There’s a long history of stories about creations longing to be human—from Pinocchio’s wooden heart to the Terminator’s fractured conscience—and Tron: Ares boots up into that lineage with a neon red and blue glow. This isn’t just another visual upgrade to the Grid; it’s a meditation on what it means to live, to choose, and to feel.
It’s not a quest for immortality. It’s about mortality—about the weight of limits and the fragile beauty of being real. From the low hum of the Grid to the pulse of the human heart, Tron: Ares asks whether our creations can ever understand the Creator, and what happens when they try.
That’s a question as old as Genesis—and still the most relevant one in a world always trying to code its own salvation.
First Impressions
Stepping back into the world of Tron felt like waking up inside a memory—one built from light and sound. The digital landscapes still hum, the discs still spin, but Tron: Ares feels heavier and more reflective than its predecessors. As we both noted in the episode, this movie isn’t just about technology; it’s about identity. It lives somewhere between Pinocchio and The Terminator—a creation wrestling with the question of what it means to be real.
From the opening frames, we both noticed how different this film feels from Tron: Legacy. The Grid is no longer a neon playground. It’s fractured, corporate, and morally confused. Together, we pointed out that everything under Dillinger Systems glows red, while Encom radiates blue—a color shift that feels deliberate. In the original films, color represented purpose. Here, it represents control. That simple palette change says more about the story’s moral center than any monologue.
Eve quickly keyed in on how those environments mirror the characters behind them. Dillinger’s sterile red realm feels oppressive, lifeless, and self-serving; Encom’s space, with its water, trees, and even that glowing orange tree, breathes with unexpected warmth. We both smiled at that callback to the first Tron. I couldn’t resist calling it an “Easter Orange,” but she was right—it’s symbolic. Life in the middle of the machine is a striking visual choice, suggesting that something organic still pushes back against the artificial.
Not everything worked perfectly for us. We both found ourselves asking why the movie plays so fast and loose with physical laws. If the Grid’s objects can materialize in the real world, why don’t they obey its physics? And if death is reversible for programs, where’s the tension? Those questions chipped away at the stakes. The whole idea of permanence gets murky when your characters can be rebooted.
That’s why the line about the “permanence code” struck us both so hard:
“They call it the permanence code, but it’s really the impermanence code.”
It’s a brilliant bit of dialogue—simple, poetic, and surprisingly self-aware. The entire story is built around conquering decay, yet the code itself admits that nothing made by man can last. That contradiction runs through the whole film, and it might be one of the most honest ideas the franchise has ever explored.
We also spent time unpacking the relationship between Ares and Athena. Both characters wrestle with purpose and autonomy—what it means to obey, to feel, and to choose. Ares himself feels like a walking paradox: too logical to be human, too emotional to be code. He hesitates before violence, questions authority, and shows compassion in ways the humans around him rarely do. That blurring of lines made for some of the most interesting moments in the film, even when the pacing stumbled.
We both appreciated how Ares handled nostalgia. The sequence in Flynn’s archive—with its relics, old music, and a quiet glimpse of Sam and Quorra—lands as a heartfelt connection to the earlier films. It’s not just fan service; it ties the trilogy together emotionally. There’s a melancholy to it, like a memory trying to stay alive in a system that’s already moved on.
There were still a few moments that made us laugh. That parking garage—the same one that’s shown up in a dozen other movies—stood out immediately. And yes, the delivery van chase felt like a strange choice for a movie about high-tech warfare. But those quirks didn’t ruin the experience. They reminded us that Tron has always balanced deep questions with a little pulp energy.
By the time the credits rolled, we both felt the same blend of curiosity and admiration. Tron: Ares doesn’t chase immortality; it faces mortality. It’s a story about limits, sacrifice, and the fragile beauty of life—digital or otherwise. And it circles back to a truth that can’t be rewritten in any code.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
That verse captures what the film reaches for, even if it never names it. We’re not defined by our programming, our systems, or our code. We’re defined by our Creator. Tron: Ares doesn’t get all the way there, but it’s trying—and that effort alone makes it worth watching.
The Impermanence Code
Of all the ideas in Tron: Ares, none landed harder for Eve and me than the so-called permanence code. The movie sets it up like salvation by science—a line of code meant to preserve existence forever. But when that code begins to unravel, the story becomes something richer and more honest: a confession that everything humanity builds eventually breaks.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)
Creation began in perfection. Order, purpose, and harmony were God’s design. Watching the ordered beauty of the Grid—its symmetry, its light—reminded us of that “very good” world. But Ares doesn’t stay in that light any more than we did.
And he said to Adam, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, Do not eat from it, the ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.’ (Genesis 3:17)
The curse in Genesis explains what Ares dramatizes: corruption isn’t a glitch in the system—it’s the condition of it. The moment creation turns inward, the code starts to decay. In the movie, human arrogance replaces gratitude. Dillinger tries to perfect life through control, and in doing so he breaks it. The more his world promises eternity, the faster it disintegrates.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Kim sisters envision a world where the digital code can become the altruistic salvation of the hungry and the needy. But this type of altruism fails to provide the necessary ingredient of individual responsibility and instead creates dependence and totalitarianism (a lesson that Tron: Legacy preached, but Tron: Ares misses entirely).
We talked about how that mirrors real life. Every technological leap is sold as permanent progress, but the half-life of every human achievement keeps shrinking. Phones, networks, even data storage decay or become obsolete. Nothing we make escapes entropy. That’s why the permanence code feels like an allegory for humanity’s constant reboot cycle—hoping the next update will finally save us.
For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. (Romans 8:20–21)
That’s the tension Tron: Ares never quite resolves but accidentally illustrates. The Grid can’t fix itself because creation can’t redeem itself. Decay exposes dependence.
Still, something about the movie’s humility impressed us. It’s rare for science fiction to tell the truth about limits. Even the characters who think they’re masters of the system end up longing for cleansing they can’t accomplish. That longing finds its answer not in new code, but in a better sacrifice.
Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands (only a model of the true one) but into heaven itself, so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us. (Hebrews 9:23–24)
That’s the line between imitation and incarnation. Humanity keeps trying to code its way back to perfection; Christ accomplishes it through purification. The permanence we crave isn’t found in data preservation or human progress—it’s found in resurrection power.
When the credits rolled, Eve and I both felt that mix of awe and resignation. Tron: Ares doesn’t preach the gospel, but it accidentally points toward it. Every collapsing circuit on the Grid reminds us that permanence was never our invention to begin with—it was God’s gift, lost in the fall and recovered at the cross.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has always been the heart of Tron—programs built in man’s image trying to understand their maker. But Tron: Ares takes that conversation a step further by asking whether imitation can ever equal life.
Eve and I spent a long time on that question, because it parallels one we face as believers: if our culture can now code “empathy,” where does that leave genuine compassion? That’s where Allie Beth Stuckey’s Jubilee Surround episode came up. Her argument stuck with both of us—empathy, as the world defines it, makes feelings the highest authority. It demands that we feel what someone else feels, even if those feelings are rooted in falsehood. Christian love, by contrast, is grounded in truth and seeks another person’s good, even when feelings disagree.
The short answer, as we said in the episode, is that Christians are called to love, which might involve some form of empathy—but we are not called to empathize as the world understands the word.
That distinction matters in Tron: Ares, because its programs confuse data correlation with understanding. The AI characters can simulate compassion, but they can’t truly love. They mirror back human emotion without discernment, the same way our own technology often mirrors our biases and broken motives.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters… If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:9–18)
That’s love with discernment—truth-anchored, not emotion-led.
We also compared empathy and sympathy. Sympathy feels for someone; empathy tries to feel as them. Sympathy can extend a hand from solid ground; empathy risks sinking into the same pit. In the context of AI, that difference becomes almost literal. Programs in Ares learn to mirror emotional states but lack the conscience to weigh them. They can reproduce pain, not redeem it.
That conversation led us to the film’s quiet theological question: can something human-made ever achieve subjective consciousness—the internal awareness that defines personhood? The answer, both biblically and biologically, is no. Intelligence can be manufactured, but life cannot.
Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
That “breath of life” is more than animation—it’s spirit, identity, will. It’s the spark that makes empathy possible in the first place, because empathy requires a soul. Machines can mimic behavior, but only image-bearers can love with knowledge of God.
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.’ (Genesis 1:26)
Being made in God’s image gives humanity a moral framework no algorithm can reproduce. The AI in Ares functions on cause and effect; human conscience works through conviction and choice. That’s why the programs’ attempts at compassion always stop short—they can’t love beyond logic.
This difference exposes how easily we’re tempted to outsource our virtues. If we can program empathy, maybe we can automate mercy, patience, or even forgiveness. But real virtue can’t be mechanized, because it’s relational—it flows from the Spirit, not circuitry.
Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another, and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8–9)
Those verses describe sympathy shaped by truth—the kind of compassion machines can imitate but never initiate.
Directive versus Purpose
One of the ideas that stood out most in Tron: Ares is how easily obedience can replace purpose. The programs in the Grid follow directives—they execute what they’re told—but few of them know why. That difference between command and calling became a major point in our discussion, because it’s one the Bible confronts directly.
A directive is mechanical: it defines action without meaning. Purpose, by contrast, anchors obedience in relationship. Humanity was designed for purpose—to glorify God and enjoy Him forever—but we often settle for directives that look productive but leave us hollow.
Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail. (Proverbs 19:21)
That verse reframes the whole conversation. In Ares, the characters wrestle with the illusion of autonomy while still bound to the code written by their creators. It’s a mirror of our own condition: we can choose, but our choices never override God’s sovereignty. Eve and I talked about how easy it is to mistake freedom for self-authorship, forgetting that true freedom lies in alignment with our Creator’s will.
Tron: Ares pushes that tension to its limit. The programs crave independence; the humans crave control. Both end up frustrated, because purpose can’t exist apart from the One who defines it. When humanity writes its own directives, they multiply but rarely satisfy. God’s purpose, by contrast, is not reactionary—it’s redemptive.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. This is the Lord’s declaration… so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do. (Isaiah 55:8–11)
That’s the difference Tron: Ares can’t code: human directives fail, but God’s purpose always executes perfectly.
Wrap-Up
Across Tron: Ares, every glowing circuit and coded command points back to one simple truth: humanity keeps trying to create what only God can give. We chase permanence, but everything we build fades. We teach machines to mimic empathy, but only souls can love. We follow our own directives, but purpose still belongs to the One who wrote it first.
That pattern—creation straining against its Creator—runs through the Grid and through us. The movie never names God, yet it echoes His story: perfection lost, corruption revealed, redemption longed for. Even in a digital world, the evidence of that longing remains.
What makes Tron: Ares worth watching isn’t its philosophy or visuals—it’s how it accidentally reminds us that eternity, emotion, and purpose can’t be programmed. They have to be received.
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
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