Anaheim, California turned into the Grid Friday night as the stars of 2025’s Tron Ares debuted not just the first footage from the sequel, but a huge piece of news too. Coming off of 2010’s Tron Legacy, which had an all-timer of a soundtrack by Daft Punk, everyone was curious who would be doing the music for Ares. Daft Punk, after all, broke up in 2021. Well, after a killer-in-room-only trailer, a red laser cut out from the back of the arena, carving an all too familiar logo. Tron Ares will have music by Nine Inch Nails. Here’s the reveal.
NIN for TRON: Ares! #D23 pic.twitter.com/H4v4hnrPCg
— Dustin Sandoval (@DustinMSandoval) August 10, 2024
That, of course, came after an amazing trailer. It starts with a top-down shot of Evan Peters’ character, Julian Dillinger, explaining that while for most of human history we’ve been looking for life out in space, all the while we were looking in the wrong direction. It’s not out there, he says. It’s in here. He’s referring, of course, to the Grid, an internal world discovered by Kevin Flynn in the original Tron. And in it, there is intelligent life that he wants to bring out.
He’s not the only one. A woman named Eve Kim (Greta Lee) rides a snowmobile across a huge mountain. There, she discovered a very out-of-place orange tree. Elsewhere, a man in a red suit (Ares, played by Jared Leto) emerges in our world and says he’s looking for something he doesn’t understand: permanence. The streets are littered with wreckage and garbage. Rain falls on his black-gloved hand as we see him admire a bug on his finger.
A helicopter hovers next to a dock. Eve hangs off it looking down at Ares. “What are you?” she asks. Cut to a mountain pass as two red lightcycles glide through the night. We then see a Grid that looks familiar but is red. A quick shot of Gillian Anderson. Eve in a red lightsuit falling through the air, only for a hand to reach out and grab her. Eve and Ares speeding down a river on a Lightboat.
Then all manner of lightcycle action in the streets of our world. A straight-down shot of two red lightcycles moving around like a 1980s video game. Closer in, they speed down the streets, chop cars in half, and cause massive crashes. Finally we see Ares walking on an unfamiliar Grid and a man with white hair and an purplish robe, with a weird symbol on the front, say “Greetings program.” It’s Kevin Flynn, or some version of him.
Tron Ares, with music by Nine Inch Nails, will be out October 10, 2025.
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