Sci-Fi

Tron: Ares, Movie Review

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By: A.B. Timothy

Introduction

Tron: Ares is a movie released in 2025 by Disney, starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee, and Jeff Bridges. It is the third installment in the Tron franchise of movies and is a spiritual successor, rather than a direct sequel. Directed by Joachim Rønning, Tron Ares was released on October 10th, 2025. The ratings have been mediocre, with a critic’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 55% and an audience rating of 86%

My review will consist of three parts: Characters, Plot, and Pacing, concluding in an overall rating of my own.

Characters

In this movie, there are four characters that matter. The titular character of Ares, played by Jared Leto. The CEO of ENCOM, Eve Kim, played by Greta Lee. The CEO of Dillinger Systems, Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters. Lastly, a security program, called Athena, played by Jodie Turner-Smith. An honorable mention to Jeff Bridges, who reprised his role as Kevin Flynn, playing the guardian of the object of desire in the plot.

Ares

Ares is the most advanced security AI ever developed, across the board. During the opening of the film, we see Ares pitted against virus after virus. We see this from his perspective, inside the GRID (the digital frontier), intercut with the neural network presented as a digitized spiderwebbed vortex, along with shots of Julian Dillinger writing and executing the commands that train Ares. He is next shown to us receiving his name after his training is complete; he is called Ares and receives the title of Master Control, a title steeped in Tron Lore. We are then shown him being extracted from the Grid and brought to the real world as a tech demo by Julian, to receive government contracts as a weapons manufacturer. After the visitors had left, Ares approached the door of the massive facility where the demo was happening and reached his hand outdoors. For the first time, this program feels water falling on his skin, which begins his awakening.

Ares is a very compelling character because he dives into many philosophical questions. How human can AI be? Is it better to live eternally while suffering death every thirty minutes, or to live once the length of a human life?

Eve Kim

Eve Kim is the CEO of ENCOM, the successor of Sam Flynn, who disappeared again sometime between the events of Legacy and this movie. Her sister died of a disease, and Eve took up her sister’s work, finding what is called the “Permanence Code.” This code is the object of power and desire that drives the rest of the plot of the movie. It stops the 29-minute de-rez that happens to programs brought to the real world from the Grid, which includes plant life and infrastructure, not just AI like Ares.

It is the empathy Eve shows Ares that causes him to disobey his directive for the first time, after she is uploaded into the Grid, mirroring her predecessor, Sam Flynn.. She then partners with him for the rest of the movie to protect the permanence code, which eventually gets gifted to him by Kevin Flynn.

Overall, Eve Kim is a great character and plays her role as a friend and philanthropist well.

Julian Dillinger

Dillinger Systems is the rival technology company to ENCOM. Thus their CEOs are also at odds with one another. Julian is under stress from his board to get his market share back up and stop obsessing over the Permanence Code. He finds out that Eve has it, however, and sends Ares after Eve to stop her from getting the code to ENCOM and retrieving it for Dillinger Systems. This sets in motion the process of events which leads to his and Dillinger System’s ultimate downfall.

As a Foil for Eve Kim, Julian does an amazing job. Evan Peters portrays a desperate, manic, and boderline obsessive CEO who is playing with forces beyond his comprehension. His ending is the most tragic, while also being the most hopeful for a sequel.

Athena

The other Security AI, Athena, is totally obident to her directives, unlike Ares. She is sent to finish the mission Ares could not bring himself to finish. Retrieve Eve Kim, bring her back to the Grid, extract the permanence code from her disc and delete the carrier.

It is on this mission, however, after she watches Ares get uploaded into an acient rendition of the Grid, while she is about to upload Eve and complete her mission, the sprinklers inside the building, reminescent of the rain Ares felt at the start of the film, falls on her making her hesitate as she expierences the new sensation. Unlike Ares, however, who reacts to the rain by beginning his path to sentience and permanence, Athena allows this sensation to embolden her and turn against her Creator, Julian Dillinger, forgetting everything but the directive and locking the creator out of his override powers.

Athena is an amazing foil for Area and, paired with him, shows the two sides of the AI coin.

Plot

The plot summary is this: Eve Kim discovers the Permanence Code, needed to allow objects summoned from the Grid to remain in the real world indefinetly, and begins her return to ENCOM, to distribute the code. Meanwhile, Julian Dillinger designs, devlops, and deploys Ares, the Master Control, and the Perfect Weapon. The hitch is that this perfect weapon can only last in the real world for 29 minutes without the permanence code. Thus, Julian sends Ares and Athena out to retrieve the code from Eve Kim. Rather than let it fall into unworthy hands, Eve snaps the USB containing the code in two and throws it into the river. Julian anticipated this and enacted Plan B. Eve gets uploaded into the Grid. Ares has a change of heart and goes agains The Creator (Julian Dillinger)’s directive to kill Eve and retrieve the Permanence Code from her Identity Disc. Ares and Eve escape the Grid together and are chased by Athena in the real world. Athena runs out of time the first time she is sent out. Then decides that she will succeed at all costs, killing people in the process. Athena is then confronted by Ares, who has been transformed by a meeting with Kevin Flynn, and has recieved permanence. They battle, and Ares defeats Athena. Meanwhile a team of hackers form ENCOM manage to infiltrate and crash, or “nuke” as they call it, the Dillinger Systems servers, winning the day.

The Plot is very much a monomyth story about a an AI learning to become mortal. Flynn calls the “Permanence Code” the “Impermanence Code” as he realized that if this code was used, these programs would stop being imortal lines of code on servers and gpus, and would begin to age, decay, and die like humans. The time Ares spends in Flynn’s server helps him solidify his new identity and decide that he truly wants to be mortal, because things passing away is what gives them meaning.

I give the plot, all around, a 9/10 because it tackles a very human story. This is even called out by Julian who asks Eve, “What? And turn Pinocchio here into a real boy?” refering to Ares.

Pace

The pace is wonderful. Breakneck from start to finish. The only time it slows is during the scenes between Ares and Flynn in the old server Ares is uploaded to. These breaks are much needed and allow us to process the threat that our heroes in the real world are facing.

Conclusion

I give Tron: Ares a 9/10 overall. As a life-long lover of the Tron franchise, I was thrilled to see all of the eras of Tron come together into this story. I am excited for a sequel if it comes.

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Is your Sci-Fi Setting Real Enough? Part 2

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Yesterday, I left off encouraging you to improve your world-building by seeing my listicle on the subject. Today, however, I want to continue to drive home a few points.

Individualism in Short Form

Something that I have done, and I have read other authors successfully doing as well, is taking a moment to realize your world on a deeper level in between story beats. What do I mean by this? Well, look at Brandon Sanderson’s “Skyward” series. I will admit I have only read the first book so far, but there in the first book he does what I want to suggest you do. In between the acts, in his three act book, he breaks POV and moves the story to someone else, someone we later find is still connected to the main character, but still a different POV. In this POV we learn several things about the world implicitly and it gives us very real, very human characters outside the head of the main character. It reminds us, “Hey look over here at this other thing that is still happening in this very real world!” Try that!

As I mention in my listicle on world building writing short stories is huge for any world and it is a wonderful way to ensure that this creation of yours feels alive. Why not take a moment and write what it’s like for a planetary senate to convene? Do they all connect to a holo-server and beam themselves to a forum from the sectors over which they preside? Are they all contacted and asked to beam themselves half-way across the planet for a special session?

Caste Struggles

Look at any Sci-Fi setting you adore, Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, Skyward, or insert your Sci-Fi of choice. In all of these you will find a deeper issue behind the epic space battles and existential threats. In Star Wars you have a very traditional economic caste struggle between the rich and powerful elites and the regular everyday citizens. I have not seen it, but I am told that the show “Andor” on Disney+, is a great example of everything I have been talking about. They dive deep into personal motivations while still giving us the epic landscapes and space battles that Star Wars is known for. In Warhammer 40k (limiting the scope for this discussion to just the humans) there is a struggle between the Imperium and Chaos. Humans split into two factions which only serves to highten the tension between Humanity and its impending doom. In Skyward there are the citizens of the undercity, the place where humanity is forced to hide to avoid being bombed into oblivion by an ominous alien threat, and the pilots of the Defiant Defense Force or DDF.

Closing thoughts…

Did I stress you out? Did I give you delusions of grandeur? Or did I inspire you to something you feel is too daunting to tackle? Well, good! Writing a world of Fantastic Speculation is not going to be an easy task and you need to realize that we in order to succeed in this space you have to shoot for the moon and hit the stars.

Go now and realize your grand designs! Write that epic story, pain that epic landscape, or whatever it is you do, but go now and do it! Per Audacia ad astra.

Is your Sci-Fi Setting Real Enough?

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From Star Wars to Warhammer 40k and from Dune to Starship Troopers, something sticks out. Planetary Governments. More often than not, the politics behind the cool sword fights and bureaucracy behind the epic space battles get overlooked. This is because the interior design of a senator’s office is much less attention-grabbing than the trenches of an alien battlefield. Truthfully, however, the inner workings of a political movement and how it infects a populace could be great fodder for a story.

The idea of Sub-genres is what comes up here. Science Fiction, and speculative fiction more broadly, is usually hosted in the same aisles in bookstores. We, as readers and creators in the space, understand there is more nuance than that, however. We understand that some Sci-Fi stories will be about political intrigue on a galactic scale, while others will be war chronicles of fighting men and women doing heroic deeds on their far-flung battlefields. Even still, there are space operas that contain much of both of the aforementioned categories. If you dig down deep enough, however, you will find politics on the battlefields and battles raging in the space senate.

As the author, we get to decide how much of each is shown to the reader and why. That is the balance that I am here to talk about today. If you lack politics, it becomes mindless action page turners with little to no character. If you forget action, your story can get bogged down with speeches and exposition that lose readers. A realistic world has both.

The place where I often roll my eyes the hardest is when a book or franchise says, “Oh yes, this entire planet with billions of people is ruled by one government with no dissent.” That is just a plain lie that we are expected to just accept as readers. It’s a lie that you should avoid trying to feed your readers. How you do that is up to you. If world-building is not your strong suit, then I would definitely check out my other posts about that. Like this one! There is so much more to talk about here, but I am out of time today. Look for part two of this tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know ways you have made your sci-fi worlds more real in the comments below, and subscribe so you never miss a blog.