Disney+’s #1 Movie Right Now Makes Disney’s Recent $601M Sci-Fi Franchise Failure Look Even Worse

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The Predator franchise was in dire straits when Disney acquired FOX. Unsuccessful Alien vs. Predator crossovers and the divisive nature of Predators led to the 2018 reboot film The Predator, which was a massive critical failure. Once Disney acquired FOX, they released the prequel movie Prey straight to Hulu, which turned out to be a huge hit. Then, they followed it up with Predator: Killer of Killers and Predator: Badlands, completely revitalizing the franchise.

Disney’s Successes With FOX’s Legacy Franchises Make TRON’s Failure So Much Weirder

Disney inherited some major franchises when it acquired FOX, like Predator. Many of these big-name properties were in rough positions, but their notoriety meant that Disney wasn’t simply going to shelve them. The Alien franchise was coming off a series of divisive prequel movies. Disney then released Alien: Romulus, the franchise’s most well-received film since Aliens, and Alien: Earth, which heavily expanded on the universe.

Planet of the Apes was in a similar boat. The reboot trilogy was a big success, but there wasn’t a clear future after the conclusion of the saga. Disney brought the series back with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which revitalized the franchise by kicking off a new saga. Disney has also obviously been doing well with FOX’s X-Men franchise, with the MCU releasing Deadpool & Wolverine and making the X-Men characters a central part of Avengers: Doomsday.

Predator, Alien, Planet of the Apes, and X-Men make four FOX sci-fi franchises that Disney has successfully continued with legacy sequels. However, the company can’t manage to succeed with one of its own: TRON. While Disney has acquired some big sci-fi franchises like the MCU, and Star Wars, TRON is one of Disney’s original ideas. Disney released the original film in 1982, and while it wasn’t a huge success, it gained a cult following. Thus, Disney followed it up with 2010’s TRON: Legacy.

The 2010 film made $409.9 million on a budget of $170 million, meaning that it was profitable, if only by a little bit. However, Disney didn’t know how to capitalize on TRON. A sequel was initially greenlit, but it was later put on hold. Disney didn’t confirm that work was being done on TRON 3 until early 2020, meaning that they were a decade late in building on the franchise’s relevancy.

TRON: Ares didn’t release until 2025, 15 years after TRON: Legacy and 43 years after TRON. The third film starred Jared Leto, a controversial actor, was directed by Joachim Rønning, the director of critical failures like Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and was marketed in a way that fans couldn’t tell if it was a direct Legacy sequel or a reboot. Daft Punk also didn’t return to compose the film, causing Ares to miss out on one of Legacy‘s most popular aspects.

All of these factors combined led to the unsurprising result of TRON: Ares‘ failure. The film was received poorly by critics and was a box office bomb, making only $142.2 million on a budget of $220 million. It is almost universally pointed to as the worst TRON movie, and its existence left many viewers scratching their heads. Throughout its development, many fans immediately predicted that Ares would be a failure due to the aforementioned odd decisions. So, why couldn’t Disney predict this?

Disney’s mismanagement of TRON is only made more obvious by its near-perfect handling of FOX’s legacy franchises. TRON has a cool concept, an iconic style, and a big name. It isn’t impossible to make a good TRON movie. Many of the decisions that killed Ares were made on the ground level, and a different director and a different star could have done a lot to help the sequel succeed. These glaringly obvious poor decisions were somehow overlooked by Disney, leading to the inevitable failure of their film.

After the performance of TRON: Ares, another sequel is unlikely. Maybe Disney will wait another 15 years or longer to take another swing at the franchise. The company’s mismanagement of TRON is a tragedy, and it is a shame that fans of the franchise have to suffer because of it.

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