Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Tron: Ares just released its first trailer. Fifteen years after the last movie, this one picks up on the previous entries which saw humans enter the living world of the Grid, where programs fought to survive against tyrannical rulers. This time, the Grid is coming to us and endlessly controversial leading man Jared Leto is riding the light bike as a program called Ares. Alasdair Stuart has very little time for Leto but, honestly, this impressed him. Here’s what he saw….

0.07 – Streets Like A Grid

The original movies have a lot of fun with city streets and circuits and the similarities between them. This shot is a fun early indicator that this time the journey is in the other direction…

0.11 – TWO?!

Who’s the other rider?! They seem to be working together and one of them is presumably Ares.

017 – Light Walls

Dropping the light walls that the bikes leave behind them as a real-world weapon is just the first of the trailer’s jaw dropping visuals. Interesting that it’s explicitly non-lethal too.

0.39 – The Recognizer

There are some really smart visual choices here and all of them revolve around spotlighting the Recognizer. The iconic, gate-shaped vehicle from the original movie looks unbelievably menacing here. The red highlights, its colossal size, the silent, precise glide through the city. Even the brutally geometric shape. All of it says this is something threatening, something alien and it’s right here. Interesting too that the trailer is cut to imply the bikers come through first. But are they scouts or are they trying to stop it?

0.41 – Gillian Anderson

I’d somehow forgotten she was in this! Always does great work and I love this shot of her watching the Recogniser glide past.

0.45 – Recogniser Chase

Greta Lee, best known for her excellent work in Past Lives and Russian Doll, is playing a character credited as Eve Kim. Judging by the trailer she’s a law enforcement officer who witnesses the invasion begin. This shot of her sprinting away from the colossal Recogniser is jaw dropping.

0.55 – Light Batons

A city on the water, but is it in the Grid or is this San Francisco? Is the invasion successful? And what’s led to it? Regardless these helmeted programs swinging solid light quarterstaffs look very dangerous.

0.54 – Who’s This?

This doesn’t look like Evan Peters, appearing as the latest generation of the Dillinger family who have had major roles in the franchise to date. It also doesn’t look like Cameron Monaghan. It could be Arturo Castro, whose role, like Monaghan’s, is currently a mystery.

1.03 – War In The Skies

I was not expecting to see full on aerial combat with a Recogniser in live action but here it is and it looks incredible.

1.15 – ‘Ready? Cos there’s no goin’ back’

And there he is. Old Man Flynn’s voice and Jared Leto’s face as we see Ares, helmet off. In the real world. Has Flynn sent him? And if so is he leading the invasion or fighting it?

Tron: Ares releases on October 10th. If you’ve not seen the original, the excellent and cruelly truncated Tron: Uprising or Tron: Legacy they’re all on streaming services now, including in Uprising’s case YouTube. The two movies are available on disc too.