To its credit, “Tron: Ares,” the third entry in the Disney film franchise dating back to 1982, is everything you expect it to be. It’s pure nostalgia bait (Jeff Bridges! Space Paranoids! Floppy disks!), stuffed with callbacks and references to both the original “Tron” film and the 1980s themselves. It’s a visual showstopper, a dazzling display of stunning special effects all bathed in neon reds and blues. Its intentionally harsh and techno-infused score, crafted by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Nine Inch Nails, is pulse-pounding, a perfect companion to the futuristic chaos unfolding on-screen.

But to its detriment, “Tron: Ares,” a sequel to 2010’s “Tron: Legacy,” offers nothing more than that. Bogged down by a simplistic binary plot that pits the evil red team against the good blue team and that only skims the surface of its meatier themes, “Ares” is the textbook definition of style over substance.

Directed by Joachim Rønning, who’s helmed other Disney sequels including “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” from a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow, “Tron: Ares” flips the premise of the original movie. Instead of humans being transported to the digital world of the Grid, the artificial beings (known as Programs) and technology from the Grid come to our world through the most impressive 3D printing setup you’ve ever seen.

The crux of the story revolves around two companies, ENCOM and Dillinger (both of which will sound familiar if you’ve seen the first movie), as they race to discover what’s called the Permanence Code, a phrase you’ll hear about 100 times too many. It turns out that while both companies can bring the digital to the real world, those creations have a strict 29-minute life span before they painfully dematerialize in a shower of dust.

In this technological arms race that quickly turns into an actual arms race, ENCOM, led by Eve Kim (standout Greta Lee), wants the code so it can help the world: feeding the hungry, housing everyone, creating medical breakthroughs (a personal goal for Eve). Eve views artificial intelligence as benevolent, something that can aid humankind in solving its most intractable problems. Dillinger, on the other hand, has profits and warmongering in its sights; orange trees and Quonset huts are out, hyperstylized weapons are in — which leads to the creation of the digital security program known as Ares (a mostly forgettable Jared Leto).

Ares is the ultimate soldier: sturdy, strong and utterly expendable, according to the cartoonishly amoral company CEO Jullian Dillinger (a manic Evan Peters). If one version goes down, Dillinger will just print another. (Jodie Turner-Smith delivers a coolly sleek performance as Ares’ second-in-command, Athena.)

But in a twist everyone will see coming, Ares begins to question his creator, particularly after a fellow program is destroyed during a creatively stylized digital break-in into ENCOM’s Grid. Pair that with Ares experiencing new “feelings,” like the sensation of rain on his body in the real world, and it’s no wonder why he doesn’t want to be expendable anymore.

But that’s the thing with “Tron: Ares”: There’s almost no surprise, no nuance, at all. It’s hard not to roll your eyes when Ares starts quoting “Frankenstein,” as if the parallels to Mary Shelley’s classic weren’t obvious enough. For a franchise about the boons and perils of AI, it’s a shame “Ares” boils the conversation down to “good guy uses AI for good, bad guy uses AI for bad.” And Ares’ evolution from program to rebel prompts questions about the human condition, but that conversation stays surface-level.

If all you want out of your “Tron” movie is amazing visuals, a great score and some fun action sequences with light cycles, cool weapons and even a Recognizer, “Ares” will execute that command. Anything more, though, and it all starts to get a little glitchy.

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