DEF CON, Lock-Picking, and a Mother-Son Bond: How Tron: Ares Star Built a Manic Villain

Evan Peters has made a career out of playing guys you probably would not want to meet in a dark hallway. Tron: Ares hands him a new flavor of bad: Julian Dillinger, a swaggering tech prodigy with a god complex and a serious need for mom to say good job. No existing blueprint for the character, so Peters stitched him together from old Tron DNA, hacker rabbit holes, and some thorny family drama. It is a weird mix, and it works.

Building a brand-new Tron villain

Because Julian is a fresh face in the Grid-adjacent world, Peters went backwards to go forward. He revisited the franchise touchstones: David Warner as Ed Dillinger Sr in the 1982 original and Jeff Bridges' digital doppelganger Clu across the first two films. That gave him a baseline for the tone of Tron villains. Then he dove into the real-world stuff a brilliant coder might actually obsess over, bingeing DEF CON talks and lock-picking videos. Inside baseball alert: that is exactly the kind of detail that colors a character without turning him into a cartoon.

But the real spine of his performance, he says, is the messy push-pull with Julian's mother. The guy is a genius in rooms full of geniuses, and still he is chasing a nod of approval from the one person who will not give it easily.

What Julian wants (and why that is a problem)

Julian's big idea is not subtle: be the first industry titan to print digital objects and even digital beings into the real world. Think limitless manufacturing on god mode. ENCOM's CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) wants that pipeline aimed at endless food and medicines. Julian wants expendable supersoldiers. Of course he does.

Some of that swagger reads like cover for a bruise: the board chose Julian to take over instead of his more altruistic mother, Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson). Now he is desperate for her blessing on a plan that is equal parts visionary and reckless. Classic corporate soap opera, just with Lightcycles parked outside.

'The rug was pulled out from under her but at the same time, she wants to support her son. So it is quite loaded, it is quite complex.'

That is Anderson on Elisabeth's headspace. Translation: she built this thing, lost it, and is still trying to be a good mom while her kid pitches a super-soldier factory. No notes, incredible tension.

Set life: no Grid for these two

While co-stars Greta Lee, Jared Leto, and Jeff Bridges got to play on the Grid and zip around on Lightcycles, Peters and Anderson stayed grounded at Dillinger Systems HQ. Production built those offices inside a massive airplane hangar. Anderson says Peters 'filled' the cavernous set with a slightly manic intensity, which tracks for a character who wants to drag programs into the real world. Also, yes, Peters openly envied the Lightcycle gang. Can you blame him?

Who is who (and what they are up to)

• Evan Peters - Julian Dillinger: a brilliant coder and newly minted industry boss chasing the breakthrough of printing digital objects and beings IRL, with an agenda that leans hard toward expendable supersoldiers.
• Gillian Anderson - Elisabeth Dillinger: Julian's mother, known for a more altruistic approach; passed over by the board in favor of her son and wrestling with supporting him vs. stopping him.
• Greta Lee - Eve Kim: ENCOM CEO pushing the same tech toward limitless humanitarian uses like food and medicine.
• Jared Leto and Jeff Bridges: co-stars who got some time on the Grid and Lightcycles while the Dillinger family drama unfolded in the office trenches.

Release date

Tron: Ares hits theaters in the US and UK on October 10.