The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2025 - Issue 37

bitefilms S ci-fi action film Tron: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning, is an audacious plunge into the liminal space between code and consciousness. While the 2010 Tron: Legacy dazzled with neon spectacle, Ares dares to ask what happens when the Grid bleeds into our world, and whether artificial life can carry the burden of mean- ing. Jared Leto stars as Ares, a highly evolved programme dispatched from the digital realm into the physical world. It’s a premise that echoes Blade Runner but filtered through the sleek, chrome- drenched lens of Tron. Leto’s performance is enigmatic, almost alien in its restraint, as if Ares is constantly calibrating what it means to feel. Greta Lee’s Eve Kim, a programmer caught between awe and dread, anchors the film with a performance that’s both cerebral and emotionally raw. Visually, Ares is a triumph of con- ceptual design. The Grid has never looked more tactile with its geom- etry now fused with organic decay, suggesting a digital world haunted by its obsolescence. Rønning’s deci- sion to shoot specific sequences as if “filmed by a robot” lends the film a chilling precision, reinforcing its themes of surveillance, autonomy, and synthetic perception. But it’s the score by Nine Inch Nails that truly redefines the Tron experi- ence. Gone are the orchestral swells of Daft Punk’s legacy; in their place is a soundscape of industrial dread and glitchy melancholy. There’s not one second of orchestra in the score, and the result is a sonic architecture that feels like the Grid itself is humming with existential anxiety. Jeff Bridges returns in a spectral ca- pacity, as his Kevin Flynn character, now a digital echo, is part men- tor and part myth. His presence reminds us that Tron has always been about more than light cycles and identity discs, but about the search for perfection, and the cost of chasing it. At its core, Tron: Ares is a story about thresholds between worlds and ourselves, and what is created and what creates. Release Date: 10 October 2025 www.disney.co.uk/movies/tron-ares T ron A res