The upcoming big-screen threequel Tron: Ares features a bold-faced cast including Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges, but two of the biggest stars in the film are heard rather than seen: Oscar-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, credited under their Nine Inch Nails moniker on a film score for the first time.
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The duo (who served as executive producers on the film and do actually appear onscreen, briefly, as fighter pilots) was on hand at the film’s world premiere in Hollywood on Monday night (Oct. 6). They appeared both in the theater — standing alongside the cast and director Joachim Rønning ahead of the screening — and outside of it, when they played a three-song set for premiere guests, marking the first time they performed songs from the soundtrack album live.
Prior to Reznor and Ross’ entrance on the stage erected outside the TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman’s Chinese), their frequent collaborator, Boys Noize, played a throbbing, roughly 30-minute set that wove in music from the Ares soundtrack, much of which he helped produce. Bathed in thick smoke that served as a kind of constantly shifting canvas for the red laser light show that beamed out from behind the stage, the German DJ — who, at least from afar, presents as a doppelganger of Ross and Reznor with his jet-black hair and matching all-black outfit— enraptured the premiere attendees, some of whom were dressed in vaguely futuristic clothing (think lots of black and silver), per the premiere invite’s suggested “On the Grid Chic” attire.
Notably, Boys Noize opened for Nine Inch Nails on its recently-concluded Peel It Back tour and also joined Reznor and Ross onstage for the EDM-influenced portions of those shows (he’s also slated to perform with Reznor and Ross at next year’s Coachella under the name Nine Inch Noize). As the DJ/producer got deeper into his set, the space at the front of the stage began filling in as anticipation grew for NIN’s promised appearance. And then, as if conjured, Reznor and Ross materialized out of the smoke to an enthusiastic reception.
Immediately, NIN launched into “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” the soundtrack’s bass- and vocoder-heavy lead single. As they did, the crowd grew visibly more animated, with countless iPhones held aloft to capture the moment. From the song’s opening lyric (“The way it makes me feel, infection/It’s almost like a tongue on the back of my neck”), the now-60-year-old Reznor sounded remarkably similar to the twentysomething man who first hit the mainstream in the late ‘80s, when the band broke through with its triple-platinum debut album, Pretty Hate Machine.
Next on the setlist was “The Warning,” a track from the band’s 2007 album Year Zero. Interestingly, that album ties in somewhat with the themes of Tron: Ares — in which a nihilistic tech scion (Peters), in competition with a rival (Lee), becomes hell-bent on unleashing a dangerous version of artificial intelligence on the world — with lyrics revolving around a dystopian future in which a group of rebels send dispatches, through the internet, to the year 2007 to warn people of the coming apocalypse in hopes of preventing it from happening.
Before departing as they arrived (in a haze of smoke), NIN performed the third and final song in the set, Tron: Ares track “Shadow Over Me.” One of just four vocal songs on the 24-track album, “Shadow” is similar to “As Alive as You Need Me to Be” in that it works equally well as a standalone NIN song and a thematic pairing with the film. With its lyrics about a future world, not so dissimilar to our own, in which every day can feel like a plunge into a strange and disorienting new reality, it’s a song that feels made for the moment. “Hard to tell if I’m awake anymore,” Reznor sings. “Hard to know for sure.”
Tron: Ares is in theaters Friday (Oct. 10).
