The Full 'TRON: Ares' Trailer Has AI Soldiers, Jeff Bridges Back on the Grid and a New Nine Inch Nails Song
After Daft Punk gave 'TRON: Legacy' its soundtrack, Trent Reznor and company are doing the honours 15 years later on the franchise's next instalment.
AI is here, in the real world and changing everything as we know it: that's the timely premise of the third TRON movie Ares. What happens when artificial intelligence from the digital realm enters reality? And when it comes in the form of the first AI beings? Also, when those figures are hailed by big tech as super soldiers? The new trailer for the third film in the TRON franchise ponders this exact situation.
"The grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? Motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then one day, I got in." If you've watched 1982's TRON and its 28-years-later sequel TRON: Legacy in 2010, or listened to the latter's sublime Daft Punk-scored soundtrack, then you've heard those words. But what if everything that Jeff Bridges (The Old Man) describes as Kevin Flynn wasn't relegated to the virtual realm, TRON: Ares asks.
Come Thursday, October 9, 2025 Down Under, viewers will discover the answer when the program that shares the TRON: Ares' moniker makes the jump from digital space to physical. Amid heavy lashings of laser-red hues, the first trailer for the feature had a monster-movie vibe when worlds started to collide, complete with flesh-and-blood folks such as Greta Lee (The Studio) staring up, then beginning to flee. The just-dropped new full sneak peek is also ominous — and shows Flynn back on the grid.
While things happen quickly in the digital arena, flicks about it clearly don't always earn the same description, given that it has now been over four decades since the first TRON film made its way to cinemas, and 15 years since its first sequel. A third movie was announced the very same year that TRON: Legacy released, in fact, but TRON: Ares has taken time to eventuate. For much of the past decade and a half, it's been one of those pictures in the "I'll believe it when I'm actually sitting in a theatre watching it with my own eyes" category, until Disney not only announced that the feature had a date with picture palaces in 2025, but also dropped a first image from it.
Cast-wise, Jared Leto (Haunted Mansion) plays Ares, aka the threatening face of AI, with Bridges back as the software-company employee who first found himself in the digital world in the initial movie. Evan Peters (Agatha All Along), Hasan Minhaj (It Ends with Us), Jodie Turner-Smith (The Agency), Arturo Castro (The Vince Staples Show), Cameron Monaghan (Shameless) and Gillian Anderson (Sex Education) co-star in TRON: Ares, while Joachim Rønning (Young Woman and the Sea) directs.
The new TRON: Ares trailer does more than give viewers a fresh glimpse at the film to come — it also debuts 'As Alive as You Need Me to Be', a new song by Nine Inch Nails. Following on from Daft Punk's masterpiece of a score for TRON: Legacy was always going to be a tough feat, but TRON: Ares clearly isn't skimping on musical talent, adding to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' run of film work (see also: Soul, Mank, Bones and All, Empire of Light, The Killer, Challengers, Queer and The Franchise just in the 2020s alone).
Check out the full trailer for TRON: Ares and lyric video for 'As Alive as You Need Me to Be' below:
TRON: Ares releases in cinemas Down Under on Thursday, October 9, 2025.
Images: Leah Gallo / courtesy of Disney. © 2025 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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