‘Tron: Ares’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hi, I’m Joachim Ronning. I’m the director of “Tron: Ares.” So this is the scene where Julian Dillinger has discovered that Eve is in possession of the permanence code. So he’s sending his two top programs after her, Ares and Athena. And we get to see them on the light cycles. And Ares obviously being played by Jared Leto, Athena being played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Eve being played by Greta Lee. I put so much pressure on myself and everybody to get this right, this sequence, because it’s such an iconic part of the Tron universe, the light cycle chase, and light cycles. And we spent a year designing this. And here, the police car, obviously, this is the first time we’re going to see the famous Tron light wall in the real world. And boom. We shot this in Vancouver over six weeks of nights. And luckily, Vancouver is a very film friendly city, so we were able to close down the bridge and really, really do this. And then we finally found together with Darren Gilford, the production designer, and we found a look for the light cycles and together with the suits and I’m really happy with them. This is the Akira slide by the way, which is super important for me to get in there. And I remember reading the script three years ago and thinking like, how can we be worthy of a next Tron chapter. And I think I got to page 30 or something like that. And, and I saw the digital assets coming into the real world and the light cycles coming out and creating havoc on the streets. And I felt like as a fan, as a filmmaker, that’s something I really wanted to see. So here we are getting into the parkade, and this is like, I wanted to have a sequence in the middle of this big chase that we just stopped down and we brought it all down and it became more a psychological thriller sequence. “Come on.” With Eve hiding and wondering what the hell is going on here and being resourceful, she ghost rides her Ducati and takes down Athena. And Athena Boom. Falling through the air here. That’s a real stunt woman doing that. And obviously this is in March in Vancouver. So it’s like everybody’s really cold. And it’s not easy. And we did it over so many nights. And you get that 1,000 yard stare after a while. But I’m really happy we did it. I think the audience can feel that this is real. It’s in camera. We built the light cycles, and we’re coming up to this moment now where Eve is about to make a decision and get on one. So I think the big advantages of building these assets the light cycle, we built a couple of them. What that meant was that we were able to put the camera on the light cycles with the actors. Here’s Athena coming T-1000 style, running for her. And here we go. I think this is kind of like a wish fulfillment for a lot of fans, to be able to drive the light cycle in the real world. And it sure is for me. And it was so amazing to be able to do this. And I think when you make these big movies, you have the resources to get it. And here’s Greta Lee escaping Jodie Turner-Smith or Athena actually running behind her. And you get all these things in the same shot. And both Jodie and Greta did so much running on this movie. And obviously Jodie is in that suit. So I was just so amazed by these, the physicalities that these actors went through.