As Alive As You Need Me To Be

Directed by Joachin Rønning

Starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters

Released October 10th, 2025

Rated PG-13

Have you ever attempted to explain the plot of a TRON movie to someone? It’s not an easy task. TRON is a nerdy computer technobabble franchise for nerdy technobabble people, that has inexplicably managed to spawn three movies and an animated television series over the course of nearly five decades. The original film was produced and released by the Walt Disney company back in 1982, written and directed by Steven Lisberger. TRON featured some of the earliest computer-generated special effects ever seen in a feature film, and it retains a singular visual style to this day. Nothing looks like 1982’s TRON. And nothing sounds like it either, thanks to the electronic/orchestral score from visionary composer Wendy Carlos. In the film, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a video game designer, is transported into the computer world. There he meets human personifications of programs, all of whom mirror a real-life human counterpart, including Yori (Cindy Morgan), Sark (David Warner), TRON (Bruce Boxleitner), and CLU (Bridges). The film becomes a race against time as Flynn tries to escape back into the real world before his company is taken over by a corporate rival. This strange plot proved hard to follow, and audiences did not show up. TRON was a financial and critical failure; a curio remembered more for the popular arcade games it spawned than for the film itself. 

That’s why it was shocking when, twenty-eight years later, Disney released a sequel. Written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis and directed by Joseph Kosinski, TRON: Legacy brought Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner back along with new cast members Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, and Michael Sheen. Like the first film, this one was visually ambitious, with some of the best visual effects of its time on display. I’d say the real legacy (pun intended) of that second film is the score by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk. Their soundtrack was a bestseller and is widely regarded as one of the great modern film scores. The story focused on Kevin Flynn’s son Sam (Hedlund) searching for his long-lost father, eventually being transported into the computer world himself, where he comes face to face with CLU (a digitally de-aged Bridges). The plot was not quite as muddled as the original film, but general audiences seemed more confused than excited about the prospect of more TRON films.

Which makes the existence of a third film, released fifteen years later, even more improbable. And yet, TRON: Ares does in fact exist. My theory is that there is one executive at Disney who loves the universe of TRON and in every meeting, they campaign for a new TRON film, and every decade or so, the powers that be grant their wish. This latest entry was written by Jesse Wigutow and directed by Joachin Rønning. Jeff Bridges returns for a cameo, but otherwise it’s an all new cast, including Gillian Anderson, Jodie Turner-Smith, Evan Peters, Greta Lee, and Jared Leto. That makes this the first TRON movie not to feature the character of TRON. 

In this installment, Ares (Leto) is a security program designed by Julian Dillinger (Peters) of Dillinger Systems. Ares is transported into the real world during a presentation by Dillinger to show off its potential as an expendable soldier, an idea his mother Elisabeth (Anderson) feels is dangerous. Dillinger does not tell his would-be investors that programs can only last roughly half an hour in the real world before violently derezzing. Dillinger’s corporate rival Eve Kim (Lee), CEO of ENCOM, is trying to find a “permanence code” that the late Kevin Flynn hid away, code that she believes could change the world for the better. Dillinger sends Ares and his second-in-command Athena (Turner-Smith) from the computer world into our real world to steal the code from Kim. It stands to reason that Ares wants to get his digital hands on the permanence code for himself, so that he doesn’t die every half hour. He’s an artificial creation that longs to become something real. This has long been a science fiction and fantasy trope, and Pinocchio and Frankenstein’s monster are referenced in the film, though Blade Runner is not (perhaps because Leto was in that film’s sequel).

In the first two films of this series, we were transported along with the characters into the world of computers, and the result was a true sense of wonder. In this film, programs from the digital world come into ours, and the results are not as impressive. There is not a big wow factor in seeing digital vehicles such as Light Cycles and Light Jets and Recognizers come into the analog world next to regular cars and skyscrapers compared to seeing them at home in their unnatural computerized landscapes. Thankfully, the score, by Nine Inch Nails, does a lot of heavy lifting. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do a commendable job in creating a soundscape that fits the strange TRON universe while still feeling like classic NIN. I also appreciated that we hear some of Wendy Carlos’ original TRON themes when we are transported back to the 1980s Grid in a few scenes toward the conclusion. And just so Daft Punk isn’t left out, in a flashback scene we see Greta Lee’s character wearing a shirt with their logo. 

I found the story of TRON: Ares to be just as oddball and strange as the plot of TRON: Legacy and TRON. All of these films are just plain weird. The editing across all three is choppy and the characters are mostly ill-defined. It truly is a series of films saved by interesting visuals and excellent soundtracks. Red is the color scheme of TRON: Ares, as blue was to TRON: Legacy, and gray to TRON. What color will the next film choose? Yellow? Green? Periwinkle? Will we get a fourth TRON film? Do we want one? What about that one Disney executive? You know they will push for one. I say go for it, if only to finally tie up the loose story threads. Perhaps after a fourth film, the world of TRON will finally make sense. Of course, with this franchise’s track record of long delays between each movie, we may not get a follow up for another ten or fifteen years. 

I feel like there must be an alternate reality out there where TRON movies are a huge global phenomenon, where audiences everywhere have TRON fever. We do not live in that reality. In our reality, audiences meet each film with a collective shrug. If you want a strong story with memorable characters, then you’re looking in the wrong place. If you dig crazy visuals, the color red, and Nine Inch Nails, then you might dig TRON: Ares.

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