Posted 10/10/2025
The 2025 film Tron: Ares is a standalone sequel and soft reboot of the franchise, directed by Joachim Rønning and starring Jared Leto as the highly sophisticated digital program, Ares. The story shifts the focus from humans entering the digital world to a new technological race to bring programs into the real world.
The core conflict is a corporate battle between ENCOM, now led by CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee), and rival Dillinger Systems, run by the villainous Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), grandson of the original film's antagonist. Dillinger is obsessed with weaponizing artificial intelligence and sends his creation, Ares—a highly advanced digital super-soldier—into the real world on a dangerous mission. The major obstacle is that anything transferred from the Grid can only survive for about 29 minutes before it de-resolves (disintegrates) back into the digital realm.
Julian Dillinger seeks the long-lost "Permanence Code," created decades ago by Kevin Flynn, which would allow digital constructs like Ares to exist indefinitely in reality. Eve Kim is also hunting for this code for benevolent purposes. When Ares is dispatched to steal the code from Eve, his interaction with her—and his exposure to the real world—sparks a profound sense of self-awareness and a desire for permanence, forcing him to question his programming and his creator's sinister intent. The film then becomes a high-stakes, action-packed chase across the real world and various versions of the Grid as Ares and Eve try to keep the code out of Dillinger's hands.
Movie descriptions were generated by Google Gemini.
