TRON: Ares — The AI Story Disney Has Been Building For Years

Disney is dropping a new trailer first in the lead-up to its official San Diego Comic-Con presentation next week, and it comes for the company’s TRON: Ares. The latest installment in the long-running science-fiction franchise will be directed by Joachim Rønning and set to expand the scope of the saga beyond the digital universe of the Grid and into the real world.

TRON: Ares is a sequel of sorts to the last movie in the franchise, 2010’s TRON: Legacy, which saw the return of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of the film’s hero, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Flynn stopped a last-minute attempt by the Grid’s alpha male program, Clu, to destroy the physical world by downloading a virus from the real world that would collapse the digital universe in on itself. He also found a way to escape back into the real world with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) from Clu’s long-dormant memory archives that the renegade program had been looking to delete.

One of the original storylines for TRON 3 involved a direct sequel to Legacy, telling the story of Sam and Quorra as Flynn took over his late father’s company, ENCOM. Disney had given the green light to a third TRON as far back as October 2010, though after numerous delays and stints of inactivity, that particular film was ultimately cancelled in 2015 after reports of a similarly tepid box office performance by a different studio sci-fi misfire, Tomorrowland.

But the future held new possibilities for TRON, which saw a new life breathed into it when Disney announced that the project had been revived as an entry into a stand-alone reboot of the franchise and was no longer a direct sequel to Legacy, though some elements of the previous script remained, including Ares, a primary program to the various iterations of the earlier planned film. After delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Hollywood’s recent labor strikes, TRON: Ares has finally wrapped and is in line for a theatrical release in the fall.

In the synopsis released by Disney, the official description for the film 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.” Jared Leto stars as the program Ares, and is joined by Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim, with the cast rounded out by the likes of Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Leto is no stranger to playing AI, of course, having fronted the band Daft Punk in the iconic “Tron Presents: Daft Punk.”

Jeff Bridges will also reprise the role of Kevin Flynn, and the score is being handled by the industrial rock veterans Nine Inch Nails.

A Quick Look at the Trailer: Humankind’s “First Encounter” with A.I.

The first trailer for the film was released in April, and it was impressive for its visuals, seeing the TRON brand’s well-known palette of neon lines, sleek lightcycles, and futuristic landscapes, without really offering any insight into the story being told. It’s the same with this new trailer for TRON: Ares, though it does reveal the bones of what is at stake in the upcoming film.

Julian Dillinger is onstage in what looks to be a tech industry keynote presentation, railing about what’s on everyone’s minds today: AI, big tech, and the virtual worlds. He speaks to the audience, saying, “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.”

At that point, Dillinger then reveals his “ultimate soldier.” “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” the tech executive then physically takes down Ares in the middle of the presentation, continuing “…I will simply make you another.” As such, Dillinger is established as someone not above showing off their power to wield and manage an AI program that they have created, for better or for worse.

The trailer suggests, though, that it might not be that simple. While Dillinger believes he is the one who created and has power over Ares, it would appear that the latter has other ideas. The program that Dillinger so casually dismissed takes on a journey into the real world to seek out what is unknown, yet specific, to him. It offers the seeds of a philosophical conflict to come between the man and the AI program, particularly when Flynn himself shows up in the virtual world, questioning, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

There’s also the hook of seeing Bridges return as Flynn, while TRON fans are sure to be intrigued to see Leto play an AI who leaves the digital world to interact with our own.

Visually, the Rønning film should check all of the expected boxes for fans of TRON as well, with the filmmaker taking on sets that bridge both the futuristic techscapes and the real world around us in a combination that should also work in tandem with Nine Inch Nails’ score. It all suggests the promise of both spectacle and expansion of the franchise’s earlier ideas about AI.

TRON: Ares will hit theaters on October 10, 2025.