The biggest Oscars snub of the year is the Challengers score

In the wake of the Oscar nominations, one snub stands above the rest. How could the Academy pass over the 'Challengers' score?
The biggest Oscars snub of the year is the Challengers score

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(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros)

Film » Features » Film Opinion

Thu 23 January 2025 16:00, UK

When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier today, there were several notable omissions. Denzel Washington was snubbed for Gladiator II, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was passed over for Hard Truths, and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu was left out of everything but design and cinematography categories. But the most shocking omission of all came when the nominations for ‘Best Original Score’ were announced and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s names were not called.

The Academy has been good to the musical duo over the years. They won the award in 2011 for The Social Network and were nominated twice in 2021 for Soul and Mank, winning for the former. Of all their soundtracks, however, Challengers is the most deserving of the Oscar, let alone a nomination. It’s not just that they already won the Golden Globe award for it; it’s that it is the most inseparable element of a film they have ever created.

Luca Guadagnino’s movie stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor as a trio of tennis stars who meet in their teens and go on to have a tangled love triangle fueled by rivalry on and off the court. Although Zendaya’s character is initially the object of desire for the young men, it soon becomes clear that she is only turned on by tennis, and they are only turned on by each other.

The sexual tension between Faist and O’Connor unfolds on the court. They might struggle to meet eye-to-eye when they don’t have tennis rackets in their hands, but when they’re gazing at each other from across the net, their passion is unleashed. Whether they’re trying to destroy each other or make love to each other is hardly the point. The sparks are flying either way.

At every turn, the pulsating electronic score dominates, and it’s one of the few instances in which the music can chew the scenery without pulling the audience out of the story. As the characters lob tennis balls back and forth at each other, soak through their clothes with sweat, and glance nervously at Zendaya on the sidelines, their fever-pitch of emotion pounds through the score.

Reznor and Ross understood the brief from the moment Guadagnino approached them. “I wish I had his notes,” Ross told GQ back in April. “His notes were so fucking funny on what each piece was meant to do.”

“‘Unending homoerotic desire,'” Reznor recalled. “It was all a variation on those three words.”

While a large portion of the score is indeed the sweaty, sexy techno rave that that phrase might suggest, it also takes crucial detours into quietly unsettling piano progressions and a haunting choral arrangement sung by a children’s choir. It’s a triumph, and the duo’s best work to date.

Instead of awarding the year’s most electrifying, innovative, and narratively imperative score, the Academy went the traditional route, handing out nominations to the more predictable options of Conclave and The Brutalist, and the scores for the musicals Emilia PĂ©rez and Wicked. Wild Robot is the most experimental and innovative of the nominees, but it is no more deserving of the slot than Reznor and Ross’s work.

While the Challengers snub stings, the score will almost certainly outlive every other nominee, and we can take the Academy’s failure as the perfect excuse to listen to it again.

Related Topics

Atticus RossLuca GuadagninoTrent Reznor



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