The “Tron: Ares” Trailer Leaves People Cautiously Optimistic

 

(This is the poster for Tron: Ares.) 

Yes, I am going to talk about the trailer to Tron: Ares today, or whenever I end up posting this. If you actually read my last post, you’ll know that I announced the fact that I was going to talk about two trailers that I saw that I liked and had peaked my interest in the movies that they were advertising. The ones that I said I was going to do dedicated posts for were Predator: Killer of Killers and Tron: Ares. I wasn’t sure which one I should do first, but I am in a little bit more of a Tron mood thanks to me revisiting the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy in preparation for this, and I have a little bit more immediate to say about Tron: Ares than I do Predator: Killer of Killers (other than the intro), so I’m doing Tron: Ares first. 

 

I just realized now as I was writing this that Tron: Ares and Predator: Killer of Killers are both technically Disney movies since Tron is a Disney film franchise released under the actual Disney label, always has been, and Predator was a Twentieth Century Fox property and since Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox and turned it into Twentieth Century Studios, Predator is now owned by Disney. The movie is being released on Hulu. Predator: Killer of Killers that is, not Tron: Ares, that one is coming out in theaters. So, this is a full Disney showcase, these are two major high profile releases that Disney wants us to see and give a try. 

I don’t think this will be as long as my last few posts (I hope not at least) because I don’t have a ton to say about this trailer other than that I thought it was good, I thought it was a cool trailer, because I’m not a huge Tron fan. I never watched the original 1982 film, and I only saw Tron: Legacy once. I didn’t watch that short-lived CG animated series that came out 13 years ago, Tron: Uprising, which many fans of that series blame Disney buying Lucasfilm and shifting its focus towards Star Wars for its cancellation. I don’t know about that, but Disney XD, like a lot of children’s networks nowadays, has demonstrated that they don’t actually care about action cartoons and will do anything and everything to undermine them, even though they’re the same bozos who greenlit them. If you don’t like action cartoons and don’t want action cartoons on your network, then don’t greenlight them. 

So, I really don’t know my Tron lore, and I’m not coming at this from a familiar or educated place. I don’t even know what the red people inside the Grid are called, or even what the real difference between the Grid people who are blue and red, other than that the villains in these movies are usually red and the good guys are usually blue. I don’t even know who’s leading the red forces now that Clu is dead. Unless Clu is back somehow, or Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges’s character in Tron and Tron: Legacy) is actually still alive and didn’t actually die. We hear his voice in the narration/voiceover in the trailer, sort of like how they did with Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in all the trailers for the Star Wars sequels. But, unlike with Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars sequels, I don’t think Kevin Flynn’s in this, I don’t think this movie will involve the Flynn family at all. Just like how Tron: Uprising didn’t involve the Flynn family at all, that’s really the only thing that I know about it that it didn’t include a Flynn family member, and was just about the people inside the Grid, who I think are called “programs” (sort of like in the Matrix franchise) but I’m not sure. The regular humans that go inside the Grid are called users, but I’m talking the people who were born inside the Grid, and/or were created by the human programmers on the outside. 

They made a point of saying that this is a stand alone sequel rather than a direct sequel (Wikipedia said that it was a stand alone sequel), meaning that it is a sequel in the sense that it is the third film in the trilogy, but it doesn’t actually continue the story from Tron or Tron: Legacy. It stands alone and tells its own story with its own characters that have very little if anything to do with the characters from the previous films. And the characters from the previous films won’t actually appear, and if they do, they’ll have comparatively smaller roles. I think they just included his voiced because he was in the first two movies and he is intrinsically tied to the Tron franchise and to the Grid specifically. Kevin Flynn is the creator of the Grid if I’m mistaken. He is at least the creator of Clu, his AI program clone that went rogue and took over the Grid.

There’s a lot of red in this, we have a lot more red Grid people, red light cycles, red light staffs, and red light discs than we do blue. Red seems to be the main color of this movie. It’s the only color on the poster that you see above this text. I guess works for this movie, it is called Tron: Ares, Ares is the God of War, the color red is often associated with war, mostly because of blood 🩸 and anger 😡. Two things that people associate with war, they associate it with blood 🩸 since people die during war (both soldiers and civilians) and they associate it with anger 😡 because people are often angry 😡 during war. You have to be at least a little bit angry 😡 to fight in war. It also sets the movie apart from the other two because the other two were blue centric. Blue was their color. Like, literally, the only colors in Tron: Legacy once Sam Flynn goes into the Grid are black and blue. So, it’s nice to have this one go all red. 

This trailer does depict an invasion of our world, the real world by the red forces of the Grid, but again, without Clu, I have no idea who’s leading the red forces and why they’re invading the real world. I know Clu was trying to escape from the Grid and lead an invasion of the real world in Tron: Legacy, but he’s dead as far as we know, so what motivation would the red forces have to invade the real world now? But, it is cool to see parts of this movie take place in the real world and have the Grid encroach on the real world in such a forceful way, instead having it all take place inside the Grid once again. We’ve seen that for two movies and an animated series, we needed something of a change of pace. 

The visuals are amazing from what we see in this trailer, there is some really cool shit in this trailer. Tron has never failed at least making things that look cool, and this movie looks to be no exception. My favorite part was when the light trail from that red light cycle slices that police car 🚓 in half down the middle, that was a really cool shot. That is why this movie at least being set partially in the real world is worth it in my mind. Many of the comments underneath the trailer were saying that if there was one thing that Tron: Ares would have to nail, it would have to be the visuals because Tron: Legacy was so visually stunning, it is one of the coolest looking movies ever. So, it would be a shame to not have the third movie be visually stunning as well. 

This of course extends to the quality of the CGI itself, the CGI looks great in this, from what we’ve seen, from what this trailer showed. Tron has always been on the cutting edge of CGI visual effects technology, the first Tron had one of the earliest and most extensive use of CGI for its time, and was seen as revolutionary and cutting edge when it came out. Even though, course, being that it is a 1982 movie, the CGI is pretty dated compared to what we have today. So, when they did Tron: Legacy, it had to look good, otherwise it wouldn’t be a good Tron movie. It wouldn’t be a good sequel, a good legacy sequel if you will 😉 because that’s what Tron: Legacy is. It’s a legacy sequel, legacy is even in the title. 

 

It’s kind of like how people were saying that any sequel or prequel or whatever to John Carpenter’s The Thing had to have practical effects and have good practical effects for it truly be a good continuation of the first one. That’s a lot of Thing fans were upset when the 2011 prequel (also called The Thing) had CGI effects and almost no practical effects. It’s the same thing with Tron, except with CGI and not practical effects. And luckily for Tron fans, the CGI in Tron: Legacy did look pretty good and in someways outdid the CGI in the first one because the CGI was more advanced than the CGI in the first one. 

 

So, it’s good to see Tron: Ares continue that tradition and not only use the latest and greatest CGI effects technology, but have it actually look good. This looks like it would be a cool movie to watch on IMAX, or RPX, or Cinemark XD, even if I probably won’t be able to because all of those large format theaters are pretty damn expensive, more than expensive than a regular movie theater screen. But, even if we did have the money 💵, I probably wouldn’t be able to convince my grandma to go see it with me, not just because she’s not into Tron and would never agree to watch a Tron movie with me, but also hates watching movies in IMAX. She’s hated it ever since we saw John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum in IMAX back when it originally came out in 2019. It’s too loud for her. 

 

If I were to watch this movie in IMAX when it comes out, I’d either have to see it by myself or with my cousin and his girlfriend, they see movies together sometimes. Not as often as they used to since they now have a baby they have to take care of. But, their son (my nephew) will turn 1 the month after this movie comes out, so soon he’ll be old to where they drop him off at my aunt’s (his grandma’s) or my grandma to be babysat and they go out and do stuff together like going out to see a movie, and they could even invite me along if they wanted to. I am available, and I want someone else to hang out with in real life besides my grandma. 

The reaction to this trailer, based on what I saw in the comment section underneath the trailer, was mostly positive but there is some trepidation, some apprehension. That’s why I said in the title of this post that people are cautiously optimistic about the movie based on what they saw in this trailer. The consensus about this trailer and the movie as a whole is that it looks promising, but they aren’t going to get their hopes up too high because this is current day Disney and they don’t trust current day Disney handle it with care. In other words, they’re happy that a new Tron movie is coming out, but they don’t fully trust current Disney to handle it with care and deliver an actually good product. They’re just worried that they’ll fuck it up based on the kind of movies that Disney has been putting out lately. 

 

Whether it be their live action remakes, their Marvel movies in the MCU, some of their streaming shows on Disney+, and even some of their animated film projects. Some of their recent animated films haven’t been very good and have kind of subpar like Wish or Moana 2. Disney just has this reputation now amongst those on the Internet 🛜 as a terrible company that ruins anything and everything good they’ve got going for themselves. Ruining things that people actually liked and enjoyed. And people really like Tron: Legacy, it’s pretty much a cult classic and people have a lot of nostalgia for it because they saw it as kids (I saw it as a kid), and they don’t see it all be thrown away and ruined by Tron: Ares. 

Especially since Tron: Ares is following and trying to match the aesthetic of Tron: Legacy. Tron: Legacy didn’t really try to recreate or match the look and aesthetic of the original Tron, it created its own aesthetic that still honored and respected that original film, and you could tell that it was still apart of that same world and was an evolution of it. Makes sense since Tron: Legacy came out 28 years after Tron. But, Tron: Ares on the other hand, is trying to recreate and match the aesthetic of Tron: Legacy. The gap in between, while still vast, is not as vast as the one between and Tron and Tron: Legacy, Tron: Legacy came out in 2010, so there’s a 15 year time gap in between it and this movie. 

 

And the current movie going audience as well as the younger fans who watched Tron: Legacy but not the original and became fans because of Tron: Legacy are more familiar with the aesthetic of Legacy than the original 1982 film. So, they expect it to sort of look the same since for many years, Ares was billed as Tron 3. They expect it to be a continuation of Legacy even if is it is more of a soft reboot that’s doing more of its own thing. So, the Grid in Tron: Ares looks more like how it did in Tron: Legacy, except everything’s red now. The only thing that’s really significant different are the designs of the bikes, the ships, and the suits that the programs and users wear. 

 

 

 

(This is the teaser poster for Tron: Legacy.) 

I saw one comment underneath the trailer that said “Please be good, please be good, please good 🤞🤞” over and over again (I added the emojis), that’s how much this movie means to them, how this franchise overall means to them, and how much they do not want Disney to fuck it up. It’s sort of the way Lilo & Stitch fans feel about the upcoming live action Lilo & Stitch movie, they desperately want it to be good and don’t want it to suck, but they have reservations and are rightfully skeptical based on Disney’s track record when it comes to live action remakes of their animated films. Except with Tron: Ares, it’s much more amplified because the fanbase for Tron (and specifically Tron: Legacy) tends to skew a lot more male and straight ♂︎⚤ than the fanbase for Lilo & Stitch. Not a lot of women ♀︎ or gay men ⚣ (or genderfluid crossdressers) like Tron. 

 

That’s not to say there aren’t any, but they’re pretty few and far in between. Same thing about the Lilo & Stitch but with straight men ⚤♂︎, there are plenty of straight men ⚤♂︎ who like Lilo & Stitch, but they’re few and fair in between as well. Tron mostly appeals to cisgendered straight men ⚤♂︎ while Lilo & Stitch appeals mostly to cisgendered straight women ⚤♀︎ and LGBT folks 🏳️‍🌈. The reason why Lilo & Stitch has such a strong following within the LGBT community 🏳️‍🌈 is the character Pleakley, he’s a crossdresser, he likes wearing women’s clothing ♀︎ and wearing wigs that correspond with women ♀︎’s hair. For that reason, he (and the movie as a whole) appeals to crossdressers, genderfluid people, nonbinary people, trans people 🏳️‍⚧️, and otherwise gender nonconforming people. They see themselves in him, and his arc as he slowly but surely embraces who he really is.
 

Like I said, I did see Tron: Legacy as a kid, and I thought it was alright. I didn’t love it or hate it, I just thought it was okay. I was hoping that I would love it 🤩, and I wished that I loved it now 🤩, but I didn’t and I don’t. I don’t feel as strongly about it one way or another by it compared to the other people in that comment section. Maybe I might feel differently about it when I rewatch for my review that I plan to write this blog in preparation for this movie, Tron: Ares. The thing that I came away from Tron: Legacy loving 🤩 and will unironically and undoubtedly say is great is the music by Daft Punk. That is easily the best thing about it in my opinion. It’s probably like 85% of the reason why people like that movie. In fact, I kinda sort of think people remember liking the movie a lot more than they actually did because of the music. 

 

I know because the same thing happened to me with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, I remembered liking them a lot more than I actually did because of the music because of the licensed songs they included on the soundtracks, and I like the music more than the actual movies themselves. And those are Disney movies too since Marvel is owned by Disney. They’ve owned it since 2009. So, it’s totally possible for music to influence how people feel about a movie and make them remember liking a movie more than they actually did. 

The original music score for Tron: Legacy by Daft Punk was such a masterpiece that as one comment said, Disney literally had to announce in the trailer itself who was doing the music for Tron: Ares, because music became that important to the identity of Tron because of Daft Punk’s work on Tron: Legacy. They did to reassure people and convince them that Tron: Ares will actually be good and won’t be a betrayal of what came before, and by that, I mean, Tron: Legacy. And it worked, at least for me. Nine Inch Nails taking over from Daft Punk and doing the music, as well as the good quality CGI and awesome looking visuals are very reassuring. Like, they could’ve picked a better band to pick up the baton from Daft Punk and compose the music for this music than Nine Inch Nails. It almost makes up for the fact that Joseph Kosinski isn’t coming back to direct. 

 

He went onto bigger and better things after directing Tron: Legacy, directing Oblivion, which was his first Tom Cruise collaboration, and then he directed Top Gun: Maverick, which was his second Tom Cruise collaboration and is his biggest movie so far. Grossing over $1.496 billion 💵 worldwide 🤑, and arguably being the real movie that saved movie theaters and brought them out of the pandemic era 🦠😷. Take that Christopher Nolan and your Tenet movie. And Joseph Kosinski has a new movie coming out called F1, which stars Brad Pitt and is about Formula One racing 🏎️. That movie is probably the reason why Joseph Kosinski was not available to direct Tron: Ares, even if he probably would’ve said “yes” otherwise if it was offered to him. After all, he is the guy ♂︎ that brought Tron in the 21st century and paved the way for all the Tron media that proceeded it including this movie, Tron: Ares. 

This time, he’s been replaced by Joachim Rønning, who I never heard of until now, but apparently directed a few movies of note. Mostly blockbusters, and Disney blockbusters at that, like he directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales 🏴‍☠️♂︎ and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, both of which are sequels. Bet you didn’t know that there was a sequel to Maleficent. The only non-blockbuster movie that Joachim directed of note was Young Woman and the Sea ♀︎, which was a based on a true story type of sports movie starring Daisy Ridley (the actress who played Rey AKA Rey Palpatine AKA Rey Skywalker in the Star Wars sequels) about an American competitive swimmer 🇺🇸 🏊‍♀️ who swam across the English Channel and was the first woman ♀︎ in history to do so. That too was Disney movie though, released under the full Disney label. Tron: Ares will his third Disney blockbuster, his third Disney sequel, and his fourth Disney movie overall. 

 

The fact that he’s directed so many Disney movies and is firmly within the Disney ecosystem, locked in the Disney garden 🪴, is probably the main reason why he was chosen to direct Tron: Ares. He knows exactly what Disney wants, at least when it comes to their live action blockbusters, and delivers exactly what they want. Hopefully, this means the movie won’t be a soulless studio driven movie and some unique artistry still comes through like it did with Tron: Legacy. Hopefully, Joachim is given as much creative freedom on Tron: Ares as Joseph Kosinski was given on Tron: Legacy. 

The thing that I’ve seen people (especially those in that aforementioned comment section) show the most concern about is the fact that Jared Leto is in it. I saw so many comments underneath that trailer say that Jared Leto being in it is a dealbreaker for them, or that they’re more concerned about the movie now that they know that he’s in it. I can’t believe the Internet 🛜 hates Jared Leto this much. He used to be well liked, especially back in his Thirty Seconds to Mars phase, but now everyone’s kind of just turned on him, just like Dwayne Johnson or Gal Gadot (who ironically were in a movie together, Red Notice) in a lot of ways. I don’t what is that made people finally turn on Jared Leto and made them see him as a potential red flag 🚩 whenever he shows up in a movie.

 

Was it Morbius? Was it House of Gucci? I ask because even back during Suicide Squad (2016) when he played the Joker, and did all that weird and creepy stuff on the set of that movie, hiding behind the old actor excuse of “method acting” (which is more often than not just a cover for actors to excuse their own shitty behavior on set), there were still people who liked him. Even with his controversial and divisive performance as the Joker both in Suicide Squad (2016) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Was it because of some shitty thing he did real life? Did he sexually harass or assault someone? Did he beat someone like one Ezra Miller? Did he lie about something or promote a scam? Or was he just generally annoying and obnoxious? 

 

It had to have been when he became a meme around the time House of Gucci and Morbius came out. People across the board all of sudden stopped taking Jared Leto seriously as an actor when Morbius came out and people couldn’t stop making “It’s Morbin’ time” jokes. I mean, I think Jared Leto’s a good actor, I don’t think he’s as bad as people make him out to be. His Joker is alright, it’s the worst one (the worst one is the one in The Batman (2022)), and he works a lot better in Zack Snyder’s Justice League when he was given better material to work with and was able to interact with Batman, which is arguably when the Joker is at his best, no matter which version by which actor it is. And the deleted scenes in Suicide Squad (2016) would’ve improved his portrayal if they were added back in. #ReleasetheAyerCut. 

 

And even though I haven’t seen Blade Runner 2049, I have seen the scenes with him in it as Niander Wallace, as well as that prequel short film they released prior to the film’s release, 2036: Nexus Dawn, where he’s talking to a room full of bureaucrats showing off the new Replicant model, the Nexus-9, and he’s fantastic. It’s probably my favorite role of his and I haven’t even seen the full movie. So, I’m going to complete write off this movie or assume it’s going to be bad just because he’s in it because he is a good actor who is still capable of delivering good performances and has delivered plenty of good performances before Morbius came out and changed the public perception of him probably forever. 

 

And if he’s bad person in real life and has committed crimes (of a sexual nature or otherwise), then I’ll disown him, but I don’t know enough about his personal life outside of movies to really make a judgement about his character. All we can really do is wait and see. I’m gonna give this chance even if I’m not crazy into Tron. I just want a cool-looking science fiction movie to watch, and I’ll need something to watch in October, which is when Tron: Ares comes out. Hopefully I can actually see it in theaters when it comes out, but like with every other 2025 release, I just don’t know. I’ll just have to wait until it comes out on streaming or VOD (video-on-demand). 

 

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(This is the trailer for Tron: Ares.)