Now that the dust has settled on Tron: Ares, it’s fine to reveal one huge truth about the movie: Despite its many wonderful qualities and utter commitment to its basic premise, Tron: Ares does not contain the actual Tron anywhere in its breezy two-hour runtime, nor in the post-credits. And while there are some super-deep cuts in Ares, the presentation of Tron himself is not one of them. Is this okay? Can hardcore Tron heads — who delight in pointing out Tron is a person, not a place — wrap their minds around an entertaining Tron movie which lacks Tron?
The answer is complicated. Ares actually works decently well without having Jared Leto team-up with a digitally de-aged Bruce Boxleitner. (See Tron: Legacy for how that went last time.) And by having the hero Program of Tron: Ares actually start as a program created by a villain, this Tron film scores some clever transgressive points. But the absence of Tron actually connects to a strange paradox created by the casting in the original film: Flynn and Tron are, in some ways, visually very similar. And so, including a literal Tron figure in Tron: Ares might have messed with the mojo of the story.
Spoilers ahead.
Who is the main character of the 1982 Tron? As much as fans of Boxleitner would like to say that the main character is Tron, or his human counterpart, Alan Bradley, the truth is, the lead character of Tron is the flippant and lovable programmer, Kevin Flynn, played unforgettably by Jeff Bridges. In the classic film, the entire conflict, both within the virtual “Grid” world and without, connects to Flynn. It was Flynn who had his video game designs stolen by Dillinger (David Warner), and it's Flynn who gets zapped into the Grid, making him the only human in the neon-computer world. When he meets the character of Tron, we already know that this AI can defeat Sark and the Master Control Program, because Alan told Flynn about the Tron program IRL. And yes, while Tron defeats Sark and the MCP at the end, Flynn is the human hero, and the man we’re rooting for.
Visually, though, if you’re just watching the video game action in the Grid, Tron and Flynn look somewhat similar. Bridges and Boxleitner were, at the time, almost the exact same height and very similar builds. This, as Tron creator Steven Lisberger has revealed, was not always the plan.
Jeff Bridges in Tron.
“It was a little difficult when we realized he [Bridges] and Bruce [Boxleitner] were similar physical types,” Lisberger revealed in a 2011 mini-documentary called Photo Tronology. “The original plan was Flynn was gonna be the smaller, sort of wiry guy, and Tron was supposed to be more of a Clint Eastwood.”
In a sense, Lisberger is alluding to a more Han Solo/Luke Skywalker dynamic, in which the two leading men are clearly very different, not just in temperament, but in physicality, too. And while the characters of Tron/Alan Bradley and Flynn are clearly different — Alan/Tron is much more straight-laced while Flynn is a goof-off — again, in neon outlines of the Grid, one could get them confused. As it stands, only Ram (Dan Shor) fulfills the “wiry guy” role in the actual film.
So, although Tron “fights for the users” in the original Tron, the true protagonist of the film wasn’t Tron. In 2010, Legacy got around this problem by secretly making Tron into the secret villain, Rinzler. And, technically, in that film, both Tron and the Flynn perished. Ares brings Flynn back with a hand-wave, saying that he’s an “echo” in a different system. But could the movie have really brought back the real-deal Tron? How could that have truly worked with the premise of this film?
Bruce Boxleitner as Tron in 1982.
One headcanon some fans might want to consider: Since Ares was created as a security program, did Dillinger steal some source code from Alan Bradley? Could the movie have given hardcore fans an Easter egg like that?
Maybe. Maybe not. But, clearly, Ares asserts that Ares himself is the Tron of his movie, while clearly, Eve Kim (Greta Lee) is the Flynn of this sequel. Does that leave any room for Tron? Sadly, the sensible answer to that question is no. At least not this time.
