TRON: Ares Sends a Program Into Reality in Latest Trailer

It’s been a little while since we’ve seen anything new from the TRON franchise, and with San Diego Comic-Con on the horizon, Disney is whipping up hype for its big panel by unveiling a shiny new trailer for the next installment of the franchise, TRON: Ares.

Directed by Joachim Rønning, the film is a new beginning for the series, one that finally leaves the Grid for the real world.

The last time audiences were in the digital realm was in 2010’s TRON: Legacy, which followed the son of the original film’s hero, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund). The big twist at the end of Legacy was that Sam not only prevented the Grid’s vengeful program Clu from trying to merge the Grid with reality, but he also saved a female isomorphic algorithm (ISO) named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) from Clu’s deletion drones.

Following the incredible success of Legacy, Disney’s next step was to go forward in time to see what Sam and Quorra were up to in the Grid as Sam took over as CEO of his father’s legacy business, ENCOM. The studio officially gave the green light in October 2010, and there was even a screenplay by Brian Salisbury and David S. Goyer. The wheels started to come off the follow-up as the original timeline fell apart and the film hit development hell. In 2015, the studio officially shelved the sequel after the critical and commercial failure of another of its sci-fi fiascoes, Tomorrowland.

The movie seemed dead, but the TRON universe was very much alive in 2020 when Disney resurrected the film, this time as a reboot and not a direct follow-up to Legacy. Elements of the previous projects persisted in the revamped Ares, including, at the time of that announcement, the character of the titular Ares. A self-aware central AI presence that had been present in iterations of the movie in the 12 years since Legacy.

The film managed to survive the COVID pandemic and Hollywood’s recent labor stoppages and is finally finished. The official synopsis from Disney reads: “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.”

In the leading role as Ares is Jared Leto, alongside Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. Other cast members include Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Bridges, of course, is also on the roster reprising his role as Kevin Flynn, and Nine Inch Nails have composed the score.

Related: Jared Leto Inspired Nine Inch Nails’ ‘TRON: Ares’ Soundtrack

The first trailer for TRON: Ares was released in April to screens everywhere, but instead of letting the audience in on the plot points, all they saw was the hypnotic visuals that are the brand standard for the series since the first film: scintillating neon lines across slick surfaces, stylish lightcycles, and those painterly vistas made of glowing blocks of digital data. The latest trailer from this week carries those stunning aesthetic touchstones forward, but with added insight into the human element.

It opens with what looks like a scene from an Apple or Google product launch keynote. In a packed auditorium, Julian Dillinger is speaking to the assembled crowd when he asks, “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like, and when will we get there? Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

The man of the hour is Dillinger’s “ultimate soldier,” which, in the movie, is an AI known as Ares. Taking an obvious page from Elon Musk’s Twitter regime, Dillinger continues to flaunt his creation by saying, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” as he demonstratively smashes his toy soldier with a forceful hand gesture and continues, “…I will simply make you another.” Dillinger is the classic type of cutthroat corporate leader with his eyes firmly set on a future where he can utilize artificial intelligence however he sees fit.

But, spoiler alert, life is not so simple. Dillinger may think he’s in charge of Ares as his new weapons-grade soldier, but Ares has his mission — a search that only he can understand. A personal journey to find the one thing he’s been programmed not to have, and just maybe it’s not the Ares the program is looking for.

It will be interesting to see what kind of philosophical take on AI things go in TRON: Ares. The teaser ends with Kevin Flynn in the virtual world ruminating on what sounds like Ares when he says, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?” Coming at it with a full-fledged 35+ years, the original TRON’s voyage into the digital realm in the Grid was, at its heart, an extended interrogation of the distinction between man and machine.