The flops of the 20th century are the genre gold of the 21st. And in the year 2025, one ahead-of-its-time proto-cyberpunk masterpiece will become one of the strangest film trilogies of all time. At D23, new footage for Tron: Ares was revealed. And based on what we now know about this third Tron film (are we still calling it T3RN?) it looks like a lot of what we assumed about the first film in 1982 and the second film in 2010 is getting fully rebooted.
Here is why the clarification of one new character, and the return of Jeff Bridges as Flynn seems to mean that the next Tron is rebooting everything we thought we knew about Tron.
Who is the new Tron villain?
At D23 it was revealed that Evan Peters is playing Julian Dillinger, who, as Variety points out, has the same last name as the human villain Ed Dillinger (David Warner) in the original Tron. In Tron Legacy, Cillian Murphy briefly cameoed as Ed Dillinger Jr.; the son of the original Dillinger, but Evan Peters’ Dillinger is a totally new character. “Dillinger doesn’t always mean great things for those on the grid,” Peters said.
The new Tron: Ares footage shown at D23 also opens with Julian Dillinger, promising that new life isn’t coming from the stars, but from AI. But who the heck is this guy? A secret brother of Cillian Murphy’s Dillinger? A second cousin of Ed Dillinger? Somebody who married into the name? It’s not clear, but the idea that we have a third Dillinger in Tron: Ares feels very reboot-ish, and might suggest that aspects of Tron: Ares will subtly contradict the previous two films.
The legacy of Tron: Legacy
As previously reported, the central premise of Tron: Ares is all about sentient AIs from the Grid —the virtual world in Tron — coming into the real world. The titular “Ares” character (Jared Leto) is the primary “Program” who is crossing over from the Grid, aided by human character Eve Kim (Greta Lee) a human programmer who Lee said: “Provides a path for Ares to come into our world.”
Weirdly, the idea of sentient Programs from the Grid coming into the real world already happened in Tron: Legacy. In that film, the naturally occurring ISOs (Isomorphic Algorithms) had sentience and weren’t specifically made by humans in the real world. And, by the end of Tron: Legacy, one ISO named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) did manifest in the real world and was riding on the back of Sam Flynn’s (Garrett Hedlund) motorcycle. So, if Tron: Ares is a direct sequel to Tron: Legacy, it will either have to address this idea, or maybe ignore it.
But again, if Tron: Ares is a low-key reboot, it’s possible anything about the ISOs will simply be lip service rather than actual canon connections. Legacy was able to get around any inconsistencies with the first movie because it established that a second Grid had been created. Presumably, Tron: Ares will also depict a new iteration of the Grid, which could account for the fact that a digital version of Kevin Flynn is still alive, even though he didn’t make it out of the previous film alive.
Where’s Tron?
At no point in any of the new Tron: Ares footage or in any of the announcements about D23 is there any mention of the character Tron, played by Bruce Boxleitner in the original film and Tron: Legacy. While most people think of “Tron” as a reference to the virtual worlds in the Tron stories, the reality is, “Tron” is the name of the security program created by Alan Bradley (also Boxleitner ) in the first film. In Legacy, the character of Tron was hidden in the guise of the villainous Rinzler for most promotional materials, but even back then, Alan Bradley appeared in early trailers.
Right now, the only actor from all three films who is confirmed to be in Tron: Ares is Jeff Bridges. While the cast also features Jodie Turner-Smith and Gillian Anderson, it’s unclear if Bruce Boxleitner — either as Tron or Alan Bradley — will appear.
Maybe the answer to Tron’s whereabouts will end up being the biggest hidden twist of Tron: Ares. Or maybe, because Tron: Ares is sounding like a reboot, this new version of Tron will be Tron-less.
