Jared Leto Goes Full Samurai in Tron: Ares — Here’s How He Built the Role
Two days before Tron: Ares lights up theaters, Jared Leto breaks down his title role—likening it to a samurai—as he teases Joachim Rønning’s sleek new sci‑fi chapter.
We are two days out from Tron: Ares hitting theaters, and Jared Leto is finally talking about what, exactly, he is playing. Short version: not a guy, not even a program with a backstory. He is an artificially generated intelligence dropped into the Tron world as a blank slate — and Leto leaned hard into that.
Leto's take: a 'stoic samurai' with no wasted moves
Leto told GamesRadar+ that Ares is built around precision and restraint — which meant ditching a lot of the loud, colorful character work he usually does. His framing for the character is very simple and very specific:
'Ares is all about efficiency; I think about him as, like, a stoic samurai warrior. You know, not a wasted movement?'
He also spelled out that Ares starts off emotionally closed-off — not someone who shares feelings, and not particularly expressive. Over the course of the film, Ares loosens up as he has true human experiences for the first time. That discovery arc was the fun of it for Leto: taking a hyper-competent, mechanical mindset and letting it fracture a bit once the real world gets in.
The 'big movie' reality check
Here is a bit of interesting inside baseball from Leto: he acknowledges there is only so much room in a big studio movie to explore subtle character work because a lot of screen time goes to setting up the world and explaining the rules. So rather than stuffing in backstory (Ares does not have one), the team focused on the moment-to-moment discovery — what it would feel like for an intelligence like Ares to process human sensation and connection in real time. It is a candid way to talk about the trade-offs these tentpoles make.
What you need to know
- Release: Tron: Ares opens October 10, 2025 (yes, that is this Friday).
- Director: Joachim Ronning.
- Lead: Jared Leto as Ares, an artificially generated intelligence program with no built-in backstory.
- Premise: The film centers on humanity's first encounter with AI beings inside the Tron universe.
- Cast: Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jeff Bridges, Cameron Monaghan, and more.
- Positioning: A standalone Tron sequel — connected world, new entry point.
If you have been wondering what flavor of Leto you are getting this time, it sounds like 'minimalist precision' rather than 'chaotic peacock.' Honestly, that could be a smart swing for Tron.