TRON: Ares Trailer Shows the Birth of Disney’s ‘Ultimate Soldier’

Disney has released a new trailer for TRON: Ares ahead of San Diego Comic-Con, which kicks off on July 20. The latest entry in the legendary sci-fi franchise from Disney will be directed by Joachim Rønning and serves as a new beginning for the TRON story, one that moves away from the “Grid” into the real world.

TRON: Legacy, which was released in 2010, brought fans to the Grid for the first time since the original TRON in 1982. The Legacy film followed Sam Flynn, the son of TRON’s Flynn (Jeff Bridges), and in the movie’s final act, he thwarted Clu’s plans to bring the Grid to life and took control of ENCOM, his father’s tech company. Flynn also rescued Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a rare ISO who was also being hunted by Clu. An ISO is a unique form of a sentient algorithm that is separate from the “Core” of the Grid.

One of the first acts of development on the new film was to confirm that it would be a direct continuation of TRON: Legacy. Disney announced that the film was officially in production in October 2010, and the original concept of the film was that it would directly follow the events of Legacy. The film’s original vision explored what Sam and Quorra’s life looked like as Sam settled into the role of CEO of ENCOM. However, that film came to a screeching halt. In 2015, Disney put the film on ice. One of the cited reasons was that the success of Disney’s other sci-fi film, Tomorrowland, which flopped at the box office.

The TRON story didn’t go away for long, however, and in 2020, Disney announced that the studio would be rebooting the franchise with a new TRON film that would act as a stand-alone story. However, while it wasn’t considered a direct sequel, remnants from that original, scrapped film have leaked, including one of the key AIs from that film: Ares. The film is now done, after a development process that included a series of shutdowns from Hollywood’s recent labor strikes as well as the usual pandemic delays. TRON: Ares will hit theaters this fall, and Disney released a new synopsis and trailer.

Synopsis: “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.”

Actor Jared Leto stars in the film as Ares. Joining Leto are Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. The rest of the cast includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. If you’re a fan of the first TRON movie, you will be pleased to know that Jeff Bridges will be back in the role of Kevin Flynn. The film’s music was scored by Nine Inch Nails.

Trailer: “The ultimate soldier arrives”

The first trailer that Disney released in April was the typical big-budget TRON movie with lots of neon lines, big rigs, lightcycles, and aesthetic digital landscapes. However, this first trailer only had minimal context and failed to hint at the plot of the film. In contrast, the new trailer gives audiences a more complete picture of where the film will be headed and why this is important.

The trailer’s opening scene features a man standing in front of an audience at an event that looks like a tech industry keynote presentation. Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters, delivers an ominous warning: “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.”

In Dillinger’s speech, he proclaims to the audience, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” – at which point, he knocks the figure of Ares down during his presentation – “…I will simply make you another.” This moment in the trailer cements Dillinger as a corporate monster who is beyond morality and has decided to fully weaponize AIs.

However, it appears that the world is not exactly how Dillinger has it set up. As powerful and convinced as Dillinger might be that Ares is his to control and use at his will, Dillinger is not a creator. This role belongs to Ares. In the trailer, the Program sets off on a personal quest to find the thing it is looking for, but can’t quite seem to name or know what it is. This sets the trailer up for what might be some interesting philosophical musings, especially when Kevin Flynn appears in the virtual world and asks the question, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

The nostalgic pull for fans of TRON will be the return of Bridges as Flynn and Leto’s role as an AI program who crosses into the real world. Both of these elements take the already existing explorations of man and machine in the film franchise into more territory. There is a big action movie in the works that will also likely ask some interesting questions about the autonomy of AIs and how their makers treat them.

Visually, this film looks glossy as ever. Rønning, who helmed the film, knows how to maintain TRON’s big, bright action flick aesthetic. He does this while also seamlessly juxtaposing the effects of computer worlds against the more mundane real-world settings. This will likely also work together with Nine Inch Nails’ atmospheric score to make for a film that will deliver on the TRON world’s usual mind-blowing effects that it’s known for, while also thrusting the narrative into fresh, new directions.

After over a decade of reboots, relaunches, and studio purgatory, TRON: Ares is finally here. The film will be hitting theaters on October 10, 2025.