The Best Way to Watch Tron: Ares Is in Silence

I watched Tron: Ares in theaters and walked out thinking. Well, that wasn’t it. It looked incredible. The world was slick. The tech was cool. But something didn’t hit. It felt distant. Cold. Like I was watching a demo reel instead of a story. Then months later I watched it again on a flight. No headphones. Just subtitles. No score. No sound design. No emotional cues telling me when to feel awe or tension or dread.

And it completely changed the experience.

Without the music pushing me around, I actually saw the structure. I tracked the motivations. I noticed the moral tension. I understood what Ares was wrestling with. It stopped being spectacle and started being a story about identity, control, and what happens when a creation steps into a world it wasn’t built for. That’s huge.

Because music is powerful. It can elevate a film—or it can cover weak emotional wiring. In the theater, the score felt like it was trying to convince me something profound was happening. On the plane, stripped bare, I had to decide for myself. And weirdly? I leaned in more. And here’s the honest part: I enjoyed Daft Punk on Tron: Legacy about a thousand times more than Nine Inch Nails on Ares. Not because NIN isn’t talented—they are. But Daft Punk’s score didn’t just set a mood. It served the story. It carried wonder. It carried weight. It felt spiritual in places. Like digital worship.

NIN’s score felt heavier. Darker. More industrial. More anxious. Which fits the theme—but it also flattened the emotional range. It kept everything in the same lane: tense, cold, unsettled. After a while, it’s just noise. So yes—it really is that significant of a change. Music is the emotional translator of a film. Change the translator, and you change the message.

It’s like reading Scripture with different tones. One invites you in. The other keeps you at arm’s length. No music = no emotional manipulation.

And when that layer was gone, I could finally hear what the film was trying to say. It made me realize something: sometimes we don’t dislike a story—we dislike being told how to feel about it. Kind of wild that an airplane seat at 35,000 feet gave me a better viewing experience than a Dolby theater. But there it is.