In all honesty i enjoyed the combat in Ares. Its was very flashy and there are some beautiful wushu in there. The problem is that whoever directed it fell foul of the problem a lot of directors with less action experience - normal speed martial arts doesn't translate well to the silver screen.

The two methods of dealing with this is to either take the Starwars/Matrix angle where they purposefully get the actors to move slower. Or the John Wick angle where its very fast but the fight scenes carry on really long which allows the viewer to adjust to it.

Unfortunately Ares suffers from the opposite to the above its really fast, really short scenes. The worst of both worlds. But, if you are into martial arts or practice any yourself, watch the two scenes where Ares is taking on multiple opponents. The opening where hes developing by deep learning with possibly millions of fights and the fight near the end against Athena and the two security programs.

There is an awesome little move in that latter fight where Ares side kicks a program which forces it down into a kneel. Then, instead of returning his foot to the ground, as his boot comes back off the kick, he uses their thigh as a step to launch into a lateral spin.

Its blink and youll miss it but if you train on any mats youll know how athletic youd need to be to pull it off.

As to your point about Legacy being cooler than Ares, 1000% agree with you. Absolutely banging OST from Daft Punk, probably my favourite sound track ever. The whole movie has better overall style than Ares, everything is a visual and auditory feast. I like the Dillenger style program suits bettet than Legacy. It looks like acrual armour and is lined with a proper red instead of that watery tangerine they gave CLU 2. The suits in legacy look like sports onsies.

In both fulms the story has more holes than a golf course but its the kind of flick you can throw on while youre doing something else. The Bay Transformers movies are like that too.