Somehow, it's been 15 years since Tron Legacy burst onto the scene in a shower of neon lights and throbbing Daft Punk numbers, turning a decades-old
Somehow, it’s been 15 years since Tron Legacy burst onto the scene in a shower of neon lights and throbbing Daft Punk numbers, turning a decades-old pop culture oddity into a stern franchise tentpole seemingly overnight. But now, after a decade and a half off Grid, it’s time to fire up the lightcycles once again for Joachim Rønning’s Tron: Ares, a fresh chapter in the franchise that’s set to reverse the series’ polarity and, for the first time, bring the virtual world to reality — courtesy of Jared Leto’s protagonist Ares, sent from the Grid to the real world on a perilous mission. And you can check out the first trailer for the threequel, soundtracked by the inimitable Nine Inch Nails, below;
It may be only a minute and a half long, but that is some teaser right there! It’s got neon red lightcycles bombing it down the freeway, bisecting a cop car as NIN’s distorted, crunching industrial rock blares out. It’s got fresh glimpses of Greta Lee’s Eve Kim, Gillian Anderson, Evan Peters and the return of actual Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn — at least in voice if not yet body. And it’s even got the somewhat foreboding bio-digital emergence of Leto’s Ares right at the end. What more could you ask for, eh? But seriously, when Empire caught up with director Rønning back in November, the filmmaker told us that having Nine Inch Nails take over from Daft Punk on scoring duties indicated the “grittier, more industrial” tone of the sci-fi saga’s latest instalment, and if this trailer’s anything to go by then he wasn’t kidding — this looks as bulky and as locked-in as it does absolutely inject-it-into-our-eyeballs rad as hell.
Now what it’s all leading towards, beyond the clear AI-vs-reality, “Worlds Will Collide” of it all is, at this point, anybody’s guess — though a commentary on digital spaces’ increasing encroachment upon and enmeshment with reality is timely to say the least in whichever configuration it reaches us. But we’ll find out exactly what Rønning and co have in store for us very soon — we’re all set to plug back in to the Grid when Tron: Ares speeds into cinemas on 10 October. Game on!
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