Tron: Ares Trailer Introduces Jared Leto as AI Super Soldier (And Jeff Bridges’ New Look)

The trailer for Tron: Ares sheds new light on the movie’s premise, and how it plays into today’s anxiety around technology and artificial intelligence. The trailer kicks off with some exposition by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), explaining how the technology from the previous movies will now be applied to warfare, policing, and espionage. Of course, it’s followed by dire warnings from other characters, and only at the end of the trailer do we hear from the program, Ares (Jared Leto) himself. We even get our first look at Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Kevin Flynn. Tron: Ares hits theaters on October 10th.

Both previous Tron movies have taken place within the virtual world known as the Grid, but in this trailer, the young heir to the Dillinger family promises to bring the action into real life. In some kind of staged sales pitch to military leaders, he introduces the world to “Ares, the ultimate soldier,” apparently created using AI. The super-soldier looks like one of Tron’s digital warriors brought to life, and somehow, Dillinger seems able to print them endlessly for whatever purposes his customers need.

Play video

The trailer features everything we’ve come to expect from the Tron franchise — light-cycles, neon-colored combat, and mankind confront its own hubris face to face. As for Leto’s AI character, he may have an arc of his own. He says that he’s “looking for something. Something I do not understand,” and when Flynn questions him about his will to live, Ares replies, “It’s just a feeling.”

Read Next

Tron: Ares Needs to Answer This 15-Year-Old Franchise Question

Even with this trailer and all the other teasers we’ve seen so far, it’s hard to predict what we can expect from Tron: Ares. The movie seems to be holding back a lot of secrets and tantalizing questions, though there’s time for more reveals before the big premiere. This movie has been through many iterations in the last decade and a half, and was even developed as a complete reboot at one point. The latest promotional material categorizes it more as a sequel, keeping the events of Tron: Legacy in place.

Peters plays the latest face of the Dillinger family — the descendant of the original movie’s antagonist, Ed Dillinger (David Warner). We met Ed’s son Edward Jr. (Cillian Murphy) briefly in Tron: Legacy, but it’s not clear how Julian is related to them. We know that Gillian Anderson plays his mother, Elisabeth, but that she has mostly handed the reigns of her business over to Julian at the time this story begins. It seems like the two don’t exactly see eye to eye.

Tron: Ares is shaping up to be a timely commentary on AI and a surprisingly grim sci-fi epic for Disney, based on what we’ve seen so far. The movie hits theaters on October 10th. The previous two movies are streaming now on Disney+.