Tron: Ares

[JD]

If he's showing up, I would have to assume it's a paid engagement to have him appear as part of the movie's rollout. You often see this kind of thing via the movie festival circuits accompanied with a Q&A period.

I don't know, he way he walked in, it felt more to me like he was surprising the audience. I've seen quite a few of these kind of videos where an actor or director goes into a theater to surprise fans on opening night, but I think this one is probably had the most subdued reaction from the crowd.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^ Well, he can still surprise the audience even if he's hired to do it. Maybe in this case it was a 'surprise guest appearance". I doubt he really did it out of his own volition, and especially when he has a camera crew with him.

 

[Skipper]

I just finished watching the Tron trilogy these past two weeks and have a couple of questions for the more experienced users...

Spoiler

What exactly does the general public know about the Grid? And the fact that one can be dematerialized and reincarnated there? I don't know how much of a secret that last bit is, given all the technicians I've seen working on it at Dillinger Systems!

And why did Encomm stop working on the digitizing laser? I mean, it works! It could revolutionize the world of transportation alone. And medicine, too. Imagine how many terminally ill people would rather live on the Grid than spend their final days in agony.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I just finished watching the Tron trilogy these past two weeks and have a couple of questions for the more experienced users...

Spoiler

What exactly does the general public know about the Grid? And the fact that one can be dematerialized and reincarnated there? I don't know how much of a secret that last bit is, given all the technicians I've seen working on it at Dillinger Systems!

And why did Encomm stop working on the digitizing laser? I mean, it works! It could revolutionize the world of transportation alone. And medicine, too. Imagine how many terminally ill people would rather live on the Grid than spend their final days in agony.

Spoiler: Response

To answer your first question, I got the impression that all the tech behind the grid was Encomm-proprietary trade secrets. When the principals in the company who sponsored its creation died off/retired/disappeared, it probably went into mothballs by the succeeding members of the company board who either didn't understand what any of it did, how any of it worked or even cared.

The second question can be answered in part by my first answer - company-proprietary tech that languished and disappeared. And, at the risk of sounding conspiracy-theoretical, any kind of advanced tech that could be used for the betterment of humanity (particularly the terminally ill) would likely:

• almost always be suppressed in the fallacious interests of population control, and
• almost always be appropriated by the military industrial complex and turned into a horrendous weapon of mass destruction.

All these apply to the digitizing laser, if upscaled, could probably digitize whole cities out of existence. Think V'ger on a micro scale.

 

[Set Harth]

I don't know, he way he walked in, it felt more to me like he was surprising the audience. I've seen quite a few of these kind of videos where an actor or director goes into a theater to surprise fans on opening night, but I think this one is probably had the most subdued reaction from the crowd.

"You know, Peter, if you go to see Tron: Ares, Jared Leto might show up in person."

"I already said I wasn't going to see it, Harry. You don't have to convince me."

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The original movie had deleted love scene between Tron and Yori. It was fully completed and is bonus feature on home video releases. Seems to be a couple different reasons why it was deleted so late. If early there would be no completed effects. Either cut for pacing issues or too erotic for Disney in 1982. Bruce Boxleitner himself said it was confusing. How can they be sexual if just programs?

I re-watched that scene yesterday, while I had my TRON DVD out. And that scene is also in the novelization. I also watched the silent "morning after" scene. And the end credits as Wendy had scored them.

If I remember right, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens put a love scene between two programs into Memory Prime. The programs, as I recall, made love by overwriting each other's code. And they wondered if users did anything that felt as nice.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Kinky.

 

[No Grave Dug]

I re-watched that scene yesterday, while I had my TRON DVD out. And that scene is also in the novelization. I also watched the silent "morning after" scene. And the end credits as Wendy had scored them.

If I remember right, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens put a love scene between two programs into Memory Prime. The programs, as I recall, made love by overwriting each other's code. And they wondered if users did anything that felt as nice.

Gives a whole new meaning to the tern: Cybersex.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I will note that if Lisberger & co. hadn't rejected Wendy's cue for the Lightcycles scene, she wouldn't have had the rejected material to rework into the Io movement of her Moonscapes suite. But cutting half her end title cue for the sake of a rock song, or not getting her for the sequels, that's just stupid. Almost as bad as not giving Cindy Morgan at least a cameo as Lora/Yori in Legacy.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Gives a whole new meaning to the tern: Cybersex.

Hell, it gives a whole new meaning to bits and bytes!

"Hang on, babes, double-click my hard-drive. Ohh yeah, right down to the bits. Don't worry the bytes won't hurt. Just let me log into you. Ohhhh, overwriting our code has never felt better! Is this what they mean when they say they're feeling jacked!?"

 

[137th Gebirg]

Pay no attention to my sad floppy.

 

[fireproof78]

Gives a whole new meaning to the tern: Cybersex.

Unexpected Demolition Man reference.

 

[SarcasticVulcanSalute]

for all the financial nerds out there. Summarizes the whole business up rather accurately, whether the number itself are accurate or not.

By Germain Lussier
Published October 20, 2025

'Tron: Ares' Is an Even Bigger Bomb Than We Thought

The legacy sequel starring Jared Leto and Greta Lee could be quite costly for the studio.

gizmodo.com

Movie math is incredibly confusing. Many, many factors go into what a movie costs beyond just its production, and how much money it makes goes well beyond just its box office. That’s why, while a film like Tron: Ares may have reportedly cost about $175 million to make, and it just crossed $100 million at the worldwide box office, the losses could be much more.

Deadline has a fascinating article about those numbers in regard to Disney’s latest release and the news is not good. According to the trade, while the film’s initial budget was in the $170-$180 million range, the number was actually closer to $220 million all in, and with the box office just having eeked past $100 million, the film is likely to lose about $132.7 million.

How does Deadline get to that number? Here’s the trade’s math, but be aware, it’s very confusing, as we said.

Deadline surmises that the film will end up at about $160 million worldwide in the coming weeks. That’s just an estimate. But, if it hits that, Disney will get “$72.2 million in worldwide theatrical rentals, $37.6M in global home entertainment, close to $100M in global home television, with an extra $5 million from airlines for a total of $214.8M in revenues.”

But that number then has to go up against the film’s costs, which, on Tron: Ares, were significant: “$220 million net production cost shot with Vancouver, BC tax credits, a $102.5M global P&A spend with stunts at San Diego Comic-Con, touring light cycles, a laser light Nine Inch Nails laser-light concert at the Los Angeles premiere that closed down Hollywood Boulevard, $10.8M in other costs, and $14.2M in residuals,” according to the trade. That means everything in regard to the film costs $347.5 million but is likely to only make $214.8 million in profit. $347.5 million minus 214.8 million is 132.7 million.

Now are all those numbers exactly right? Maybe not, but certainly, they’re close. Plus, the revenue could end up more, or (more likely) less, than the $160 million Deadline is using. All of which is to say, yeah, Tron: Ares is very unlikely to turn a profit for the studio and is very likely to put an end to the franchise. At least for now.

Because, as the Deadline article also points out, while this film had many, many things going against it, including an overreliance on the Tron IP, it’s still a known IP. It’s got theme park rides, merchandise, and films that people will watch as they find a life beyond the theater. It took 30 years for Tron to get Tron: Legacy and then another 15 for Legacy to get Ares. Tron is probably dead, but with the right story, anything is possible. Just a little less so if you lose $132.7 million.

 

[Set Harth]

this thing cracked 100 million, let's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Owain Taggart]

That article says there's an overreliance over the Tron IP, but I don't understand that. How can there be an overreliance on it when it's part of its identity?

 

[Qonfounding Ghooool]

Tron was at the big ENCOM presentation on the Space Paranoids game. Seriously he is standing at front of the stage at front of the huge crowd…

Seriously there is fan in vintage style costume. That is most direct reference to the character in Ares.

Something that is very undefinable and possibly off putting about whole series to audiences- are the programs alive? Even if they are artificial life what are lives like? Do they eat, sleep….. sex???

That's why the original was the best. Save for a little, the metaphor was pretty direct. Apart from the few times that two programs were glowing blue even brighter when tongue-wrestling... Talk about glitching, don't tell me that was the equivalent of "the blue screen of death"?!

The original movie had deleted love scene between Tron and Yori. It was fully completed and is bonus feature on home video releases. Seems to be a couple different reasons why it was deleted so late. If early there would be no completed effects. Either cut for pacing issues or too erotic for Disney in 1982. Bruce Boxleitner himself said it was confusing. How can they be sexual if just programs?

Talk about getting up for a little bit... after a byte to eat, of course... and a nybble... if the movie were a cornball camp comedy, they'd have a field day with those...

Bruce was right. The programs would have to be programmed to interact like that, like a DLC expansion pack for a game. A 1982 mainframe equivalent just isn't coming to mind, though. My previous joke about BSOD notwithstanding, maybe it was a glitch that took place after the MCP was defeated.

Legacy and Uprising pushed further them having more human lifestyles. But do they really die?

Where's the extension cord, power switch (even Data has one, and one wouldn't be putting in big OFF switches anywhere otherwise)...

I re-watched that scene yesterday, while I had my TRON DVD out. And that scene is also in the novelization. I also watched the silent "morning after" scene. And the end credits as Wendy had scored them.

I'll have to look that up.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Yuri has quarters (a space to live in, not currency deposited to play a video game) and Tron... so that's why so many programs have cloth down there, to hide their "extension cords"... *cough* So anyway, the scene - music and all - comes across so hokey that, even before she traces the trail to treasure (so to speak), it just doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. It was excised for the right reasons, it does take away from the thematic tone of the film. That said, the visuals are outstanding, but it definitely veers from the stricter sci-fi and enclosed vibe and becomes idle fantasy stretching credibility. Again, maybe this would be a metaphor for a C64 locking up or Amiga guru meditation error (circa 1985, anyhow), but it still comes across like a big brick of limburger cheese on screen when it comes to the tone and flow of the movie's main quest.

If I remember right, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens put a love scene between two programs into Memory Prime. The programs, as I recall, made love by overwriting each other's code. And they wondered if users did anything that felt as nice.

That metaphor might also explain situations like 'Yar's Revenge" where actual code was used as a graphics object placed on screen (the vertical barrier that allows some safety...)



I just went to do a deeper search and found a commentary to go with the a la carte scene:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

The making-of documentary's sequence and their reasons ("too sentimental" is initially stated and, a minute or so later, it confirms that it was also due to interrupting the flow. Maybe if they did a sequel they could have made it fit in and work, but for the original it's just too easy to see why it was removed. It clashes with the rest of the film.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I found the transformation of Yori's quarters, followed by the transformation of Yori herself, to be visually stunning, and as to the music, I'd always regarded it as one of the finest cues in the whole score. But no accounting for taste: yours, mine, or anybody else's.

On the other hand, the Io movement from Moonscapes sounds much better than the lightcycle cue from which it was reworked.

 

[The Nightmare Doctor]

After being busy with work for the past two weeks, I finally had the chance to watch the film this afternoon...and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even if it had plenty of flaws.

Spoiler: Characters

Greta Lee was by far the most engaging part of the whole film, although I wish less of Eve's character history and development hadn't been regulated to archival footage viewed by others (prologue, newscasts, Ares' privacy invasion). Thankfully, Eve's thin characterization was greatly heightened by Lee's performance and I loved her adventure as a direct result.

I adore everything Gillian Anderson does so it was a shame to see her largely wasted here. She only shared scenes with Evan Peters and while their chemistry was fun (I saw that slap coming a mile away!), it was also limiting. I was disappointed but unsurprised when Athena killed her, right when her character no longer served any purpose.

I had low expectations for Jared Leto and that's probably why I was fine with his merely adequate performance as Ares. I will say Leto's tendency for weird performances helped Ares stand out as a program (and not just relying on the modulated program voice developed by Legacy), but often times his performance still felt flat. Despite this, I liked Ares' journey of self-discovery and seeking permeance and I particularly liked how his motivations were purely benevolent.

Spoiler: My biggest criticism

However, my biggest issues with the film all stem from the plot's grand MacGuffin: The Permeance Code. That whole situation was confusing from the get-go. How did Flynn develop it during his less-than-a-decade stint with ENCOM while also working on the perfect system with Tron and Clu? If it was part of that development, then why wasn't the Code stored only there? Why wasn't that something he knew and talked about during Legacy? (Of course, in the real world, it wasn't developed then but Ares created this unnecessary problem) If it was such an important Code, why was it regulated to some archive that no one seemingly didn't know about for decades until now? If it was such a secretive code, how come it was stored in two different locations? (One of which that the characters just happened to stumble on by sheer luck exactly when they needed to!)

Perhaps some of these issues have already been discussed* in the past weeks but I haven't had a chance to read those however many pages of discussion yet.

*Edit: Oops, I guess not.

Spoiler: Tron: Legacy connections

Naturally, I was apprehensive about how the film would handle Legacy's, well, legacy since we knew Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde weren't returning, especially after the prologue seemingly ignored history (aside from Sam's brief namecheck) by omitting Ed Jr.* and Alan Brady (who was named the CEO by Sam at the end). However, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of direct and indirect references to Legacy, both visually and musically, even if its plot and character threads were ignored...until the very end, when Ares decided to go looking for Quorra for obvious reasons. That said, it really stings that there were absolutely no visual references to Bruce Boxleitner in any form, nor any references to Tron himself (which was especially glaring when Ares faced so little resistance when breaking into ENCOM).

*The other day, I just happened to watch Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith's appearance on Graham Norton from a few weeks ago and Cillian Murphy coincidentally happened to be on the couch, too. Murphy mentioned his appearance in Legacy (even though he couldn't even remember the name of the film!) and he said that his cameo only happened because he was such a big fan of the original, which curiously suggests it was never actually the plan to bring him back? Maybe I'm reading too much into it and Murphy didn't know of any actual plans, or simply forgot about them.

Spoiler: Tron connections

I was also very happy to see the plethora of references to the original film, ranging from Wendy Carlos' score to the almighty return of Bit! My jaw was on the floor when I saw that Ares arrived the original Grid, complete with 80s aesthetics and special effects, with lovely callbacks like the hole in the wall of the Light Cycle arena and the solar sailer. I also loved seeing Julian discovering Sark's identity disk and then transformed into his original costume.

Spoiler

the last we see of Ares he is holding pictures of Sam and Quorra. Need to see it again to better read written notes on pictures and hear his narration. On her picture it’s written “have you seen her?” Maybe Sam is looking for her. Ares in narration basically says he knows he is not unique in his experience, hopes maybe he meets them. More than I expected.

Spoiler

I only catched a glimpse of a photo of Quorra with numbers and think it could be coordinates from that scene

Was over to quickly for me to see/notice all of it. I'll wait for a screenshot/analysis down the line.

Spoiler

Missed the 'have you seen her?' note on the picture of Quorra. Maybe that's the 'personal reason' Sam gave up the company as mentioned in the news report at the beginning of the movie. Maybe more to explore there.

Spoiler

Also written on the photograph of just Quorra are coordinates of her possible location. The moment went by too quickly to recall them so I don't know if they're actually in Mexico or not.

 

[JD]

or not getting her for the sequels, that's just stupid.

I absolutely loved Daft Punk's music for Legacy, and I'd hate to have lost that for what sounded like a standard sci-fi fantasy score. Daft Punk's music was an absolute perfect fit for TRON, and gave the movie a more of a unique feel than just another orchestral score would have.