Ares’ Just Brought the Grid Back to San Diego Comic-Con

In the pantheon of cool Hall H moments at San Diego Comic-Con, the reveal that Disney was returning to the world of Tron is right near the top. Sneaking into a 2008 panel about Race to Witch Mountain, Disney randomly showed proof-of-concept footage announcing that Tron 2, later called Tron Legacy, would be coming in a few years, and the place went mad. Since that moment, Tron and Comic-Con have shared a fun history, with Legacy’s team even recording audio for the film in Hall H a few years later.

All of which is to say, when the third Tron film, Tron: Ares, was announced for Comic-Con, it had a lot to live up to. That’s especially the case considering the studio dropped a brand-new trailer days before the convention. So what was in store for the biggest room in pop culture?

Well, lots of cast to start. That included stars Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, and Gillian Anderson. Lots of lights, as red lasers crisscrossed the entirety of Hall H for long sections of the. And lots of loud Nine Inch Nails music, as they are scoring the film. The panel was a visual delight, centered on two action-packed clips from the film itself.

The first was a lightcycle chase in the real world. Dillinger (Peters) summons Ares (Leto) and Athena (Turner-Smith) from the Grid to capture Eve (Greta Lee). They can only exist in our world for 30 minutes before dying (or de-ressing, in Tron speak), so they have to be quick. Which they are. Eve is just minding her business driving around when Ares and Athena bolt through some vast mountain roads toward the city. Somehow, tapping into the city’s cameras and stuff, they are able to locate Eve without even seeing her. Eventually, they catch up, and she has to do what she can to escape.

Eve is a human, though, so she can be a little more cunning than the programs. She drives into a circular parking garage, hides, and when Athena slowly drives by, she sends her motorcycle at her, smashing her over a ledge. However, when she looks down, Athena is gone. She’s already up and running back around the garage. Without a bike or car, Eve looks around and sees… the lightcycle. She somehow starts it up, sits down, and it engulfs her just in time to escape before Athena reaches her. The clip ended with her speeding off.

The second clip saw Eve go onto the Grid itself. She’s floating in some kind of water until Ares grabs her out. He unveils a lightcycle jetski and takes off on a digital river. Eve puts her hand in it and realizes it’s all just bytes, not real water, even though it acts like it. Athena sends drones after the pair as we realize Ares has gone against his programming and against Dillinger, and is now helping Eve. It’s an epic chase both below the digital water and above it, against the drones, until Eve finally agrees to help Ares. The two make it to the transport portal, which should send them to the real world, and the scene cuts out.

I have to say, while both of these scenes looked amazing and each was set to absolutely incredible new music by Nine Inch Nails, something was just… off about them. There was just a certain energy that was missing even though it looked and sounded incredible. Maybe it was because we didn’t have any context? Because as happy as everyone on the panels seemed to be about being at Comic-Con, none of them said anything about the movie itself. There was some chatter in the clips about some code everyone is fighting over? What is that about? What role does Jeff Bridges play? Where’s Sam Flynn and Quorra? Who even is Eve, and what is Dillinger up to? Nothing.

Even so, with only a few months left until the October 10 release of Tron: Ares, we are still ready to get back to the Grid. What about you?

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