In theaters on October 10 via Walt Disney Studios is ‘TRON: Ares’, the third entry in the franchise about artificial beings existing on a computer grid.
The ‘Tron’ movies have always been about humanity’s connection to –– and issues with –– technology, and as AI dominates headlines, the time seems right for a new entry to the venerable franchise, which has so far only put out two entries.
Yet the latest suffers from some very basic issues, especially when it comes to its script, but does have enough entertainment value.
The new movie’s script, written by Jesse Wigutow (David DiGilio receives a “story by” credit) makes the whole affair feel like a video game that has some impressive graphics, but not quite enough power to make it work fully. It’s loaded up with coincidence and contrivance along the lines of many basic would-be blockbusters.
And while it doesn’t lean too heavily on nostalgia, there’s a chunk of it near the end which, while it allows for a welcome return, does tend the drain the tension.
Director Joachim Rønning, meanwhile, has experience with this sort of big scale movies, but he can only do so much to inject humanity into the overall result.
Jared Leto actually tones things down, Ares naturally being a more muted character until he starts to evolve. He’s perfectly serviceable in the role, and even funny towards the end.
Greta Lee enjoys some decent moments, but is mostly saddled with a character you feel like came straight off the peg in terms of story arc.
Evan Peters has fun as the villainous Julian Dillinger, but spare a thought for poor Gillian Anderson who pop ups for a couple of scenes as his mother but is essentially a walking cliché.
‘TRON: Ares’ follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares (Jared Leto), who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.
(L to R) Jared Leto and Jeff Bridges at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con Hall H Panel for ‘TRON: Ares’. Photo: Disney.
Preview:
‘TRON: Ares’ showed off some new footage at Comic-Con.
Director Joachim Rønning was present at the panel.
The movie will land on October 10th.
With much of Disney’s other big franchises –– Marvel especially –– skipping the San Diego Comic-Con this year, it’s up to ‘TRON: Ares’, the latest entry to feature A.I. Programs and humans mixing, to fly the genre flag.
A highly sophisticated Program called Ares (Leto) is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.
What happened at the ‘TRON: Ares’ panel?
(L to R) The cast and crew of ‘TRON: Ares’ at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con Hall H Panel. Photo: Disney.
The ‘Ares’ panel began with a digital light display and bots floating around the screens of Hall H, with suited Programs on stage.
Before any of the filmmakers or cast arrived, a new trailer played for the crowd.
Director Rønning brought Leto, Peters, Anderson, Turner-Smith and Bridges on stage to discuss the movie.
Leto admitted he was already in the tank for ‘Tron’ before taking the role:
“At the end of the day, I am an official ‘Tron’ super fan. If I wasn’t on the stage, I would be in the audience, for sure, watching this panel right now, cheering like all these crazy people out here.”
He also called Jeff Bridges a hero, a sentiment surely everyone in the crowd would share.
Rønning was also enthused to work on the movie:
“Well, it’s ‘Tron’. So, I was immediately drawn into it. I love the franchise, the movies, I think, in many ways, are masterpieces. And, you know, I always dreamt about making science fiction. I think the topic is super interesting, and they had a twist to it.”
(L to R) Jeff Bridges, Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con Hall H Panel for ‘TRON: Ares’. Photo: Disney.
A couple of new clips were shown, including Leto’s Ares in a light chase with Turner-Smith’s Athena, and one set in the digital world of the Grid, which has been expanded by Peters’ Julian Dillinger (a name that should set alarm bells ringing in ‘Tron’ fans’ minds).
The panel ended with the debut of Nine Inch Nails’ new tie-in single, “As Alive as You Need Me to Be” (Trent Reznor and his group supply the music for the movie).
This is what Leto had to say about the soundtrack:
“The music for ‘Tron’ has always been such an important part. When we were talking about music for this film, there was really only very few people you could think about that could fill those shoes and Nine Inch Nails absolutely did it. I mean, they made music that’s going to live a lifetime.”
When will ‘TRON: Ares’ be in theaters?
The third instalment of the ‘Tron’ franchise will bring the Grid to screens on October 10th.
(L to R) Jodie Turner-Smith, Evan Peters and Gillian Anderson at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 for ‘TRON: Ares’. Photo: Disney.
Marvel Studios’ “Captain Marvel” (their first female-led superhero romp) zoomed into theaters earlier this year and instantly became a fan favorite, amassing over $1 billion dollars and paving the way for a very memorable appearance from Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in this spring’s monolithic “Avengers: Endgame.” Thanks to Larson’s charismatic performance, a nifty 1990’s setting and some wonderfully unexpected twists, “Captain Marvel” instantly became an essential part of the MCU. And we’re very excited to watch it again, now that it’s available on home video (it’s currently available on digital HD and will be on Blu-ray tomorrow).
We got to sit down with executive producers Jonathan Schwartz and Victoria Alonso about what it was like getting the structure of “Captain Marvel” just right, whether or not the Skrulls can return (in truly villainous form), whether or not time travel was ever an option and reveal the one 90s-era logo they couldn’t get permission to use.
Moviefone: How hard was it to crack the structure of this movie?
Jonathan Schwartz: We played around a lot. It was a, it was a higher degree of difficulty than I think we’re usually used to. I think we wanted that on some level. We knew that would be a trickier road to go down, but it felt like a more rewarding road. I think that’s what led us to the structure that ended up on screen.
Did you ever start with her as a human woman?
Schwartz: Oh yeah. We, we, we would, whenever you see one of these movies, every version of that movie exists somewhere in a Final Draft folder.
Victoria Alonso: One of the most frustrating moments about working with us is that we take it apart to build it again. And sometimes it’s built at the beginning and you take it up apart a thousand times and then when you put it back together, it’s almost exactly as it was. But there’s three things that are key that changed and that’s what redefined for us for that particular moment.
Well, what was, what’s like the most dramatically different version of the movie that you guys put together?
Schwartz: I think we hit on the bones relatively quickly and they’ve stayed pretty much the same. I think one of the bigger changes along the way was that the Skrulls became what they ended up being in the movie, sort of refugees. And not even a shades of gray intergalactic war, but really the emotional core of the film. And Talos and his family was another layer that also came along relatively late.
Well, I was going to ask about that because a lot of people know the Skrulls from “Secret Invasion” or one of the big comic book crossover events. But these scrolls are very sympathetic. Does this close the door on something like that? Or is that still something that you guys are playing around with?
Alonso: I don’t think we ever close the doors on anything. I think it’s what it was for this particular chapter of this story.
Schwartz: Look, just because these Skulls are good that doesn’t necessarily mean that that pertains to all Skrulls.
Alonso: And that should be the rule. The way you are, the way I am, the way Jonathan is, we don’t define humanity and we are a part of it. That was deep and dense.
Schwartz: Soak it in.
Marvel Studios
Brie has talked about how she filmed “Endgame” before “Captain Marvel.” Was there any course correction on the character or things that you tweaked from her performance or characterization in that?
Alonso: No, I think that it was hard for her because she had to have a fully formed character with all of the remaining Avengers and go film that before she got to do her origin picture. And as unfair as that seemed, as a performer, she had to do that because that was our time frame. But she pulled it off.
Have people come up and tell you how much “Captain Marvel” meant to them?
Schwartz: I am on Twitter a little bit, which I really shouldn’t be. And I have seen some really passionate and eloquent Twitter reactions just from people who really thought the movie spoke to them and on a deep level, and then really broke down why in very specific ways that totally mirrored exactly what we were trying to do, which was really nice to see.
Alonso: I’ve had women come up to me with tears in their eyes saying thank you. Really people that, I don’t know, for what it meant to them for, having seen themselves on the screen and for having something to show to their daughters, something that they can look up to, something they can see that even though not perfect, she can reach a level of power that they want to show their daughters.
Well, there was that recent interview where “Captain Marvel” comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick talked about a version of the character that involved time travel, where she actually like got the power herself. Was that ever something that you guys played around with?
Schwartz: It was something we talked about. One of the reasons we sat down with Kelly Sue was to get her take on the character and get all of her ideas. And that was a really powerful idea. It was a road we traveled down for a while. It was tough to make it work. Plus we were sort of about to tee up a big time travel movie, which was another complication.
Alonso: Yes. We couldn’t take away from the time trouble because it was such a big component of “Endgame.” We were just throwing a grenade on something that doesn’t need any help exploding.
Schwartz: But the spirit of that idea from Kelly Sue was like really important and really powerful and is still animating the final version.
Marvel Studios
As producers you get to do annoying things like clear licenses. Where there any 90s-era logos that didn’t get cleared?
Schwartz: Yes!
Alonso: It was so annoying.
Schwartz: There was a Rock the Vote poster that we couldn’t clear.
Alonso: We didn’t know.
Schwartz: We wanted to put Carol in a Rock the Vote T-shirt and Rock the Vote wouldn’t let us. They would make us pay this exorbitant licensing fee. It was like, What?
Alonso: And we thought it was important. It was about voting and empowering people to actually get the word out, but I guess we couldn’t do it.
Schwartz: We ended up with a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt and Trent Reznor was like, “This sounds cool.”
What do you want next for Carol? Not plot-wise because I know you can’t talk about that, but just her journey.
Alonso: I just want to see her again. She’s a phenomenal character and it will be great to have her be with us.
Schwartz: My favorite part of the movie is the end of the movie where Carol realizes her full power, full potential and humanity and just has a lot of fun kicking ass. And I would hope that in that if we were to see more out of this character, that we would get to spend more time in that space.
“Captain Marvel” is on digital HD now and Blu-ray tomorrow.
For an artist whose work seems to have been inspired by a lot of unhappy feelings, Trent Reznor has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success. The musician and artist established himself in the late 1980s and 90s with the singular and hugely influential group Nine Inch Nails, which led to becoming a producer for other artists, and eventually, an inspiration to filmmakers. Unsurprisingly, that led to a new direction for his career, composing music directly for the films of auteurs like David Fincher and Ken Burns. To commemorate his 54th birthday on May 17, Moviefone takes a look at his movie and television-related work that have become part of the pop cultural firmament.
Reznor had already become a fixture in the musical landscape by 1994 when he was hired by Oliver Stone to create a backdrop for the director’s film about a pair of serial killers who become media darlings. Though he created only one original track for the soundtrack, he produced the rest of the soundtrack album, suggesting to Stone an album that was mirrored the film’s unique editing style as a “collage of sound,” featuring everything from hip-hop to world music.
Reznor’s second produced soundtrack was for David Lynch, who enlisted him to weave together a score by longtime Lynch composer Angelo Badalamenti with classic bossa nova, electro industrial rock, and of course a handful of tracks from the NIN frontman himself, including the stone cold classic “The Perfect Drug” (which Reznor finally started performing live just recently).
It was almost a decade and a half before Reznor ventured into proper film composition, sparking a collaboration with creative confederate Atticus Ross that would continue throughout the rest of his career. Juggling moody ambient pieces with more propulsive, dance floor adjacent tracks, he captures the feverish energy of Fincher’s story of how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook.
Reznor wasted no time jumping right back into an incredibly fruitful partnership with Fincher on his adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestseller of the same name. In the same family as his “Social Network” score but decidedly more ominous, Reznor’s music provided the perfect accompaniment for this twisted, sometimes violently sadistic murder mystery.
Reznor’s third score for Fincher is, like the film it accompanies, an exercise in misdirection, as the perspectives of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) fight to tell a fractured truth. Reznor’s textured, ambient music evokes the likes of Brian Eno as he hints at both a fairytale romance and a brutally dysfunctional marriage.
Peter Berg’s film about the Boston Marathon bombing needed little emotional amplification from a score, which may account for why Reznor’s themes are much lighter and more delicate than some of his other work. He nevertheless captures the haunting loss of that tragic incident and the chaos that ensued in its wake.
PBS
“The Vietnam War” (2017)
Ken Burns’ documentaries are always so thoughtful and detailed that they require the exact right music to make them a riveting experience. Drawing not upon the music of the era but his own instincts, Reznor and Ross offer some thoughtful melancholy music to represent the political morass that America got itself into, and eventually, the personal tragedy of lives destroyed and lost as a consequence of the country’s crisis of leadership.
A24
“Mid90s” (2018) – Reznor only created a handful of tracks for Jonah Hill’s directorial debut (totally around 15 minutes), the story of a skateboarding-obsessed kid who comes of age among his peers. Reznor skillfully flirts with a sense of limitless optimism and also the melancholy onset of maturity as Hill’s protagonist goes through formative moments that prepare him for adulthood — sometimes way before he should be ready.
Director Susanne Bier does an incredible job making this Sandra Bullock film’s premise — a force that makes people go insane and commit suicide — feel believable and real. But it’s Reznor and Ross’ work on the score that solidifies the increasingly unsettling feeling audiences have as they discover what’s happening, and are forced to watch Bullock’s character try and figure out how to fight back against an enemy that she cannot see and doesn’t know how to defeat.
