, going back with a third entry in a cult franchise that’s somewhat trapped between the human and digital worlds.

Ride-or-die Tron-iacs are going to need a few things to be happy — the cool motorbikes that kick off light walls, those glowing Frisbee things attached to everyone’s back, and, of course, Jeff Bridges. Director Joachim Rønning gives us all those things and much, much more. Maybe too much.

“Tron: Ares” bites off so much — a light cycle chase through downtown Vancouver, a laser attack by a massive, hovering vehicle, a Jet Ski pursuit, dozens of crushed police cars and endless flipping between Earth and no less than three computer grids — that it gets a bit deafening and numbing after two hours, like a late-stage Marvel movie.

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

We begin with a financial battle between two massive technology firms — Emcom and Dillinger (think Apple versus Google) — who have both come up against the same artificial intelligence ceiling. They can create anything they like in the real world using what looks like 3D printers using lasers but it lasts only for 29 minutes before collapsing into ash. (Twenty-nine minutes is also the limit to our attention span for this plot.)

The leaders of both firms — Greta Lee, playing Encom’s white hat hacker and Evan Peters, playing Dillinger’s very evil CEO — are in a race to find the hidden Permanence Code that Bridges’ Kevin Flynn created back when the world ran on floppy disks. The fate of the planet rests on whoever finds it. If it’s Encom, health care for everyone and a cure for cancer; if it’s Dillinger, a new military of superhuman fighters and, we guess, fascism.

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