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.

While we’re still about a year out from the next Avengers instalment, Marvel has a couple of big summer releases this year, beginning with the comedy-infused Thunderbolts. Best thought of as Marvel’s answer to DC’s Suicide Squad, here we see a gang of unlikely antiheroes rounded up to face a new threat in the absences of the Avengers (hence the asterisk in the title—“the Avengers are not available”).

Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon film franchise is about to join the recent trend of live action / computer graphic remakes of hit animated films (i.e. Snow White). Its official trailer, released in February, uses nearly every sound we’d expect from the trailer music repertoire, including massive drum accents, industrial droning synths, pulsing orchestral strings, sombre high register piano, and wordless choir - it’s all here (as well as the full plotline).