For more than four decades, Tron has imagined what happens when humans and machines collide. The 1982 original asked what a digital world inside a computer might look like. TRON: Legacy (2010) explored how that world evolved in isolation. Now, after 15 years away, Disney finally returns to the Grid with TRON: Ares, and the story has never felt more relevant. In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and questions of what separates the real from the virtual, the franchise once again feels ahead of its time.
I had the opportunity to see this evolution up close on February 20, 2024, when I traveled to Vancouver for day 26 of 76 of production. Internally, the movie was still being referred to under its codename “VELCRO.” It was not only my first time stepping onto a TRON set and inside a Grid, but it was also Disney’s first film set visit since the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a longtime fan of the franchise who was at San Diego Comic-Con each year that director Joseph Koskinski came to pitch the concept of a modern TRON, later recording sound of us in the crowd to use in the sequel, and showcasing it, this was special.
We spent much of our time on the TRON: Ares sets – which were mᴀssive and built practically – and in “war room” with producer Justin Springer who framed it best during our visit: “This movie sort of asked the question, what happens when technology becomes sufficiently advanced that the lines between the two worlds start to blur, and what comes from the digital world could start to exist in our own…”
TRON: Ares Brings the Grid Into the Real World
The first two TRON movies pulled audiences into the machine. Ares flips that premise, bringing programs and vehicles into reality itself. “If Tron was always about looking inside the machine, this movie asks what happens when ᴀssets from that world start entering our own,” Springer explained.
That’s not to say we won’t be visiting the grid. In TRON: Ares, we’ll be visiting at least three Grids that I know about, but more on that later…
At the heart of the story is the “permanence code,” a piece of elusive programming that could allow digital matter to remain stable in the real world. It is the key to everything and everybody wants it, which is where the iconic TRON corporate element come in. Production Designer Darren Gilford described how Eve (Greta Lee), our human protagonist for TRON 3, experiments with this in her mountain lab: “It’s meant to play the top of the mountains in a very remote location… she’s produced an orange tree. It’s possible to produce them before, but typically something so complex only lasts 29 minutes, and then it sort of derez into nothing.”
The mountain sequence is one of a few parts of the TRON: Ares production that uses the volume. As much as Director Joachim Rønning did not want to use this technology, citing having “mixed emotions a little bit about it, because it’s also limiting” it was not feasible on the timeline to send crews literally up snowy mountains, so they constructed a set, featuring fake snow, and utilized the volume for the digital background and to make the actors feel like they are there.
Director Joachim Rønning added that the realism extends to vehicles: “A lightcycle in the real world is more like a Formula One car… it can’t go up stairs. That’s where Eve, on her Ducati DesertX, can escape,” referring to some of the real-world chase sequences that involved the production making real lightcycles where TRON: Legacy didn’t have any. All the cool Legacy lightcycles all those years ago were craft just for the marketing campaign.
Ares and Athena: TRON’s First Contact With AI
Vehicles are not the only things breaking into our world. TRON: Ares is also introducing programs that step out of the digital realm for the first time.
Jared Leto’s тιтular Ares represents the next leap for the series: a program printed into the real world. Springer positioned Ares as something more profound than a digital soldier: “He becomes the protagonist of the movie… a program who finds his way into our world and ultimately decides he no longer is interested in the directive that was given to him, but would like to sort of be more self-determined.”
But Ares is not the only program to escape. Jodie Turner-Smith plays Athena, his second-in-command, who becomes the antagonist after refusing to question her directives. Springer explained: “She ultimately becomes the antagonist of the piece in the third act. She’s a program who doesn’t have the same sort of awakening that he does, and she’s charged with tracking down Eve and Ares.”
When Athena takes over, you’ll notice she gets a Master Control Disc of her own from the Master Control Program, the uniquely triangular-shaped version introduced in TRON: Ares.
For Rønning, the contrast of these once-digital creations defines the movie’s heart: “This movie is very much about what it takes to be human. Ares wants to be human, and he needs to deserve it and earn it.”
TRON: Ares Offers a Rarely Optimistic AI Story
The arrival of Ares and Athena sets up a larger question about how humanity and AI can coexist, and it is where TRON: Ares takes a surprising turn given that most modern AI tales end in apocalypse. Just look at Terminator and The Matrix. TRON has always been different, and Springer stressed that optimism remains baked into its code:
“It’s ultimately saying that, in the end, there’s a world in which collaboration between humanity and technology yields for a better future. It’s not without its challenges or dangers, but ultimately, we’ll be better as a species if we’re working together than apart.”
That outlook distinguishes Ares from darker, more dystopian visions. For Rønning, infusing humanity was essential: “It’s probably the darkest franchise for Disney. But I am also infusing it with humanity… this movie is very much about what it takes to be human.”
“I think Tron came up with the idea of the metaverse before that idea came and went in the last few years, because it’s sort of what it’s about,” notes Springer in how the series speaks directly to our current moment. He continues: “But I think it’s also like we are in this era of artificial general intelligence and super sophisticated 3d printing and synthetic biology in a way that will change the way we exist in our world, in terms of how we communicate, who we have relationships with, how we fight our wars, like that’s really in the zeitgeist of what’s happening right now.”
TRON: Ares Sets, Props, and Vehicles Visualize Big Themes
Those themes are not just in the script, they are built into every prop, costume, and vehicle we saw on set. Property Master Dean Eilertson described to me how Eve’s idenтιтy disc differs from what we’ve seen before: “It isn’t a militarized disc, it’s an idenтιтy disc… her whole life experience is in there.”
Ares’ own disc is notable more advanced and intricate, which, from the production side, features wireless lighting controls: “We have eight channels that control all the lights… if I’m holding the disc and I have my helmet and visor on, I can raise the level of light for reflections and drop the level of light towards camera.” I held these various discs (and other weapons you’ll see on the big screen) and they were quite intricate, heavier than you’d expect.
Weapons themselves echo the permanence theme too. Batons now shift into multiple tools like skimmers, ice axes, even lightcycle handles, and each is designed as if they were 3D-printed into existence which oddly mimics the real-world production process. And for the first time, the franchise’s iconic vehicles exist in reality: two functional lightcycles, a mᴀssive troop transport, and Athena’s F-16-inspired light jet enter the real world in TRON: Ares, some of which you’ve seen in the trailers.
Gilford also revealed how the three digital worlds featured in TRON: Ares, the Grids, mirror their corporate creators: “We have Dillinger grid, ENCOM grid, and what we’re calling a 1982 kind of legacy grid.”
“So those three grids need to be very different and unique and juxtaposed to each other, so the audience knows where we are as we’re going through the story and bouncing between these worlds.”
- Dillinger Grid: The Dillinger grid is a red palette we’ve not see in TRON before. “Dillinger being a much more military, you know, kind of brutalistic grid. We want it to be more frenetic, more interrupted, more asymmetrical with the light lines and a lot more staccato,” explains Gilford.
- ENCOM Grid: This one offers a utopian emerald vision, carrying connective tissue with Legacy. It’s not been shown in the marketing materials but we see Ares lead an ᴀssault on this Grid during the film. Gilford described it as “a little bit of a hint to Oz,” offering a more beautiful, idealized counterpart to Dillinger’s brutality.
- The 1982 Grid: This one speaks for itself and pays homage to the rotoscoped aesthetic of the original film, updated carefully to avoid losing its retro charm. I’m hoping for some notable cameos here…
TRON Legacy Connections in TRON: Ares
Despite its forward-looking themes, Ares never abandons its lineage. Springer emphasized: “It’s a new story. It’s not a sequel to Legacy. It’s a new Tron story that does exist within the same mythology…”
That mythology lives in the details. Gilford and his team rebuilt Flynn’s ENCOM office (pictured above in the center), complete with archived props from the 80s, neo,n and classic arcade machines, so many that they were literally stacked into parts of the office as if built into the walls. Springer added: “There’s a sequence where they have to get Ares back into a grid. They go to ENCOM headquarters, which features a replica of Flynn’s office in the CEO suite… an old Cray server from the 1980s that hasn’t been plugged in in 40 years.”
Even TRON creator Steven Lisberger weighed in, encouraging the inclusion of “digital trees,” a concept he had hoped to realize decades earlier. Gilford admitted the challenge: “It’s super challenging, super fun… how do you update 1982 technology without making it too slick or starting to compete with our other grid?”
For Rønning, the goal is to marry the visual coolness that has always defined the series with an emotional core. “Legacy took place for the most part on the grid. It’s a cold, cool movie, but it’s cold. This time, it’s about what it takes to be human,” he said.
As we explored the prop room during our TRON: Ares set visit, there were numbered cast pH๏τos high up on one of the walls. Several were missing, immediately causing speculation. Since then, we’ve learned Jeff Bridges returns, and I suspect TRON himself, Bruce Boxleitner, must make an appearance – especially if we’re revisiting the original 1982 grid. Will Garrett Hedlund’s Sam Flynn return from Legacy?
The Future of TRON Starts With Ares
TRON has always been about the next frontier. In 1982, it imagined the inside of a computer. In 2010, it asked what a digital world might become on its own. In 2025, TRON: Ares pushes the franchise into our reality, exploring AI, permanence, and what happens when the digital and the physical merge.
Walking off the Vancouver stages, it was clear the filmmakers aren’t just recreating the Grid(s), they’re building a TRON story that speaks directly to where we are now and looking ahead again, something the original film did so well.
