Rivals Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will miss the 2025 Oscars

Do me a favor. Grab your headphones, go to your music app of choice, and press play on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for “Challengers,” Luca Guadagnino’s 2024 film about sex, tennis, and power. I’ll wait while you listen.

How freaking strong Does this result make you feel? I’ll tell you this much: When I went to see “Challengers” at the local movie theater last spring on a random Thursday afternoon, I left the screening feeling like I could run a marathon or maybe lift a car. (To be perfectly clear, there is no world in which I can physically do either of these things.) This is due in part to the incredible performances by Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist as the most twisted tennis trio of all time. time – as well as Guadagnino’s cinematography, which he made alongside director of photography Sayombo Mukdeeprom – but Very much The adrenaline I felt after seeing the movie “Challengers” was thanks to its aggressive score. Reznor and Ross who won two The Oscars’ scores (“The Social Network” and “Soul” specifically) were supposed to get a nod for Best Original Score at the 2025 Academy Awards when Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott announced the nominees on Thursday, January 23. But they didn’t do that.

That’s right: a score that magically makes the listener feel as if they could win a Grand Slam tournament without any tennis training whatsoever was completely snubbed at the Oscars…and in the end, “Challengers” is easily one of the best movies released in 2024received zero Nominations. This is terrible, and I’m happy to tell you why.

So what films take the top five spots in the race for Best Original Score, leaving no room for two-time winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for “Challengers”? Daniel Bloomberg received a nomination for Brady Corbett’s historical epic “The Brutalist,” and Volker Bertelmann received a Conclave nomination (after winning an Oscar for director Edward Berger’s previous “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2022). Clément Ducul and Camille made their way into the category for controversial French film “Emilia Perez,” and Chris Powers earned a nomination for favorite animated film “The Wild.” Robot,” and finally, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz and John Powell, the latter of whom served as co-composer and choral director, rounded out the category for “Wicked: Part One.”

There’s sure to be some anger over Emilia Perez, who received a record 13 nominations during the 2025 nominations, because The film is generally controversialBut I’ll pick Schwartz and Powell for a moment, with all due respect. If Hans Zimmer’s brilliant score for “Dune: Part Two” is deemed ineligible for nomination because it used too much pre-existing music, so what? world It is “evil” which certainly seems to be made up of music Created for Schwartz’s Broadway musicalAre you eligible in this category? Regardless of eligibility, how can it top something as different and creative as “The Challengers”? Every year, the Oscars do some pretty cool things during the nomination process; Choosing “Wicked” to be nominated for Best Original Score over “Challengers” is definitely one of those crazy things.

The fact that “Challengers” didn’t make it into the Best Original Score category was a harbinger of terrible things to come in Luca Guadagnino’s highly entertaining and exciting film, which centers around a tennis match between Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) overseen by Patrick’s ex-wife and his art, The terrifyingly strict Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, becoming the “apex predator” in her performance). Ultimately, O’Connor, Faist, and Zendaya was all but eliminated in the acting categories, though it has to be said they all faced pretty formidable competition (and Faist must have a previous nomination under his belt for “West Side Story,” but that’s a different discussion). Writer Justin Kuritzkis – directed by his partner Celine Song last “Past Lives” consisting of three years which an act It received Academy Award nominations — it missed out on an original screenplay, Guadagnino was not nominated for Best Director, and the film did not find a place in Best Picture, which consists of 10 nominees.

Critics will argue that “challengers” are also Sexy and also Fun (and released early in the year, allowing later releases to “steal” their nominations as a matter of simple recency bias), and they’re probably right, because the Oscars are rarely exciting or fun. However, it’s extremely disappointing that the film received no nominations at all, and it’s sad that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s brilliant score was not recognized.

“Challengers” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.