Looking down the road..... TRON: Ares

[Techwright]

And so it begins (a little Boxleitner humor there).  TRON:Ares will be a new story set in the TRON universe.  So far, they've yet to reveal any cast members from TRON or TRON: Legacy returning.  The inclusion of Cameron Monaghan intrigues me.  He did good work on the two canon Star Wars games Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor. I'm also happy to see Evan Peters and Gillian Anderson on the roster. Jared Leto as top billing does not intrigue me at all,  

 

An alternate information source is suggesting a Christmas 2025 opening.

 

 

[uninventive]

Deadline Hollywood's reporting stated it's a reboot, not a sequel, so if anyone from Tron or Tron: Legacy appears it'll be cameos most likely. 

 

Jared Leto has me worried.  Between Suicide Squad and Morbius, he's not doing too hot in the superhero genre.  Tron isn't more than a skip away from that scene.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Not a huge amount of info on this one, other than:

• Supposedly follows the path a Program that wants to become a real live boy. Pinocchi2.0, I guess.
• The character of ARES is from an older version of the Legacy development that was canned.
• Whether protagonist, antagonist or a mixture of both... no idea, though ARES suggests they're military software.
• Daft Punk will not be reuniting for this gig. Which is a damn shame, frankly. 

 

[Techwright]

  On 2/16/2024 at 3:51 AM, uninventive said:

Deadline Hollywood's reporting stated it's a reboot, not a sequel, so if anyone from Tron or Tron: Legacy appears it'll be cameos most likely.

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Acknowledged, though I'm not sure how it can be a reboot, as the computer universe didn't even know there was a crossing until Flynn showed up.  I'm fine with it not being a sequel.  "Set within the universe", to me at least, would seem a better choice.

 

  On 2/16/2024 at 4:43 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Not a huge amount of info on this one, other than:

• Supposedly follows the path a Program that wants to become a real live boy. Pinocchi2.0, I guess.
• The character of ARES is from an older version of the Legacy development that was canned.
• Whether protagonist, antagonist or a mixture of both... no idea, though ARES suggests they're military software.
• Daft Punk will not be reuniting for this gig. Which is a damn shame, frankly. 

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Which could play into the concept of "set within the universe".  Ares could be a story set between the previous two movies, of an Iso (those special programs found in Tron: Legacy) who might have been trying to find a way to retrace Flynn's path and find a way out that didn't involve Flynn's disk.  Probably not, but I'd find it interesting.

 

Time to bring out Hans Zimmer.  Whomever they find, I hope they keep the musical tone of Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk.

[uninventive]

  On 2/16/2024 at 4:43 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Not a huge amount of info on this one, other than:

• Supposedly follows the path a Program that wants to become a real live boy. Pinocchi2.0, I guess.
• The character of ARES is from an older version of the Legacy development that was canned.
• Whether protagonist, antagonist or a mixture of both... no idea, though ARES suggests they're military software.
• Daft Punk will not be reuniting for this gig. Which is a damn shame, frankly. 

 

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100% on the Daft Punk.  Makes Legacy that much more special to me.

 

There's no shortage of Retro Synth music out there, but it'll be an interesting choice of composer regardless.  (Or lack thereof if they go atmospheric/cinematic score only and shun more detailed music.)

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

So this project is real, and there's a first image:

 

 

Confirmed cast: Jared Leto😠, Greta Lee🙂, Evan Peters🤨, Hasan Minhaj😐, Jodie Turner-Smith🤩, Arturo Castro🤓, Cameron Monaghan🤯, with Gillian Anderson🥰.

 

Confirmed director: Joachim Rønning, a Norwegian indie darling who - like the unfortunate Brit director from a pair of threads that have wisely been consigned to history - got sucked in by the promise of big budget big name movie making, only to find out their project was cursed (PotC: Dead Men Tell No Tales, though his second Mouse outing with Maleficient:Mistress Of Evil was pretty solid.) He replaces Aussie adman Garth Davis (Foe).

 

Execs: the producers at least knows what he's about: Jeff Silver, who cut his teeth on The Wonder Years, and then built a very varied CV ranging from Training Day and Assault On Precinct 13, to Santa Clause and three Disney live-action remakes. 

 

Confirmed plotline: TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.

 

Production notes: began filming (finally) in Vancouver in January under codename Velcro, after pandemic delays and then the strikes.

 

Unconfirmed pointless speculation: something about ARES's right hand is screaming weapon. 

Not to mention the red colour scheme, the armoured-looking suit, and the odd looking warning-triangle data disc/ frisbee / next Apple jack I'll have to get a dongle for if they flip off the EU.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2024 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Techwright]

  On 3/3/2024 at 10:59 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Confirmed cast: Jared Leto😠, Greta Lee🙂, Evan Peters🤨, Hasan Minhaj😐, Jodie Turner-Smith🤩, Arturo Castro🤓, Cameron Monaghan🤯, with Gillian Anderson🥰.

 

 

Confirmed plotline: TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.

 

 

 

 

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I'm curious why that emoji for Evan Peters.  Granted I only know him from his work in the X-men and MCU franchises, but I found him rather fun to watch.

I really hope Cameron Monaghan has a juicy role.  While I was not a fan of Gotham, his work in it and his motion capture/voice work for as Cal Kestus in Star Wars games has me believing he's not even tapped his full potential yet.

 

 

The plotline has me concerned.  The description makes no sense in context with the canon ending of the second TRON film.  It's 14 years out (hard to believe) so I shouldn't have to toss a spoiler box out, but I will.

  Reveal hidden contents

At the end of TRON: Legacy, the digital empire of CLU was destroyed, top-down as it were, and the implication was that the entire design of that society blew up.  Flynn may or may not have been destroyed, and one ISO already escaped as the destruction was happening.  If anything survived inside, it would be a smoking ruin.  So how does anything come from within and have any organization to dispatch a character on a mission?    For the sake of discussion, lets say a fraction of CLU's designs survived.  Then what we might be seeing is a member of CLU's hunter legions being dispatched to hunt down Quorra the ISO, though I've heard nothing of Olivia Wilde being in this.  Even so, it sounds like a Terminator plot, just with the opponents coming from within a computer rather than being the computer. 

 

Now that being said, Flynn made some very interesting comments in Legacy, specifically that a study of a living, sentient ISO would probably allow humanity to redesign itself, specifically in the field of medicine.  While there's been no mention of ISO's yet, the implications of this incursion triggering a number of factions into existence has future story potential.

 

I will say the plot summary seems to suggest that in the story of TRON, each world's denizens, when they cross over into the other world, become power players.  Also, how can you have a TRON story without TRON?  Legacy underused him, admittedly, but even if, as he stated, Boxleitner is done with the TRON franchise, one could always recast.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

  On 3/4/2024 at 5:57 AM, Techwright said:

I'm curious why that emoji for Evan Peters. 

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Interesting choice, is all. He's quite a versatile actor - yes, in cape world, we know him for Quicksilver (and Ralph Boehner...) and he delivered a pantheon of charismatic creeps in AHS:Cult. Haven't seen Mare of Easttown but heard that was good, and Dahmer isn't up my alley - but again, heard good things about his acting. He's got no particular schtick or associations, so you're really not going to know who or what you're dealing with.

 

Re your spoilerbox, my thoughts:

  Reveal hidden contents

There's no indication of when this takes place vs canon timeline - now, future, or a straight followon.

Although AI has taken off in spectacular fashion at the moment, so good time for a zeitgeist-paranoia movie.

If I had to take a punt - wild speculation ahoy! - it's the Isla Sorna /  Isla Nublar gag: different server, different rules.

 

At the end of Legacy, ENCOM became Sam's company and presumably rocketed in value during the AI boom. How he ran the company and the Grid after that is up for grabs plotwise, but I'd bet that he'd turn down any offers to design military code. Don't be evil, y'know.

 

That doesn't mean someone else hasn't. An annoyed software engineer, a Program that preferred life under CLU, or both could port themselves to another system or straight to reality, and start a new, ordered Grid in their own image, using military cash, and have designs on the real world. 

 

So I would suspect an ENCOM ISO is going to end up chasing this ARES character - but needing human assistance, making it a high-concept buddy cop movie or a dark reboot of AutoMan.

 

Leto seems to fit as a better antagonist for this gig than protagonist in my headcanon, which would make Lee, Peters or Monaghan interesting hero figures. Then again, with Peters' recent form, a persuasive villain might be more in his bracket.

 

Writers are:

• Jesse Wigutow: journeyman script surgeon, senior lecturer at the AFI Conservatory, and who seems to have had better luck with selling scripts vs getting them actually made.
• Jack Thorne: decent writer (and part-time script surgeon), with credits including The Aeronauts (good), Enola Holmes (I'm good with that) and the Hanks remake of Pinocchio (...oh dear. Can't win 'em all, I suppose.)

 

[Techwright]

Regarding @ThaOGDreamWeaver's spoiler box:

  Reveal hidden contents

That's...a really interesting idea.  Actually two interesting ideas fused into one:

1. A "user" world coder creating an assassin from within the digital world to attack in the real world (and dodge back into the digital one again?)  As I type it, I think my description might be a bit darker than they'd want a TRON show.  It's one thing to kill a program into a shower of bits.  It's another to kill a human with a blade disk.  Very messy.

2. A second digital world, a system isolated from the internet.  Essentially it's a digital multi-verse, and we know how Disney (specifically Disney-Marvel) loves multiverses.

 

Regarding your "ENCOM ISO":  Unless we're talking Quorra, that's going to be hard to come up with.  Flynn believed Quorra to be the last ISO.  CLU was pretty thorough in his genocide, and Flynn said ISOs surprised him.  They were not created by users, at least, as Flynn understood it.  It's always possible Flynn missed a few, or that some were assimilated into CLU's forces as Tron was.

 

"...or a dark reboot of Automan."  Nooooo....

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

  Reveal hidden contents

  On 3/5/2024 at 11:41 PM, Techwright said:

A second digital world, a system isolated from the internet.  Essentially it's a digital multi-verse, and we know how Disney (specifically Disney-Marvel) loves multiverses.

 

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Heh. Pulling that out for a second... I wasn't born along with the internet, but BBS's and MUDs existed long before the Net proper. Wonder if anyone here was ever on surfers.org?

 

I'd always thought of each one as its own "world", in a TRON sort of way, and that's how 80s books like Out Of The Inner Circle explained it. (Good read if you can find it - especially if you're learning computer security. The techniques may have changed, but a lot of the basic vectors and motivations haven't... especially about educating your users not to do dumb s**t.) 

 

Even in the age of the Internet, a .mil system exists as a world to itself: connected to the Internet, but the equivalent of Area 51. Effectively invisible to the casual user, with heavily-armed gate guards, a different and heavily ordered structure on the inside, and no fun little pickup bars run by fey Welshmen (or if there are any, they'd be illegal programs and probably spyware. And if anyone from Lower Decks happens to be reading this, you're still free to nick my illegal-Orion-porn-spyware Holodeck schtick, because that would be hilarious).

 

Edited March 6, 2024 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Techwright]

  On 3/6/2024 at 3:53 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Heh. Pulling that out for a second... I wasn't born along with the internet, but BBS's and MUDs existed long before the Net proper. Wonder if anyone here was ever on surfers.org?

 

I'd always thought of each one as its own "world", in a TRON sort of way, and that's how 80s books like Out Of The Inner Circle explained it. (Good read if you can find it - especially if you're learning computer security. The techniques may have changed, but a lot of the basic vectors and motivations haven't... especially about educating your users not to do dumb s**t.) 

 

Even in the age of the Internet, a .mil system exists as a world to itself: connected to the Internet, but the equivalent of Area 51. Effectively invisible to the casual user, with heavily-armed gate guards, a different and heavily ordered structure on the inside, and no fun little pickup bars run by fey Welshmen (or if there are any, they'd be illegal programs and probably spyware. And if anyone from Lower Decks happens to be reading this, you're still free to nick my illegal-Orion-porn-spyware Holodeck schtick, because that would be hilarious).

 

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I don't recall surfers.org specifically.  I did spend an inordinate amount of time on BBS systems in the first half of the 1990s.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Still gutted that Daft Punk won’t reunite. I mean, they could have handed on the helmets to new members for generations and no-one would have known. Y’know, the Dread Pirate Robots.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Thing from DisneyStudios Insta…

…how this works plotwise, your guess is as good as mine, but this is A Good Thing.

[Techwright]

  On 4/30/2024 at 7:25 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Thing from DisneyStudios Insta…

…how this works plotwise, your guess is as good as mine, but this is A Good Thing.

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Had to wonder if he'd be back.  Bridges improves my hope for the movie.  If "Ares" is a continuation, rather than a reboot, they've got to explain how the game universe survived what supposedly was an Armaggedon explosion of creator and creation.  I'm suspecting we'll hear that Flynn tapped into his full user potential and either did a complete reboot/wipe, or somehow contained the blast to a localized area.  Which means Tron should be back as well, though without Bruce Boxleightner, unless he joins a growing list of actors who outright lie about participation in a movie.

 

Hmm...the helmet is a generation 1 helmet.  Wonder if that implies a reboot of either the game universe or Flynn?  Whatever they do with Bridges, he can't stay in the series if they keep rolling them out every couple of decades.  Flynn's going to pass on at some point.  Then again, he might be merely the narrator of the movie. 

[Techwright]

Oh, incidentally, Superherohype.com was quoting Cameron Monaghan as saying the sets look phenomenal, to the point that he was coming in on his days off just to admire everything.  He feels this third film's look has again reinvented the look of TRON, just as the second film did over the first.  Appropriate, given computer technology's rapid advancements.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Attention, programs…

So I don’t know how many folks will be queuing up at the ‘plex for this.

 

But that album is going to KILL, and will be on heavy rotation in every goth/industrial club worldwide. (And yes, might even stomp along if my ankles can still take it. That’s the great thing: goths don’t get old, we become Dark Elders.)

Edited April 5 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[biostem]

I am concerned that they'll do the typical cost-cutting thing and have most of the movie take place in the "real world", with the escaped program(s) being able to do things like touch an electronic/computerized device to control it or take it over, a la Terminator 3, instead of it being set mostly on the grid.  I am further concerned that they may try to bring the larger internet into the mix, (which wouldn't fit with how the grid is presented as its own isolated world)...

[Techwright]

With this trailer, I'm puzzling over the lore.  Humans go to the digital world, they have the potential for remarkable powers from within, and can influence the world with their designs, but everything great about the humans in a digital world is internalized.  We've not seen humans bringing tanks and bazookas to a fight in the digital world.

 

Programs come to the flesh and blood world and their power is that they bring their lethal toys?  That's not exactly a parallel.  I'd always assumed that Quorra's character, had they continued that storyline, would have demonstrated powers from within in the "real" world.  Perhaps a natural connection to computers and the internet.  That balance and contrast would have made a 3rd movie interesting to me.  I'm not really sure I'm jazzed to see the game bikes tear up police cars.  That makes a 3rd movie in which the guys in red are far dominant over the humans around them, and on both worlds.  That's not balance.   I'll probably see it just because I was a huge TRON fan back in the 1980s, and even enjoyed the second film, though it had a couple of weak spots.

[Lunar Ronin]

Word is that the video game Tron: Identity has some bearing on the plot of this film.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

At the end of the video game, it's revealed that The Grid is dying, and only The Creator can save it.

 

[Techwright]

  On 4/6/2025 at 6:11 AM, Lunar Ronin said:

Word is that the video game Tron: Identity has some bearing on the plot of this film.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

At the end of the video game, it's revealed that The Grid is dying, and only The Creator can save it.

 

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Hmm...That would make some sense given the ending of Tron: Legacy.

[Voltor]

I've read conflicting reports for some time whether this is a reboot or a sequel to Legacy.   Legacy left some unanswered questions which I doubt this movie will deal with. 

 

 

1. Can Quora live in our world?

 

2. Looked like Sam downloaded the Grid to a usb drive that he keeps with him, does this mean the Grid is truly shut down?

 

3. What is TRON's status

 

4. What of the digitization tech?

 

5. there is a bonus scene on the blu ray of Sam taking control of Encom and of Dillinger Jr talking to  the MCP.....

 

6.  Flynn was the source/epicenter of the blast at the end that destroyed Clu's carrier......is he really dead?

Edited April 7 by Voltor

[biostem]

  On 4/7/2025 at 7:36 PM, Voltor said:

4. What of the digitization tech?

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This, I think, is the biggest open-ended question;  Even if we handwave that you can convert matter into energy/code that can function in/on "The Grid", why would that impart super-powers to entities brought over from one realm to the other, (even ignoring whether programs can exist in the real world or not), we saw Flynn have powers within The Grid beyond what other programs can do, but at least there, it was a universe with its own laws...

[Techwright]

  On 4/7/2025 at 7:36 PM, Voltor said:

I've read conflicting reports for some time whether this is a reboot or a sequel to Legacy.   Legacy left some unanswered questions which I doubt this movie will deal with. 

 

 

5. there is a bonus scene on the blu ray of Sam taking control of Encom and of Dillinger Jr talking to  the MCP.....

 

 

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MCP?  I'm curious how they justified that?  MCP's destruction was pretty clear in the original movie.  And as it pointed out to Sark, no one user made it.  It's final scene reveals that it actually began as an old, simple program that was layered upon by other users over time, with Dillinger Sr greatly expanding its powers.  It is code, so I guess a backup might have been made of the Dillinger version, (CLU was remade after all, but apparently from scratch) but considering how MCP was trapping and abusing Dillinger Sr.,  I'd have thought he'd have made sure a backup was not possible, or at least well out of others' reach.

[biostem]

  On 4/8/2025 at 12:29 AM, Techwright said:

It is code

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One thing Tron seemed to imply was that something of the original programmer "carries over" or otherwise influences the appearance and behavior of a program, so it could be as simple as the MCP creating a backup of itself, or even possibly "rectified" another program to its own ends...

[Voltor]

  On 4/8/2025 at 12:29 AM, Techwright said:

 

MCP?  I'm curious how they justified that?  MCP's destruction was pretty clear in the original movie.  And as it pointed out to Sark, no one user made it.  It's final scene reveals that it actually began as an old, simple program that was layered upon by other users over time, with Dillinger Sr greatly expanding its powers.  It is code, so I guess a backup might have been made of the Dillinger version, (CLU was remade after all, but apparently from scratch) but considering how MCP was trapping and abusing Dillinger Sr.,  I'd have thought he'd have made sure a backup was not possible, or at least well out of others' reach.

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It was a bonus scene, the voice Dillinger Jr was speaking to was the voice of the MCP or maybe it was the voice of Sr. through a synthesizer, but it is more likely a new version of the MCP.

 

Dumont stated the MCP was once a chess program. Then Dillinger augmented it considerably. As to it stating that "no one user wrote me"  that could be its ego talking.  Dillinger is the likely creator and sole creator of the MCP.   As to MCP blackmailing Dillinger, well Dillinger like many other creators of AI in fiction never seem to consider the possibility of their creation evolving too far and too fast and thus no safeguards are programmed in.  Dillinger could easily have brought a powered electro magnet into the MCP server room and ended the problem but the MCP was crucial to ENCOM at the time., so he was stuck.

 

TRON LEGACY: Flynn's own confidence and pride blinded him to CLU2 building things up to go renegade.  No safeguards are in CLU2 to keep him loyal.  Plus what FLynn did was take the old CLU code, modify it and then use it  and himself as a template to xerox himself to make CLU2.  CLU2 is a user/program hybrid AI.   He thinks similarly to Flynn and they can anticipate each other's moves most of the time.  But CLU2 is still a unique program and thus cannot fully comprehend emotions and was inflexible in his thinking and couldn't evolve himself and thus thought ISOs were a threat. 

Edited April 8 by Voltor