First Look at TRON: Ares’ Real-World AI Mission

San Diego Comic-Con is less than one week away, and Disney is heating the hype train for its marquee panel by releasing a new teaser trailer for TRON: Ares, the upcoming sequel to the original sci-fi franchise. Joachim Rønning, the veteran director of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and The Thin Man, helms the new TRON installment, which signals a narrative reset and a more grounded spin on the franchise that leaves the digital world of The Grid behind.

The last time viewers were in The Grid was in 2010’s TRON: Legacy, the follow-up to the 1982 Disney original. TRON: Legacy was centered around Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of TRON protagonist Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). The action-packed sequel climaxed with Sam saving The Grid from a planned invasion by the Grid’s evil program Clu, who planned to merge the digital and real worlds. Sam also escapes with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a rare ISO (isomorphic algorithm), who was a target of Clu’s deletion.

Production on TRON 3, originally to be a direct sequel to Legacy, began in October 2010 after Disney greenlit the project. According to the plot description, the movie was to center on Sam and Quorra as Sam took the reins of his father’s company, ENCOM, and headed into the digital world. But the film development came to a grinding halt. It took until 2015 for Disney to officially cancel TRON 3, which came after the studio became disinterested in the project and was reportedly affected by the dismal performance of Tomorrowland, another Disney sci-fi adventure.

This didn’t spell the end for TRON, as Disney rekindled a new project in 2020, but the third TRON sequel, now known as TRON: Ares, would be a standalone reboot rather than a direct continuation of TRON: Legacy. However, elements of the early projects remained, which include some plot elements, and some characters like Ares, a central AI from previous film scripts. After going through multiple pandemic delays and production stoppages because of Hollywood strikes in recent years, the filming for TRON: Ares wrapped last month. The new sci-fi is now primed for a fall release.

According to a synopsis from Disney: “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 leads the cast as Ares, while Evan Peters stars as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. Other cast members include Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Jeff Bridges also returns as Kevin Flynn, and Nine Inch Nails composed the musical score.

Teaser Trailer: A Strong-Jawed Leto Threatens A Digital World

The first trailer for TRON: Ares premiered at the end of April, much to the fans’ delight, as it treated audiences to the franchise’s famous neon grid lines, the hoverbikes known as lightcycles, and immersive CGI landscapes, but without much on the narrative front. The second trailer dropped this week, and while it retains the visual appeal, it also sheds light on the movie’s direction.

The trailer kicks off with the recognizable scene that could be right at home in any tech keynote. Julian Dillinger is standing at a podium, as he captivates the audience and flashes the villain-smirk on his face. “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,” says Dillinger.

Dillinger goes on to introduce his “ultimate soldier,” Ares. But he is not coy about his master plan, for Dillinger proclaims, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” — at this point, Ares is knocked out by Dillinger mid-speech — “…I will simply make you another.” With that, it is clear that Dillinger is an egotistical tech titan with big, and perhaps nefarious, plans for his A. I creation.

The trailer, however, seems to hint that this is not the case, or at least it is not all there is to it. Ares might be Dillinger’s creation, but it does not seem like Ares is an entity he can wield and direct at will. The highly advanced AI program has embarked on a search, looking for a “purpose” it can’t seem to put into words. This might just be the franchise’s entry into more philosophical territory, as in a virtual representation of Dillinger, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) also shows up and is asking, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

Fans of TRON will find nostalgia in Bridges’ reprisal of the role Flynn and more with the introduction of Leto’s Ares, who, as a literal robot in the human world, opens up questions of man and machine — a concept the films have long toyed with.

No stranger to impeccable film production values, Rønning seems to be helming the new TRON project on the right track as he seemingly continues the slick look and feel of TRON: Legacy. The tech-heavy fantasy woven into real-world grittiness, plus Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score of Nine Inch Nails, seems like the ingredients for a TRON film that will deliver on thrills.

TRON: Ares will be released on October 10, 2025.