TRON: Ares Unleashes ‘Biblically Strong’ AI Soldier

With San Diego Comic-Con just a few days away, Disney is priming audiences for its big presentation by releasing a new trailer for TRON: Ares, the upcoming film in the long-running sci-fi franchise. Directed by Joachim Rønning, TRON: Ares is the latest entry in the series — and one that finds the story leaving the digital world and heading into the real world.

Audiences last saw the Grid in 2010’s TRON: Legacy, which continued the story of original TRON hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) through his son Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund). Near the end of the Legacy, Sam stopped a plan by the heartless Grid program Clu to unite the digital and real worlds. Flynn also escaped with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) hunted for deletion by Clu.

A third TRON film was originally set to pick up after the ending of Legacy. Disney greenlit the third installment of the franchise in October 2010, with plans to follow Sam and Quorra on new adventures after Sam took the reins of his father’s ENCOM corporation. However, the film development process dragged on, and the studio canceled the sequel in 2015, in the wake of another of its sci-fi flops, Tomorrowland.

It wouldn’t be the last of TRON, though. The idea for a third TRON was resuscitated by Disney in 2020, this time as a reboot separate from Legacy. Some elements of earlier versions of the story and script survived through the transition, including Ares, who was a major program in prior iterations of the project. The film was completed by producer Sean Bailey after going through several different directors and weathering pandemic delays as well as shutdowns from Hollywood’s recent strikes. TRON: Ares is now scheduled for a fall release.

The official description 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 stars as Ares, 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. TRON: Ares fans will be happy to know that the film also features Bridges returning to the role of Kevin Flynn, while the score was composed by Nine Inch Nails.

Trailer Breakdown: The “Ultimate Soldier” Joins the Real World

In the first trailer from April, viewers were treated to the stunning visuals they’d expect from TRON — a film about digital worlds filled with neon lines, lightcycles, and powerful programs. The trailer also has a villain, a corporate bigwig who says, “People used to call me arrogant. They were right. A visionary who sees the future. I see Ares, the ultimate soldier.”

The new trailer keeps the eye-catching visual aesthetic while fleshing out the story. It opens at a tech industry event. Julian Dillinger steps to the front of the stage, delivering a speech. “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 rhetorically. “Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

He then pulls back the curtain to reveal his “ultimate soldier.” “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent,” Dillinger boasts. “And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” Dillinger, with a showman’s bravado, knocks Ares over mid-speech, “…I will simply make you another.” The scene establishes Dillinger as an arrogant executive who is making a potentially huge mistake in thinking he can dictate the future of AI.

Of course, the trailer teases that Dillinger may not have total control over Ares. The program, which is designed to wage war in a digital world, seems to have a personal journey of its own to pursue. He’s on a search for something that he can’t fully articulate or describe. The setup teases some interesting philosophical questions to be explored by the film, when Kevin Flynn himself steps into a virtual world to ask, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

There’s a hook for long-time TRON fans in Bridges as Flynn, while the idea of Leto as an AI being that enters the human world gives the long-running franchise a new wrinkle to the series’ ongoing exploration of the human-machine line. All of that should come with a big action element, as well, while Rønning’s direction and Nine Inch Nails’ score promise to combine to create a familiar polish in the look and sound of the film.

The long-gestating TRON: Ares has almost arrived. Mark your calendars, as it will hit theaters on October 10, 2025.