Tron: Ares | The Evolution

In an October 9, 2025 Indei Wire article titled “How the Original ‘Tron’ Changed Movies Forever, and Why It Didn’t Win an Oscar in 1983” Jim Hemphill wrote:

With “Tron: Ares” opening in theaters this weekend, we take a look back at the 1982 original that revolutionized CGI and influenced nearly every science-fiction film to come — even though it wasn’t even nominated for a visual effects Oscar.

In the late 1970s, filmmaker Steven Lisberger began experimenting with backlit animation, a process in which colored light shines through clear sections of animation cels to create unique and beautiful effects. Lisberger achieved success applying the technique to commercials and educational films, while also keeping a close eye on developments in the relatively young field of computer animation.

During this time, he wondered: Was there a way to apply the technology to a feature film? When video games started to catch on in a big way, Lisberger saw a world that lent itself to the techniques he had perfected.

He wrote a treatment about a brilliant game creator named Flynn who was ripped off by his boss and had to hack his way into the company’s computer system to find the evidence. When trying to break into the computer, Flynn is shot by a laser that digitizes him and places him inside the computer, where he must fight alongside “programs” — avatars for the programmers who created them — to get to the truth and find his way back out to the real world.

In the original film Tron Legacy a brilliant video game maker (Jeff Bridges) hacks the mainframe of his ex-employer, he is beamed inside an astonishing digital world and becomes part of the very game he is designing.

WATCH: Tron Legacy: Highlights and Popular Quotes

Today we have the first Artificial Intelligence actress.

The Majority Report’s Martin Mawyer reported:

Meet Tilly Norwood. She’s young, beautiful, and — much to Hollywood’s horror — not real.

WATCH: Hollywood’s Newest Actress Is AI-Generated

She’s the world’s first AI “actress,” created by Dutch comedian and producer Eline Van der Velden.

Tilly isn’t a flesh-and-blood woman who signs contracts, storms off sets, or sues her director. She’s an algorithm in a dress. And Hollywood is in a full-blown panic.

The Screen Actors Guild is clutching its pearls. Agents are sweating. Movie stars are wailing that “art is dead.”

You can picture it now: Beverly Hills prima donnas with mascara running down their cheeks, stylists fainting in hair salons, and producers screaming into their oat-milk lattes.

Because deep down, everyone in the industry knows what this means: actors and actresses are no longer indispensable.

Think about the savings.

AI doesn’t need stunt doubles, makeup trailers, or a hotel suite with twenty-seven white candles and a personal hairdresser flown in from Milan.

No food budget. No personal assistants. No entourages demanding first-class flights and organic yak butter. No late-night calls to bail your lead actor out of jail. No lawsuits. No #MeToo exposés.

Just performance — cheap, efficient, and drama-free.

And for conservatives, here’s the beauty: no more sanctimonious Oscar speeches.

No more overpaid actors lecturing America about politics, faith, or morality while cashing million-dollar checks.

Tilly Norwood will never “bravely” tell you to shut up about your religion or move to Canada if the wrong candidate wins. She’ll just show up on screen and deliver her lines — without a single lecture.

Yes, the elites will fight. They’ll threaten to strike, sue, and cry about “the death of the craft.”

But money always wins in Hollywood. And money says: Why pay George Clooney when a hard drive does the job without demanding royalties or a private chef?

So here it is: the end of an era.

TRON ARIES IS ABOUT GOOD AI VS EVIL AI

The film TRON: Aries is fundamentally about good vs. evil. On the one hand you have a good AI programmer Eve Kim, played by Greta Lee, who wants to create a lasting AI reality to help mankind. On the other hand you have another AI programmer Jullian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters, who uses his programs to try to steal the code from the good AI programmer Eve Kim. We won’t tell you who wins, if you want to know watch the film.

More importantly today, in Tron: Ares | The Evolution, we are witnesses to the growth of Artificial Intellegence’s impact on film making.

Like it’s predecessor Tron: Ares has now made the first step in fundamentally transforming film making.

A full 20% of this Disney Studios remake is AI. Additionally 20% of the actors and actresses are AI. This truly is the beginning of the end of an era in film making.

We predict that within the next two years you will see films produced exclusively using AI actors and actresses like Tilly Norwood to make featured films and television series.

These films will cost less, provide the same visual experiences, and more, to movie goers.

The Film Actors Guild, unions, camera crews, and living actors and actresses will be replaced. There will still be producers and directors. But the main people driving the movie industry will be AI programmers.

We have now gone from computer animation to AI. It’s like going from the internet to AI.

Wait and see if our prediction comes to pass.

©2025 Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.). All rights reserved.