Closer to Grid
Anthony D’Alessandro
Aside from being both a huge Nine Inch Nails and Tron fan, this strikes me as interesting for two reasons.
First, it's specifically Nine Inch Nails doing the score and not Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Perhaps that's sort of splitting hairs since both are affiliated with NIN, but it seems notable and clearly deliberate since every other score has been done under their individual names – and there are a lot of them:
Ross and Reznor have become a formidable movie music duo, collaborating among others with David Fincher for his pics The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network and Mank, winning the Original Score Oscar in 2011 for Social Network. With Mank they were actually nominated twice in 2021, winning along with John Batiste for Disney/Pixar’s Soul.
It all started with The Social Network, where the soundtrack was arguably as good as the film, if not better. I know a number of people who still code/work to that album. Since then, the duo basically haven't missed on 20+ scores/soundtracks. A personal recent favorite is the soundtrack for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which sounds like it's a joke but is just a fantastic bit of music. The song "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" is legitimately beautiful. Also great recently: the score for Challengers. "I Know" is an awesome song with bits of tennis sounds mixed in. They have a wide range.
Anyway, they know what they're doing. But doing it as Nine Inch Nails is something different. The last time the band was credited with a full soundtrack (they've done songs here and there, of course, for different movies) was the 1996 videogame, Quake.1 Perhaps they intend to have more music with vocals here? Or maybe they just want to rope in more/different band members/collaborators?
Regardless, it leads to point two. Which is who is not doing the soundtrack: Daft Punk. If there's one recent soundtrack in the general genre that's more well-regarded than the Reznor/Ross repertoire it's Daft Punk's 2010 take on Tron: Legacy. Absolutely iconic. And famously, that duo is in the movie too, during one memorable nightclub scene.
Back in April, I wrote the following:
The opening alone of 'Tron: Legacy' is brilliant. A perfect Bridges voice-over bridging us to perhaps the best movie soundtrack of all time. One thing perhaps even more critical than Bridges: Daft Punk better be back.
Well, they're not coming back because they're apparently not coming back at all. The duo parted ways in 2021 after 28 years of making music together and not even an Olympics being held in Paris could coax the French group back into action. So no, Daft Punk will not be playing in Tron's new house, sadly.
It seems impossible to find a better replacement than NIN. And perhaps if the movie really aims to distance itself from Legacy – which sort of seems silly given that the last movie was actually good and, of course, still had Jeff Bridges in it – creating an entirely new ambient landscape with music will help.
Worth noting as well that it seems like Tron: Ares will take place mostly in the real world versus on The Grid – back to D'Alessandro:
Tron: Ares is the third film in the Tron sci-fi franchise. Starring the returning Jared Leto, the plot follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with AI beings. It’s directed by Joachim Rønning. Original star Jeff Bridges also returns with a cast that includes Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson.
Not sure what "returning" is in there for, since Leto was not in Tron previously. Regardless, I'm still holding out hope that they surprise us with appearances from Sam Flynn and Quorra.2 Oh, and how fun would it be to see one Cillian Murphy, fresh off his Oscar win, returning as Edward Dillinger Jr. – a role for which he was never credited?3
"The game has changed, son of Flynn!"
1 Which was, of course, John Carmack's follow-up to Doom.
2 Bridges, sadly, has said recently that his Legacy costars Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde are not returning. But maybe just misdirection? Hopefully?! Ares would not be the first AI being in the real world, after all... (Tangentially related: whatever they do, they have to differentiate from the later seasons of Westworld.)
3 Evan Peters is playing Julian Dillinger, presumably the brother of Edward -- the son of the villain from the first Tron?