Tron: Ares

In film trailers where the visuals are mesmerizing, a less-is-more approach to the soundtrack can be very effective. The recent trailer for Tron: Ares has only 5 lines of dialogue and the music is made up mostly of droning sustained notes, with brief snatches of pulsing electronic music. To be sure, for a Tron film, the music needs to be electronic - the whole premise of the film franchise is the interconnections between the real world and the digital world. And Tron: Legacy (2010) featured a soundtrack by EDM icons Daft Punk, while the original Tron (1982) had an electronic score by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos.

The Tron: Ares trailer begins with the sounds of police radio describing a speeding motorcyclist, as we see a slowly panning aerial shot of an unidentifiable city at night. We hear sirens and helicopter blades, but no music yet. At 0:08, a whirring sound leads us into a cut to black and silence.

Then it hits: at 0:09 we are seeing the light cycles from the digital world riding across a city bridge in the real world with police in pursuit. The absence of music here gives us the chance to focus on all the details of the electronic sound design: a tall laser beam is shot out from the back of the light cycle, slicing the police car in half, in slow motion.

The cyclists escape and drive out of the city, and we hear a voiceover at 0:26 that sounds like it could be Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridge’s character from previous Tron films), saying, “I’m looking for something, something I do not understand.” An unstable high-pitched drone has faded in now, lending the scene a sense of menace.

Then at 0:35, there are accents from a squelchy dubstep synthesizer as massive arch-shaped “recognizers” from the digital world begin to float above the city. In case we weren’t freaked out yet, at 0:45 as a woman is running away from the approaching recognizer, there is a loud accent from percussion and a whistling synthesizer tone synched to a flash of light. As intertitles at 0:46 tell us of worlds colliding, we cut to the digital world, bathed in red laser light. Now there’s an electronic rock groove from pulsing synths and drums. We’re moving towards Daft Punk territory now–but it doesn’t last. The groove cuts out at 1:03 and echoes away into the distance.

The absence of music leaves space for one more line of dialogue, and at 1:08, the slithering and breathy sound design for a body’s atoms being re-integrated into what we take to be the new Flynn. At 1:21 we cut to the title card, which glitches out tastefully several times, as the electro groove returns.

With big names like Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk involved in the Tron franchise in the past, music has a role to play in marketing the Tron films. Currently Daft Punk have disbanded though, so instead of them, we find out at 1:29 in this trailer, with a title card on screen, that Tron: Ares will feature original music by none other than Nine Inch Nails. This will actually be the first time that multiple Oscar-winning film composing team Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor score a film under their band’s name. The duo is known for their innovative and gritty use of electronics in their film scores, so it’s safe to assume the music of the next chapter of Tron is in good hands!

Tron: Ares zooms into theatres October 10, 2025.

— Jack Hui Litster