Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter Says Scoring 'Tron: Legacy' Was 'Depressing' and 'Limiting'
Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter has revisited the making of the score for Disney's 2010 film Tron: Legacy, calling the process "depressing" and "limiting" in a recent episode of The A24 Podcast. He spoke with Blood Orange mastermind Dev Hynes about the project, which was Daft Punk's first full film score. The film was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who later went on to make Top Gun: Maverick and F1. The conversation was reported by NME.
An all-electronic brief, rejected
According to Bangalter, Kosinski's original pitch matched what most people would expect: "He said, 'I want you guys to do an all-electronic score.'" But Bangalter and bandmate Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo pushed back.
"I'd been making that kind of music for fifteen years at that point," Bangalter said, explaining that his response was that since the project was headed to Hollywood and being made by Disney, it should follow the model of Fantasia and use a full orchestra.
Where the score ran into trouble
Bangalter said he spent months developing synth tones, but the real obstacle came once the music had to sit against picture. "The problem is anything in the mid-range fights with the dialogue," he said.
He described film scoring as fundamentally about stepping back rather than getting in the way of a performance, which meant many ideas simply didn't survive the process: "You have all these ideas, you're like, 'OK, I'm going to bring this in,' and then you almost have to go back to something more traditional." He added that tradition is "not just rules" — sometimes it's just common sense, arrived at because something else was tried and didn't work.
Legacy of the score, and the band today
At the time the score was finished, Bangalter had called it the most challenging and complex thing Daft Punk had done up to that point. A deluxe edition of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, including previously unreleased tracks, was issued in 2020 for the film's tenth anniversary, followed by a vinyl reissue the next year. NME's original review of the film gave it two stars.
Daft Punk announced their split in 2021 after 28 years together. Earlier this year, Bangalter ruled out any reunion, saying there are "other things to explore" outside the duo. Even so, the group's music remains in heavy rotation this summer — "One More Time" was chosen as the official goal-celebration song for the French national team at the FIFA World Cup.