It wasn’t that long ago the sound of the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences stepped into the future…
2011. Industrial agitators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross step onto the Dolby Theatre stage to accept their first Oscar for The Social Network—in doing so announcing a new era in prestige film music.
2012. A former Red Hot Chili Pepper cements his place in the pantheon of greats. Herrmann, Williams, Zimmer, and now Cliff Martinez. He later commissioned a tiny scorpion jacket for his small gold statue.
The floodgates have opened. Theatres pulse with arpeggiated sawtooths and speaker-rattling sub-bass, and electronic musicians from Moby to Skrillex jump into film scoring.
2017. These awards are not remembered for any envelope-related controversy, but for dual 40th anniversary tributes: Tangerine Dream’s live performance of Sorcerer and Claudio Simonetti’s Lifetime Achievement Award, tied to Goblin’s seminal Suspira.
2020. Acclaimed super producer for The Weeknd, Daniel Lopatin, wins for Uncut Gems as the film sweeps the majors. At the after party, Adam Sandler is seen pitching Lopatin on his planned Happy Gilmore sequel—complete with IMAX release, of course.
2023. While accepting his Academy Honorary Award, Howard Shore stuns audiences by saying his greatest achievement is not his combined works for The Lord of the Rings but rather the cue “Klinek” from David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. A dozen solid gold ears adorned his honorary statuette.
2025. Fourteen years after their iconic win, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross return to the top of the mountain with Challengers—proving cinematic techno could be more than just the latest mode de jour.
Perhaps this electronic domination was set into motion long ago, when the Soviet Union honored Leon Theremin with the inaugural Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1928. While the Academy has taken a little longer to get with the times, it’s come close before, like Wendy Carlos’s A Clockwork Orange narrowly losing the Best Adapted Score Oscar to Marvin Hamlisch’s The Sting (only two years after Carlos won a Grammy for Switched-On Bach). But this is all the near (and distant) past, which brings us to…
Today. Vegas oddsmakers have Lopatin’s Marty Supreme at -400 to take home Best Score. Will his little gold man get a mini Marty Supreme jacket? Only time will tell.
Alas, many brilliant electronic scores have been lost to the Academy’s ears over the years… like tears in rain.
Good luck to this year’s nominees—all of whose scores I enjoyed. Now, back to listening to Sirāt and The Moment.
About the Author: Hey, I’m Sam. I like violent movies with synth scores and listening to library music on the beach. My perfect idea for a date is taking a trip to 1970s Italy where I can stumble into a stylish murder mystery involving a black-gloved killer featuring music by Ennio Morricone. I live in Vancouver, B.C. and think too hard about what I write on my Letterboxd. Twitter: @mondosammi