TRON: Ares Brings Back Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn

San Diego Comic-Con is only a few days away, and Disney is setting the table for its highly anticipated SDCC presentation by releasing a new trailer for its upcoming film TRON: Ares. TRON: Ares is the upcoming installment in the storied science fiction franchise directed by Joachim Rønning.

This next chapter in the TRON saga steps away from the digital world to explore more of the real one.

TRON: Ares comes on the heels of 2010’s TRON: Legacy, which starred Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of TRON hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Sam stopped the Grid-dominating villain Clu from fusing both worlds at the last possible moment before making his way back to the real world with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a rare program (ISO) that Clu was trying to delete after her creation.

Back in 2010, Disney was expected to dive right back into the Grid with a third TRON film that would have picked up right where TRON: Legacy left off. Disney gave the third film a formal go-ahead in October 2010 and was to feature Sam Flynn and Quorra’s story of Sam taking over his father’s company, ENCOM. However, things ground to a halt. The sequel was canceled in 2015 after the film’s momentum ground to a halt, presumably affected by the middling box office of Disney’s other sci-fi misfire, Tomorrowland.

A year later, the sequel was dead. But that didn’t spell the end for TRON: A third entry was green-lit for development, although instead of picking up from TRON: Legacy, the film was instead being marketed as a reboot of the original film. However, earlier scripts for TRON 3, including the creation of Ares as a major AI presence in the film, were still present.

The film would undergo development hell over the last few years, with pandemic shutdowns and Hollywood’s recent labor strikes only causing further delays to the film. But now, after years of delays, TRON: Ares is finally finished and is now headed to theaters this fall.

Disney’s official synopsis 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 leads the film as the A.I. Program Ares, along with Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. Supporting cast members also include Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. For fans of the OG TRON, the film will also have a familiar face returning, as Jeff Bridges will also reprise his role as Kevin Flynn. Meanwhile, Industrial Rock veterans Nine Inch Nails will be behind the film’s score.

In the trailers, “Ultimate Soldier” is unleashed.

The first trailer that was released back in April was much more about visuals than the story, showing off the TRON franchise’s usual neon-lit grid lines, pulsating lightcycles, and garish digital cityscapes. It also has a shot of Ares himself for the first time, but we still didn’t know much of his story. But this week, a new trailer dropped, and while it certainly features the trippy, colorful digital world we all know and love from TRON, we finally start to get more insight into the film’s story.

It begins with what seems like a scene straight out of a tech industry keynote. Julian Dillinger is on a stage speaking about a recent tech event, making an ominous proclamation to his gathered audience. “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like? When will we get there? Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

Dillinger continues on stage as he introduces his “ultimate soldier,” named Ares. Dillinger gets almost in love with his creation, proclaiming to the audience, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” At this moment in the trailer, Ares trips over the edge of the stage during Dillinger’s presentation. “…I will simply make you another.” This moment solidifies Dillinger as a cutthroat businessman figure who thinks he can control the future of A.I.

It quickly becomes clear that he is wrong about that. In a quest for self-preservation, Dillinger may think he owns and created Ares. But the trailer is showing a program with its sentience that is on a path to find what it cannot completely explain. In a nod to the sequel, the film asks a very interesting philosophical question about Ares, as Kevin Flynn is found within the virtual landscape to ask, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

Jeff Bridges playing Kevin Flynn is a nostalgic hook for fans of the original film, and Jared Leto is stepping into some fresh meat for the long-running franchise by playing an A.I. that is blurring the line between the digital and real world in the TRON mythology. The film appears to have some large-scale potential, but its biggest question is more about its thematic storytelling about AI and its autonomy, and the ethics of artificial life.

The visual sheen of the film will be a carryover from Rønning’s efforts as director and will see the new film bringing its usual TRON aesthetic to both more futuristic techscapes and real-world grounded settings. Nine Inch Nails behind the scenes also means the film will have the atmospheric and fitting rock music to accompany it. TRON: Ares appears to have both of those requisites on display, and hopefully, this means the finished product that is ready for release.

After 13 years of development, the film is almost finally here. TRON: Ares will have its home in theaters, lighting up the big screen starting October 10, 2025