Disney Revives TRON With a High-Stakes AI Storyline

San Diego Comic-Con is only a few days away, and Disney will have its biggest Comic-Con press event of the year at the iconic San Diego event. The first major movie release to receive a spotlight at the show is TRON: Ares. Disney has already released one trailer for the new film, and a few days before Comic-Con, they have decided to drop a new trailer.

TRON: Ares marks the return to the series for director Joachim Ronning, who is taking the franchise in a new direction as he firmly plants it in the real world.

TRON fans last saw the digital world of the Grid in 2010’s TRON: Legacy. That film told the story of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), son of the TRON main character Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Sam had long ago lost his father in the virtual world, but in the final moments of the film, he and Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an Iso (a rare form of algorithm), escaped from the Grid, a world designed by Kevin Flynn, stopping Clu (a program) from combining the Grid with the real world.

Disney had been actively moving forward with a third TRON movie after Legacy and intended for it to pick up directly after the events of the first film. The project was officially greenlit back in October of 2010 and was to be a film about Sam and Quorra as Sam steps into his father’s role at ENCOM and leads the company, but it was canceled in 2015, with one of the more cited reasons being the box office failure of Disney’s sci-fi film Tomorrowland.

There was a second chance for TRON, and in 2020, Disney decided to revive the franchise with a reboot. This reboot was always designed to be its standalone film and not a direct continuation of Legacy, but the seeds for Ares as a character had remained from some of the original scripts, and he has been the centerpiece of the new film.

Ares has had a long journey to the big screen, suffering multiple delays due to the pandemic, a brief studio shutdown after the Hollywood strikes, and some animation issues. But it looks like the movie is finally complete, as it was announced that the film will hit theaters in the fall.

Synopsis: Artificial Intelligence Comes to Earth

In a new official synopsis, Disney teases, “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 Ares, while Evan Peters plays Julian Dillinger, and Greta Lee plays Eve Kim. Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson round out the cast of the film, which also sees the return of Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn. The score is by Nine Inch Nails.

Trailer: “The Future of Warfare”

The first trailer was released in April, and it did not reveal a ton about the story of TRON: Ares. It gave viewers a taste of the visuals they can expect to see: neon lightlines, lightcycles, and grand designs. But this week, Disney dropped another trailer, and the look does keep those expectations high in terms of the technical spectacle, but it also lets audiences know a bit more about the story and characters.

The film’s new trailer starts by going corporate at a presentation. Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) is on stage before an audience, delivering a presentation, but in a tense moment, he goes on the offensive. He bellows, “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.”

Dillinger then reveals his “ultimate soldier,” and he introduces the audience to Ares (Jared Leto), but Dillinger has a god complex as he exalts Ares. He proclaims that Ares is “biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” Dillinger smacks the super soldier across the head, knocking him down during the presentation as he continues, “…I will simply make you another.” There is no doubt that Dillinger is the film’s big corporate villain who has his sights set on creating the future.

But that may not be the case. Ares may not be the entity that Dillinger and his company can control and take to the battlefield as they please. Ares, as the trailer hints, is on a personal journey, but a journey he is unsure of, as he searches for something he can’t define. A philosophical wrinkle is likely to be added to the film, as Kevin Flynn materializes in the digital world and asks the audience and Ares, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

Jeff Bridges is sure to be the nostalgic tie for many TRON fans to return to the franchise, but the premise of seeing Jared Leto bring an A.I. to earth allows Ronning to add new layers to the classic film series’ theme of blurring the lines between men and machines.

The look is sure to be stunning, as in the film’s first trailer, and Ronning can mix the visuals of the tech world with the real-world settings. Combined with Nine Inch Nails’ score, there will be some real fanfare to the presentation onscreen, while it appears Ronning is opening the film up in terms of what the franchise can mean and who it can reach.

TRON: Ares has been a long time coming, and it will finally hit the big screen. On October 10, 2025, this next chapter of TRON will bring the grid to the real world in a new way.