TRAILER: Tron: Ares (2025)
Disney unveiled the poster and first full-length trailer for Tron: Ares this weekend at CinemaCon. Tron: Ares follows a sophisticated computer program named Ares (Jared Leto) who is dispatched into the real world to complete a dangerous mission. We don’t really know much else about the plot yet, and the trailer doesn’t show all its cards, either. But we know Jeff Bridges is back as Kevin Flynn, seemingly the one thing tying all three Tron films together. In Tron, Flynn was a hacker who got sucked into the digital world of games and programs and forced to fight his way through. Tron: Legacy followed Kevin’s son Sam’s (Garrett Hedlund) journey to find his father, ultimately getting himself trapped in the same situation. Ares’ trailer reveals some cool visuals and a foreboding voiceover from, I assume, Bridges(?), but much remains in question. Check it out here:
And here’s the official poster for Tron: Ares:
Okay, I have mixed feelings here. This is the best-looking movie Disney has put out lately, and by quite a bit. I mean both that the visuals actually look appealing and that I’m genuinely interested enough to want more insight into the story. At the same time, I’m glad they’re not giving everything away in the first trailer. I like the general look and feel of both the trailer and the poster, I’m glad Jeff Bridges is back, and I don’t mind the idea of more Tron at all. So, what’s the problem?
I’m worried Ares will ignore or minimize Tron: Legacy, which I quite liked. I got my hair cut like Quorra (Olivia Wilde, who I loved until she cheated on Jason Sudeikis. Wench). I loved the music and how they updated Tron’s visuals and world while respecting and observing the original’s ideas. But I’m most concerned about Sam Flynn, who I would really want to see again. There has been no indication of Hedlund or his character being involved in Ares, and that’s something of a bummer. If there’s one thing the original Tron lacked, it was heart. Tron is cool, gorgeous, inventive, and surprisingly intelligent, and I love the original score by Wendy Carlos, another facet I feel subsequent installments have paid homage to in their own, updated ways. However, Tron is not an emotional exercise, which is weirdly a deal-breaker for me. If I don’t feel invested in a story’s characters, I don’t care what happens to them or the world they inhabit. Sam’s search for his father got me invested not only in him but also in Kevin and even Clu. I’m not saying Ares can’t have its own emotional throughline, but even with Sam escaping to safety in the real world, I fear I won’t feel satisfied in Kevin’s continuing story without him.
I have another concern, although this one is more generic and predictable: Disney. What I used to love, I now fear. Look at Star Wars, the cultural juggernaut that influenced things like Tron. Everyone from Disney to James Bond’s EON Productions was rushing to capitalize on Star Wars in the 1970s and 1980s, and the less we say about what Disney has done with it, the better. The situation is a little different since Tron is Disney’s intellectual property; they made it, as opposed to buying it like Lucasfilm. But you could certainly make the argument they haven’t handled Tron the best over the years, and if they can’t correctly shepherd Star Wars to its full potential, I don’t have the most faith in their continued stewardship of Tron.
Tron: Ares glides into theaters on Friday, October 10th. What do you think of the trailer, poster, and general vibe? Are you going to see it? Let us know in the comments!
***
Get a META PC today; use code “199” to save on all purchases!
If you want to know what kind of political leanings movies have or just talk about cinema, check out the movie ratings community Criticless.
Get Your Geeks + Gamers merch here!
Comments (4)
The comments are saying that Jared Leto is a red flag, which I agree with, but it’s unfortunate because I wanted him to have a good career, but nothing ever really clicked. He was in Blade Runner. I think he actually looks like a Jedi, but he would have had to have been used probably much earlier. He’s already in his 50s.
One thing I like about the franchise are the digital names of the characters, like Quorra is a good one and I really like you got a haircut like that, because it shows the influence and how strong it used to be.
Tron should have been one of the great brands. The first movie was used to try to get kids into coding, as they would show it to pre-schools and Kindergartens and First graders to try to hook them with the basic games so that they would program computers. Like Quark or Data from Star Trek, I like the names like CLU and Quorra and ones like that. Should have been like Star Trek but inside the computers. Believe it or not, I have a satire along the lines of this kind of thing.
The neon colors and futuristic setting looks so epic. The world they got down, but like you said, from what we saw of Star Wars, it was the same. The tone looked right, but all else was flat.
Gotta say that I love the fans. The comments raved about how much they liked Tron: Legacy and, looking back, yeah, it was good. The part where he meets his dad and just in the room, there is a book shelf, and I recall looking at all the titles and telling myself I need to read those. So perfect for geeks. And I like that the code writer had so much power inside the digital world, he was able to change things with cheat codes and whatnot. Tron is awesome. Should have tried to recruit really talented writers.
Maybe it’s just what they put together in the trailer, but they definitely want you to know that the cast has a good diversity.
Joseph Kosinski was the X factor in Tron: Legacy. He has been replaced by Joachim Rønning, who directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.
Trading out Daft Punk for NIN has me extremely curious. But it’s the same company who’s strategy is to turn all their IPs into the Hindenburg.