French electronic dance duo Daft Punk have always been interested in filmmaking and visual storytelling. After their early singles came accompanied with videos from highly regarded directors with strong visual imaginations, people like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, the videos for second album Discovery were a linked series of anime episodes created by Space Battleship Yamato's Leiji Matsumoto. When these were gathered together to make the film Interstella 5555 it marked Daft Punk's first foray into cinematic features. Interstella 5555 demonstrates a passion for visually strong sci-fi storytelling and a desire to explore the animations they enjoyed as children (both Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo described Matsumoto as a childhood hero who they were desperate to work with), so it should not really come as a surprise to find them fans of Disney's pioneering 1980s computer animation cult classic Tron. The 28 years that elapsed between that film and sequel Tron Legacy did at least result in childhood fans of the original working on the new version as adults. Director Joseph Kosinski had only Daft Punk in mind when creating the soundscape for his vision of Tron and even gave the robot headed Frenchmen a cameo DJing in the night club scene. The film received mixed reviews with critics perhaps inevitably preferring the visuals to its story or acting. The score, however, was almost universally praised with Daft Punk mixing orchestral instrumentation with their usual drums and synthesizers to create an electronica spin on a traditional film score.
