Let’s rewind.  

Tron is a franchise that dates back 43 cycles – or years, for us users – with its first sequel dotting the timeline 15 years ago. We’ll start there.  

It’s 2010, and Walt Disney Studios has just invited the world back into the Grid with Tron: Legacy. No longer a scenery of 2D graphics, this new Grid is a spectacle of bright LED lights against a dark, flat and seemingly never-ending terrain. Racing in curved, sleek lightcycles and risking limbs and lives in disc wars, this place is one of adrenaline, competition, and trust. Unless you like the idea of deresolution, or of losing half the pixels on your face, there is no letting your guard down, no rest or reprieve.  

As you might have gathered, the Grid refers to the space of a videogame, “a digital frontier”. Set in the world we call our reality, the Tron franchise focuses on humans — otherwise known as ‘users’ — being transported into an arcade game world and placed into life alongside ‘programs’. Not just any ‘users’, though, and not just any videogame. 

This is where our Kevin Flynn grabs the spotlight. 

A young and genius software engineer, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is the first man to step foot on the Grid in the 1982 Tron. A skilled hacker, Flynn creates programs to help him navigate the world of the game in incognito mode. However, these hacking skills get Flynn too close to revealing a certain truth about the game, and he becomes forcibly transported into the original Grid by an AI program seeking his downfall. A predecessor to the polished nd smooth lightshow glory of the 2010 design, this Grid is a world of colourful blocks and shapes, designed with the iconic and now-simple graphics of 80s arcade games.  

We won’t get too into the spoiler territory, in case you haven’t yet made the (correct) decision to watch these films, but it is in this 80s Grid that Flynn meets the program of the film’s title – Tron, himself. A strong, agile and skilled program, Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) is a veteran of the  

disc games and knows very well how to navigate the Grid under the rule of the MCP, the Master Computer Program. Specially designed by Flynn’s friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, once again), Tron is a program that “fights for the users”. A quick and crucial ally to Flynn, Tron’s actions and faith in users deeply shape the trajectory of this story, changing the game forever.

However, as the name suggests, Tron barely appears in the sequel Tron: Legacy. He is a man featured only in flashbacks, until it matters most.  

Set decades after the first film, Kevin Flynn has disappeared from the world of the users in Tron: Legacy. This leaves his young son, Sam, an orphan. Twenty years later, and the adult Sam (Garrett Hedlund) is still definitely his father’s son; risky, rebellious and tech-savvy. He is convinced his father either deserted him those years ago, or is dead. But Kevin Flynn’s old friend, Alan Bradley, thinks otherwise. When Bradley receives a pager message from Flynn’s arcade, which was disconnected when the man disappeared, he encourages the sceptical Sam to investigate. 

Transported into the upgraded Grid of the 2010s and reunited with his aged father, Sam discovers that Kevin Flynn had been trapped there for the last 20 years. Having learned how to come and go from the Grid as he pleased, Flynn had been making frequent visits to this digital world prior to his disappearance. The situation was this: when you enter the Grid, a portal between worlds stays open for the equivalent of 8 hours. It can only be opened from the outside, the real world. Whatever’s left in the digital realm can’t get out.

Flynn had plans for the future of the Grid, but he had needed help. Tron’s assistance was still there, reliable and steady as always. But Flynn needed someone who could fill in his shoes whenever he was away in the world of the users. The solution? His own personal program, a clone of himself, Clu.  

Clu, a pure-logic computer program, was directed to “create the perfect system”. Needless to say, this was a recipe for disaster. Forcing Tron out of action and turning on Flynn, Clu ended up being the very reason that Kevin Flynn became trapped in the Grid all those years ago – his 8 hours had run out. 

Now, this is where considering the upcoming third movie, Tron: Ares, becomes interesting. You see, the main objective of our protagonists in Tron: Legacy – that being Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynn, and the unique program Quorra (Olivia Wilde) – is to beat Clu and his army of programs in a race to the newly opened portal. As Flynn puts it: “What’s more imperfect than our world?”. If Clu got through first, it would be destruction and war on Earth.  

Yet, this is the very premise of Tron: Ares, with the synopsis on Disney Plus reading:  

“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 AI beings. 

What was prevented in Tron: Legacy has now somehow occurred, and the teaser trailer released in April confirms that this collision of worlds causes complete chaos. 

So, what will this new film, 15 years later, actually involve? And, curiously, where does Tron himself fit into all of this? 

The answer to both of those questions is still quite the mystery, but we do know a few things. 

Firstly, Tron has always been a franchise that highlights the significance of ‘the human touch’, especially over AI. In the 1982 film, the Master Computer Program is quite literally the ‘bad guy’, the controlling and power-hungry figure that needs to be stopped. Maybe a bit too black and white – the 80s did not yet have Siri or ChatGPT – this film’s premise still raises concerns that dominate our discussions around AI today. There’s still this worry of AI becoming more intelligent and more powerful than even the humans that wrote them, or that the “computers and the programs will start thinking, and the people will stop”.  

And then in Tron: Legacy, there’s this disconnect in intention and action with Clu, Flynn’s personal AI program. When Flynn asked him to create the perfect system, he had not intended for Clu to turn to violence and mass murder. Yet, Clu had only done what seemed logical to him, with the information he had at the time of programming, to establish what “perfection” was. Just like the AI that exists today, Clu was limited by the amount of intelligence and direction, or lack thereof, that he was given. And a lack of humanity. 

Tron is a franchise that recognises the flaws in humanity, yes, but also cherishes the gifts this brings. The compassion, love and beauty that can come with imperfection.  

So, with the exponential rise of AI and its relevance over the last few years, and the messages already prevalent in the Tron franchise so far, there is no doubt that Tron: Ares will have something to say about the human and AI divide as we know it today. 

And, as crucial as the plot will be, we cannot ignore the visuals and sound design when it comes to this franchise. Both Tron and Tron: Legacy accumulated almost a cult-like following and appreciation during their respective releases, an acknowledgment of the innovative techniques used in these films. 

When it comes to visuals, Tron was one of the first films to use computer animation to such an extensive degree, with each frame having to be produced one by one. Similarly, pushing boundaries, Tron: Legacy’s visual effects were constructed by combining numerous effect types through processes such as chroma keying. This merging of visual effect techniques successfully created the renowned Grid of bright lights and deep gloom, an aesthetic so eye-catching that it trended on TikTok over the last few years – a huge comeback more than 10 years since its initial release.  

And, naturally, we couldn’t wrap up this piece without mentioning the sound design and score, specifically Daft Punk’s soundtrack for Tron: Legacy. The original film and its sequel heavily lean into the use of synthesisers for their soundscapes, both in sound effects and musical score. With the musical score, however, there is a meticulous blend of live orchestration amongst this technology, and Daft Punk’s work for the second movie was especially critically acclaimed and nominated because of this. With a range from adrenaline-rushing mid-battle beats to melancholic pieces of excruciating loss, the score for Tron: Legacy is a transcendental experience that takes your familiar orchestral film scores and amplifies their power through synths and creative genius. It may sound like this article is being used as an excuse to praise the French electronic duo (and there might be some truth to that) but anyone else who’s seen the film could tell you themselves; if you watch Tron: Legacy, there’s no way to avoid becoming a Daft Punk fan.

With the franchise noted for these creative techniques that pushed boundaries and generated praise, the question is posed: Will Tron: Ares live up to the standards of its predecessors?  

We can only know for sure once October 10th rolls around. Until then, a rewatch (or first-time watch, for anyone fashionably late to the Tron party) is definitely due. 

“End of line.”

Ilaria is a fourth-year student studying a double degree in Media (Screen & Sound Production) and Arts (English). She appreciates a good sci-fi novel or creative non-fiction piece, and is currently enamoured with texts that discuss the philosophy of the human experience.