TRON: Ares Explores What Happens When AI Crosses Over

Disney released a new trailer for TRON: Ares this week, ahead of its press event at San Diego Comic-Con. Directed by Joachim Rønning, Ares will reboot the science-fiction franchise and tell the story of an artificial intelligence that is sent into the real world for the first time. Although the film will be a reboot of the franchise, certain elements of previous scripts have carried over, most notably the presence of the character Ares.

TRON: Ares arrives more than a decade after the last entry in the sci-fi franchise. 2010’s TRON: Legacy followed Kevin Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges) son Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who managed to save the day by stopping Clu, a self-serving program from the Grid, from merging the digital world with the real one. In the film’s third act, Sam managed to escape the Grid with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a unique isomorphic algorithm (ISO) who had been targeted for deletion by Clu.

Following the success of TRON: Legacy, plans for a direct sequel were already in motion before the film’s release. The studio officially greenlit a third entry in October 2010, with a script in hand that was ready to be shot, and went into development as a story to be set after Legacy, focusing on Sam and Quorra’s story, with Sam taking over Flynn’s tech company ENCOM. Disney also hired Joseph Kosinski to direct the movie. However, production fell off, and in 2015 the sequel was put into turnaround, allegedly due to the tepid box-office returns of another sci-fi flick Disney had in its pipeline, Tomorrowland.

Disney’s interest in the TRON franchise did not end there, and in 2020, the studio opted to relaunch the property as a reboot, with Rønning attached as director, and with certain elements of a script from the earlier iteration in place. Ares, the AI with a presence in the script from the early 2010s, was present in Rønning’s version, which went into production, but since then has been pushed by a number of delays, including production shutdowns by Hollywood’s recent labor strikes and the global pandemic. The film, now fully complete, has a fall release and will now return with a theatrical release after a gap of more than 10 years.

TRON: Ares synopsis and key cast members

In a press release, Disney has shared the full synopsis of the film: “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.” Leto stars in the lead role as Ares, the A.I. program, and is joined in the cast by Evan Peters, who plays Julian Dillinger, and Greta Lee, who stars as Eve Kim. Other actors in the movie are Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Jeff Bridges also reprises his role from the original film as Kevin Flynn, while Nine Inch Nails is in charge of the musical score.

The first trailer, which debuted in April, provided no hints as to the plot but did give audiences a first look at some of TRON’s typical aesthetics, from the characteristic neon digital lines to the lightcycles and race courses. The new trailer this week maintains the aesthetics but shows audiences a bit more of the story.

The first moments of the trailer are a throwback to the regular announcements of big tech executives: an audience that is hanging on to every word as Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters, prepares to tell them something big. “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like, when will we get there?” Dillinger asks. “Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

Dillinger’s act is about to get even bigger. The CEO is here to show the “ultimate soldier,” an artificial intelligence called Ares (Jared Leto). After telling the audience that “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent,” Dillinger picks up a box and says, “And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” before he slams the box down and knocks down Ares on stage. “…I will simply make you another.” The trailer shows that Dillinger is an arrogant tech CEO who thinks he’s in control of AI and the future.

However, the trailer teases that Dillinger is wrong. Although he is correct in saying that Ares is here and will not go there, he may not be in control of Ares and what that AI decides to do on its own. In one scene, the program is running on its own outside of the facility in which it was being created and is literally in the process of asking itself why: “Searching for…” Ares says, as if questioning what it’s looking for. “Searching for, hmm, what’s the word? I know it’s here, somewhere.” Ares has a mission that it can’t even quite describe.

TRON fans will be happy to see Bridges back as Flynn in the movie and have new entertainment in Leto’s Ares character, which follows an AI that is beginning to inhabit the real world for the first time. Philosophical questions about what makes a machine human will follow as Flynn appears in the Grid and begins to question this new Ares’ mission: “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

The aesthetics also continue to be one of TRON’s biggest appeals, and the action and tension of the trailer will continue to develop between the realms of high-tech futuristic visuals with Rønning’s work, as well as Nine Inch Nails’ score.

The official release date for TRON: Ares is October 10, 2025.