TRON: Ares [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

For while this might be an electronically-driven score, there are so many human touches that the power of the artist, not the medium, shines through. Which is the best possible soundtrack for a movie that aims to examine what it means to be alive.

The results plugs directly into Tron's AI-apocalypse mainframe. It's the end of teh world as we know it, essentially, but NIN fit in just fine. [Christmas 2025, p.134]

The album's high point "Who Wants To Live Forever" is a duet between Reznor and Spanish artist Judeline, and like "Vaster Than Empires" from Reznor and Ross's Queer soundtrack is all the more complex and humane for reaching outside the tight-knit NIN universe. "As Alive As You Need Me To Be" is a fitting phrase to conjure at this point in NIN's lifespan their entire oeuvre has never felt more like a living thing, both within and outside the group. [Nov 2025, p.55]

Visceral, engaging, and potent enough to warrant the Nine Inch Nails name, Tron: Ares is one of the standout soundtracks in the Reznor/Ross catalog, one that mirrors its subject by taking something digital and transforming it into something very human and emotional.

The pleasure of the people playing this music is obvious and infectious, but it’s hard to shake the idea that despite their effectiveness, the hardest-charging songs here feel incomplete, that the film score’s mandate not to draw too much attention to itself hampers the songs’ ability to fully bloom on their own terms.

Suitably gloomy, austere, and atmospheric, there’s no mistaking that this record is there to provide the perfect sonic backdrop for the film. But there are a couple of moments that feel like true NIN songs, including “As Alive As You Need Me to Be,” which channels Reznor’s classic antihero venom.

The attention to detail is impressive and the resulting soundtrack is quite cohesive. Nevertheless, the brief runtime of most tunes here make Tron: Ares more of a Ghosts I-IV type record with an attached EP of what you would expect from a conventional Nine Inch Nails release.