Do me a favor. Grab your headphones, turn to your music app of choice, and press play on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Challengers, Luca Guadagnino's 2024 sex, tennis and power movie. I'll wait while you listen.

How strange powerful does that score make you feel? I'll tell you this much: When I went to see The Challengers at my local theater last summer, which happened to be a Thursday afternoon, I left the screening feeling like I could run a marathon or maybe lift a car. (There's no world where I could physically do both, to be perfectly clear.) That's in part due to the wonderful lead performances from Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, and Mike Feist as the most twisted tennis trio of all time—as well as the cinematography. of Guadagnino, which he made with his director of photography Sayombhu Mukdiprom - but quite a lot of the adrenaline I felt after seeing The Challengers was thanks to its strong, aggressive score. Reznor and Ross, who won two The Academy Awards for their songs (specifically "The Social Network" and "Soul") were slated to win Best Original Score at the 2025 Oscars when Bowen Young and Rachel Sennott announced the nominees on Thursday, January 23. But they didn't.

That's right: The score that magically makes the listener feel like they can win a Grand Slam with absolutely zero tennis practice was completely off at the Oscars ... and in the end, Challengers, which is easily one of the best movies released in 2024applied zero nominations. This is extreme, and I'm happy to tell you why.

So which films took the top five spots in the Best Original Score race, leaving no room for two-time winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' stunning score for Challengers? Daniel Bloomberg gets a nod for Brady Corbett's three-hour historical epic The Brutalist, Volker Bertelman earns a Conclave nomination (after winning for director Edward Berger's previous Oscar film All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022). Clément Ducol and Camille swept the category for the controversial French film "Emilia Perez," Chris Bowers received a nomination for animated favorite "The Wild Robot," and finally, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz and John Powell, the latter of whom served as co-composer and choir director, rounded out the category for "The Wicked: Part One".

There's bound to be some resentment for Emilia Perez, who earned a record 13 nominations during the 2025 nominations, as the film just generally stirs up controversybut I'll pick Schwartz and Powell for a moment, with all due respect. If Hans Zimmer's masterful score for Dune: Part II was deemed ineligible for a nomination because it used too much pre-existing music, as in the world is "Wicked," which certainly appears to be composed of music created for Schwartz's Broadway musicalmeet the requirements in this category? And eligibility aside, how can something as diverse and creative as The Challengers win? Every year, the Oscars do some really confusing things during the nomination process; Picking "Wicked" for a Best Original Score nomination over "The Challengers" is certainly one of those awkward things.

The fact that "Challengers" didn't make it in the Best Original Score category was a harbinger of terrible things to come for Luca Guadagnino's fun, incredibly fiery film, which centers on a tennis match between Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor) and Art Donaldson ( Mike Faist) overseen by Patrick's ex and Art's wife, the terrifyingly stern Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, going "top predator" in her performance). Finally, O'Connor, Faist, and All of the Zendayas were shut out of the acting categories, though it has to be said that they all faced some pretty stiff competition (and Faist should have a previous nomination for "West Side Story," but that's another discussion). Writer Justin Kuritzkes - directed by partner Celine Song the last one this year's trilogy "Past Lives", which do earned Oscar nominations—it missed out on accolades for its original screenplay, Guadagnino wasn't nominated for Best Director, and the film didn't land a spot in Best Picture, which consists of 10 nominees.

Critics will argue that "Challengers" is also sexy and also entertainment (and it came out early in the year, allowing later releases to "steal" its nominations as a matter of simple recency bias), and they're probably right, because the Oscars are rarely sexy or fun. Still, it's bitterly disappointing that the film earned absolutely zero nominations, and it feels borderline criminal that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' brilliant score went unrecognized.

"Challengers" is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.