TRON: Ares Turns AI Into the Ultimate Soldier

It’s less than a week until San Diego Comic-Con, but Disney isn’t waiting for the industry’s biggest fan event to debut to ratchet up excitement for its high-profile presentation. A new trailer for TRON: Ares, the newest entry in the long-running science fiction franchise, has arrived in time to kick off San Diego Comic-Con.

Joachim Rønning, the Oscar-nominated director behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, is at the helm of this latest movie, which notably reboots the series back into the real world, having previously been set entirely in the digital universe.

Fans last saw the computer-generated Grid in 2010’s TRON: Legacy. At the end of that movie, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of original TRON hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), stopped Clu, a menacing program in the Grid, from opening a portal that would have connected the digital world with the real one. Flynn also managed to escape with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) in the Grid who is essentially a special version of a copy of Flynn, sought by Clu for deletion.

TRON 3, as it was then, was intended to be the beginning of a new era in the franchise, with production in development to start the night Legacy was released in theaters. Disney had officially given the green light to the project in October 2010. The original concept was for the movie to explore the adventures of Sam Flynn and Quorra following Flynn’s ascent to the head of his father’s company, ENCOM, within the Grid. The film struggled to find direction and eventually came to a halt in 2015. Cited reasons for the sequel’s collapse included poor reception for Tomorrowland, another Disney sci-fi property, which presumably did not perform as expected at the box office.

This wasn’t the end of the road for TRON, however. In 2020, Disney revisited the franchise with the understanding that it was not going to be a direct sequel to Legacy but a reboot of its own. Reports surfaced that a character called Ares, an artificial intelligence, had been present in previous scripts during early stages of development and had now made it into the final film. After pandemic-related delays and two industry-wide strikes in Hollywood this summer that resulted in shutdowns, TRON: Ares is finally finished and ready to be released in theaters this fall.

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.” Jared Leto is the lead in the film, with Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. The cast also includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Jeff Bridges returns as Kevin Flynn, with a new score by Nine Inch Nails.

Trailer Teaser: “The Ultimate Soldier” Enters the Real World

TRON: Ares’ first trailer was released earlier this month in April. It gave audiences a taste of what they can expect in the movie — for TRON fans, that means heavy use of digital environments, like animated neon lines, lightcycles, and visually arresting digital skyscapes. However, the trailer gave very little away in terms of the actual story. The newest one released earlier this week is much the same in that regard, but it does help to inform viewers on the plot.

The film’s trailer opens with a man standing in front of a crowd, reminiscent of a regular keynote presentation in the tech industry. “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like? When will we get there? Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here,” the man says.

That man is Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters. Dillinger is showing off his newest creation, which he refers to as “the ultimate soldier.” “He’s biblically strong. Lightning fast. Supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” — Dillinger then strikes Ares down with a large blue button — “…I will simply make you another.” This scene establishes Julian Dillinger as a corporate mastermind who does not seem to care how he gets to where he wants to go, and that is when it comes to AI and the future.

As much as Dillinger wants Ares to be at his beck and call, it seems that the Program has other ideas. In a visual callback to the original TRON, Ares travels into the real world in search of something that he does not know. The Program’s journey of self-discovery, however, creates a potentially interesting philosophical dimension when Kevin Flynn appears in the digital world to muse, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

It has been over 10 years in the making, and TRON: Ares is finally on its way to theaters. It is set to light up screens on October 10, 2025.