
Aside from some characteristically superlative-drenched praise from
NME ("If
Tron: Legacy is among the most anticipated sequels in all of history, this score blasts away all previous frontiers of excitement for what a movie soundtrack can be"), early reviews of
Daft Punk's music for the film have been polite at best. The
Chicago Tribune laments that the French electronic superstars "sound less like innovators and more like film-score novices, which they are";
The Guardian sighs, "It's hard not to feel a bit disappointed. As is so often the case with sci-fi, the future hasn't turned out quite as you might have hoped."
It's true: Daft Punk's soundtrack to
Tron: Legacy, Disney's sequel to the iconic 1982 computer thriller, will leave most fans wanting. Working with an 85-piece orchestra, the duo has turned out a serviceably dramatic score, but also a surprisingly generic one. The strings don't seem to have evolved beyond
John Williams' stolid '80s scores, and the tracks with a more electronic foundation aren't much more distinctive. Daft Punk are clearly inspired by the '70s soundtracks of bands like
Vangelis (
Blade Runner) and
Tangerine Dream (
Sorcerer), but you can find far more compelling updates of Krautrock's
kosmische tradition in the work of artists like
Oneohtrix Point Never and
Emeralds'
Mark McGuire.
If
Tron: Legacy feels like a missed opportunity, it's because electronic music has such a long, proud history in film soundtracks. Way back in 1956, at a time when
Stockhausen was unknown to all but a small circle of avant-garde academics,
Louis and Bebe Barron's electronic score to
Forbidden Planet introduced similar sounds to mainstream moviegoers; the theremin was in use even earlier, in 1945's
Spellbound and
Lost Weekend and 1956's
The Day the Earth Stood Still.