Jeff Bridges Channels The Dude After Tron: Ares Stumbles at the Box Office: That's Just Like Your Opinion, Man
Jeff Bridges isn't sweating the Tron: Ares box office — he's more interested in the movie than the money.
Jeff Bridges is taking Tron: Ares' soft start the way you would expect Jeff Bridges to take anything: calmly, with a story, and a Dude-ism to land the plane.
The opening weekend reality check
Tron: Ares launched with $60 million worldwide. For a glossy, starry sci-fi reboot, that is not the number the studio wanted to see, and it set off the usual chatter about whether the movie will face-plant or find legs later.
Bridges on box office panic: not his department
Asked by Entertainment Weekly about the emphasis on opening weekend, Bridges basically shrugged. He said that kind of scoreboard watching is not really his thing. Then he pulled out a very Jeff Bridges example: Heaven's Gate, his 1980 epic western with director Michael Cimino. That movie was torched by critics and tanked at the box office at the time, but over the years it has been reappraised by a lot of people as a near-masterpiece. His point: first impressions are not the final word, and sometimes a movie needs time to grow on you.
"As the Dude would say, 'That is just like your opinion, man.'"
The unexpectedly personal detour
Here is a curveball detail: while talking about Heaven's Gate, Bridges mentioned that his wife took photographs on that shoot, and those photos are currently on display at the Tamsen Gallery in Santa Barbara, right next to the Arlington Theater. And next month, there is a screening of Heaven's Gate there, using Cimino's director's cut. If you are in the area, that is a pretty great little double feature of art show plus redemption arc.
Where Tron: Ares stands right now
- Worldwide opening weekend: $60 million
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 53%
- Industry projections: roughly a $132.7 million loss, which could put a sequel in jeopardy
- One review landed at 2.5 stars, calling it competent but not especially fun, swapping the Grid for the real world. Credit to Greta Lee for a strong turn and to the score for doing work, but the movie reportedly sheds a lot of the goofy charm that made earlier Tron entries pop.
About that sequel
If those loss projections hold, it is hard to see the studio charging ahead with another installment right away. That said, movies do sometimes find an audience over time. Bridges has lived that arc before. Whether Tron: Ares follows suit is up to the weeks ahead, not just weekend one.