With Tron: Ares arriving in theaters October 10, now is a great time to revisit The Grid. The new Tron movie is the third one set inside of that video game-inspired digital universe, and for the first time ever, you can watch the first two on 4K Blu-ray. Collectible Steelbook Editions of Tron and Tron: Legacy are available to preorder for $40 each at Amazon. Walmart was taking preorders earlier this week, but both films sold out within hours. You won’t have to wait long to get your preorders either, as both Tron movies release September 16.
$40 | Releases September 16
The first Tron movie was released in 1982, and it was a revolutionary film as it pioneered new special effects and revolutionary computer-generated imagery for the time. The restoration of Tron was handled by The Walt Disney Film Restoration team, who corrected dirt, warping, and other imperfections to ensure pristine image quality, after digitally scanning the film for this 4K releases. The project was also supervised by Steven Lisberger, the writer-director of Tron.
The steelbook cover is also fantastic for this release, as it features a combination of film imagery and new art of the movie’s cast. On the inside, you can also find a screenshot of the infamous lightcycle race scene from Tron, that was designed using bleeding-edge computer technology at the time. It might look quaint now, but in 1982, footage like this had never been seen or attempted before. The film also supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio, and the 4K disc is accompanied by a standard Blu-ray disc copy of the film and a digital streaming code for it.
For the bonus materials, this Tron release has inherited all the extras from the previous Blu-ray release. There’s nothing new here, but all of the legacy content from the older Tron release did provide an exhaustive glimpse behind the curtain to see just how this technological marvel pushed filmmaking to the limit in the ’80s. You can look forward to an audio commentary track with Lisberger and several crew members, featurettes, photo galleries, and promotional materials. The Making of Tron is especially good, as this is an 88-minute documentary covering the challenging development of the film.
Tron Special Features
- Audio commentary with director Steven Lisberger, producer Donald Kushner, associate producer, visual effects supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw, and visual effects supervisor Richard Taylor.
- The Tron Phenomenon featurette
- Photo Tronology featurette
- The Making of Tron documentary
- Development featurettes
- Digital Imagery featurette
- Music featurette
- Publicity and promotional materials
- Deleted scenes
- Design featurettes
- Storyboarding featurettes
- Galleries
$40 | Releases September 16
Released in 2010, Tron Legacy was directed by Joseph Kosinski and it used advances in special effects technology to build a version of the Grid that truly felt like a digital frontier. This version of the movie has been remastered in High Dynamic Range from the original digital sources under the supervision of Kosinski, and it also includes Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio options. Like Tron, you’re also getting standard Blu-ray and digital streaming code copies of the film alongside the 4K disc. The steelbook cover is also eye-catching, as it’s a collage of characters and technology on the front and the rear, while the inside shows off a scene from the movie’s evolved lightcycle race.
This edition also contains the legacy bonus features from the previous Blu-ray release, but again, these provide an incredibly detailed look behind the scenes of Tron: Legacy. Not only do you get a selection of documentaries and featurettes, but there’s even a music video from the film’s composers, award-winning duo Daft Punk. Sadly, there’s no director’s commentary audio track, but this is a pretty good collection of extras overall.
Tron Legacy Special Features
- The Next Day: Flynn Lives Revealed interactive documentary
- First Look at Tron: Uprising animated series featurette
- Launching the Legacy featurette
- Visualizing Tron FX featurette
- Installing the Cast featurette
- Disc Roars San Diego Comic Con panel
- Daft Punk music video: Derezzed
If you’ve never watched the series, the Tron movies are set primarily in a digital world known as the Grid. The first film starred Jeff Bridges as a brilliant video game developer who is beamed into the Grid after hacking the mainframe computer of his ex-employer, and he finds that this dangerous world is part of the very game he was designing. Tron: Legacy arrived 28 years later, and it saw Flynn’s son transported to the Grid, which was now under the control of sinister forces.
After the release of Tron Legacy, an interquel animated series was released in the form of Tron: Uprising. The show revolved around a young program named Beck, who becomes the unlikely leader of a revolution against the corrupt regime led by the villainous Clu and his evil henchman, General Tesler. The show featured incredible animation and mature storytelling, and while it isn’t available in a collected form on DVD or Blu-ray anymore, you can stream it on Prime Video or Disney Plus.
Meanwhile, Tron: Ares is scheduled to be released on October 10. The film stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson, and it follows a highly sophisticated program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission.
There are a lot of exciting 4K Blu-ray releases on the horizon. On September 9, Ballerina From the World of John Wick and Jurassic World Rebirth arrive. In October, Shin Godzilla and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be available with Steelbook Editions of their own. And for a video game-inspired movie based on an actual video game, the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie is getting a new 4K Steelbook Edition. It was supposed to release right before the new movie, but Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema just delayed Mortal Kombat 2 to Summer 2026.
For more classic sci-fi, check out the newly released Lost in Space Limited Edition, which just launched September 2 on 4K Blu-ray with a 50% discount. DC superhero fans can pick up the new Superman 5-Film Steelbook Library Collection exclusively at Amazon.
