When it was announced that Jared Leto would be starring as a new character named “Ares” in a third Tron film, it was understood that he’d be playing a kind of living AI coming from the digital Grid and into the real world. But what nobody expected was an outright invasion from the Grid onto humankind. In the first full trailer for Tron: Ares, that’s exactly what is happening. Fifteen years after Clu (Jeff Bridges) threatened to bring the world of the Grid to the flesh-and-blood Earth, it appears that in the new sequel, someone will do just that. Or is there more to it?
With the new trailer for Ares, it seems Disney is pushing the Tron canon into a place it's never quite gone before. Here’s what happens in the trailer, why it’s such a big deal, and what it might mean for the continuity of Tron overall.
Most obviously, the biggest shock in the Tron: Ares trailer is the opening moment in which two Light Cycles race through what appears to be the real world and slice a police car in half. After that, we see a Recognizer chasing Greta Lee’s character, Eve Kim, in what also appears to be a real-world setting. This is new. Other than the Master Control Programming communicating with Dillinger (David Warner) in the first movie and Quora (Olivia Wilde) escaping with Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) in Legacy, the Tron movies have never fully brought the digital vehicles of the Grid into our world.
Like the division between worlds in The Matrix, this is a boundary that the series has yet to cross. Yes, Kevin Flynn’s digital clone Clu (Jeff Bridges), wanted to invade the real world in Legacy, but that never actually came to pass. Now, right away, in this trailer, it seems clear that the fight in the digital world of the Grid will be inter-spliced with more terrestrial locations.
Unless, of course, this tease is all part of a larger mystery. Is this even the real world we’re seeing here? While the original Tron predates The Matrix, one wonders if this trailer suggests a larger-scale simulated world than we’ve seen before. In other words, there’s no need for Tron's digital world to look Tron-y anymore. Maybe at least one digital realm in Tron: Ares could, more or less, look just like the real world.
While we might be seeing an invasion from the Grid into the real world, we could also be looking at another simulated world adjacent to the Grid that just happens to look like the real world. In other words, in previous iterations of Tron, like Ready Player One, there is a definite real world and a definite virtual world. But now, the Ares trailer might suggest that distinction is no longer clear.
If Ares is presenting a new layer or more than one virtual world, all these concepts will create extra tension for the film. While this kind of reality-blending has been fairly clear-cut in the previous installments, Tron: Ares might be taking the themes of the franchise to the next level. At this point, based on this mind-bending trailer, we don’t actually know what we’re looking at. And that’s exciting.
