A dazzling new sci-fi movie is finally available to watch this week

The film has been in the works for 10 years.

A follow-up to the 1982 cult classic Tron and its hit 2010 sequel Tron: Legacy, the new story in the series begins with two tech companies fighting to be the first to crack how to make digital creations manifest permanently in the real world.

One of the companies is Dillinger Systems, which is fronted by the young and unscrupulous CEO, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, Monster). While he has worked out how to bring digital creations into the real world, they keep self-destructing after 29 minutes (a fun plot beat that winds up giving the film a propulsive energy).

The other company is ENCOM, whose kindly but reclusive CEO, Eve Kim (Greta Lee, Past Lives), is searching for a code created by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, reprising his role from the first two Tron movies). This would allow digital creations to remain permanent in the human world.

Eve and Julian's business battle intensifies when Ares (Jared Leto, Panic Room), an all-powerful digital soldier created by Julian, is sent into the real world to hunt for the permanence code. As he embarks on this mission, the AI soldier begins to gain consciousness and more human emotions.

Tron: Ares Review

Like its predecessors, Tron: Ares is an absolute feast for both the eyes and ears.

Much of the appeal of the franchise is how it imaginatively personifies computer programmes, turning a scene of a human hacking into a tech giant's server into a full-on siege action sequence between malware and anti-virus software. This continues in Tron: Ares, with the sequel stylishly building on the digital worlds that came before. After all, in the years that have passed, technology has only gotten more complex.

The third entry in the series also deserves bonus points for taking that ingenuity in how it creates its digital worlds and transplanting it into the human world. The scenes of Ares and his fellow motorbike-riding digital soldiers on the hunt for Eve and the permanence code in the real world are truly eye-popping.

Those sequences are set to a high-energy score from industrial and electronic rockers Nine Inch Nails. Indeed, it's hard to remember a better pairing of musical act and movie.

Like Tron and Tron: Legacy, the more characters and concepts Tron: Ares introduces, the more it struggles in terms of telling a fully coherent story. If one were asked to sum up everything that happened in Tron: Ares and its mid-credit stinger, one might struggle to do so succinctly.

And yet, it's hard to care too much about this when the visuals and the music are so dazzling.

Tron: Ares Interviews

Ahead of Tron: Ares' release, JOE spoke to Evan Peters and Gillian Anderson about the movie, with the latter playing Julian's more sympathetic mother and tech leader in her own right, Elisabeth.

Speaking about the timeliness of the sequel's release as conversations about artificial intelligence and technological hubris rage on, Anderson said:

"We only worked on it within the last three years, and it feels like that is exactly the time frame when ChatGPT was launched and the like, etc.

"But interestingly, it's something that Jared and the producers at Disney have been working on for now 10 years.

"So, they're the ones who are really responsible for being so ahead of their time in terms of imagining what our near future was potentially going to be like, in terms of the depth of the conversation and the future becoming a part of our present."

We also spoke to Anderson and Peters about the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. The group's members, Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, are producers on Tron: Ares, on top of having cameos in the film.

Given NIN's heightened involvement, we asked the actors if they got to hear the music as they were shooting the movie.

@joedotie "A pretty rambunctious experience" 😂 We chatted to Evan Peters about his time working with Barry Keoghan and asked would he be interested in starring alongside Cillian Murphy in the future 👏 Tron: Ares is in cinemas in Ireland this Friday 👀 #ireland #dublin #irish #evanpeters #tron ♬ original sound - JOE.ie

In response, Peters told JOE: "I wish! I wish I could have listened to that soundtrack while we were making this."

Anderson added: "No, I didn't. The first time I heard it was actually in the final film. It wasn't even laid in when I was doing ADR, doing the voiceover work.

"So, it wasn't until the final final version of it. It was a pleasant surprise."

Fans of the Tron series will know that the Dillinger family are a major presence throughout the franchise.

Julian Dillinger is the grandson of Ed Dillinger, the villain played by David Warner in the original, and the nephew of Ed. Jr, who was played briefly by Cillian Murphy in Tron: Legacy.

When asked about a potential Dillinger family reunion between Murphy and Peters in a future Tron sequel, Peters told JOE: "Absolutely. I'm a huge fan [of Murphy].

"That'd be a dream come true, for sure."

Tron: Ares is in cinemas on Friday, 10 October.