SOMEONE FINALLY FUCKING GETS IT! I FUCKING LOVE YOU!
sorry i'm just accostumed to inception/dunkirk type of s hit
so long as i hear orchestra and melodies i buy it, don't care if generic
I understand the popularity and functionality of the scores produced by the composers within the Media Ventures organisations, but it never appealed to me either. It always felt akin to someone hurling a wall of pure sonic assault at me.
Which has its time and place.
But it's unfortunate when listening to a quasi-period piece, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, to hear a score that - barring the wonderfully atmospheric first track (Fog Bound) - doesn't aspire towards reflecting anything that makes one think of, well, the high seas, pirates, ships at sea, the British Empire, and so on. Unlike, for example, the work produced by Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon, and Richard Tognetti on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, John Debney's work on Cutthroat Island, or of course, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's work on films such as The Sea Hawk, or Captain Blood.
All serve as examples of films that utilise music which elicits associations with the subject matter of the film.
Danny Elfman's score for Justice League did just that, much in the same way that Alan Silvestri did just the same with his excellent score for Captain America: The First Avenger.
Both films utilise leitmotifs to help us identify character identities - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and even The Flash (primarily using violins and cellos and a measured use of counterpoint to provide users with an association of pace and intensity), and likewise, Silvestri provides unique identifying musical identities for Schmidt, Steve Rogers, even Bucky.
The result?
Upon exiting the theatre, and listening to the score outside the confines of the cinema screen, it's possible to listen to the music independent of the film and identify which leitmotifs ("themes") belong to which character, and even recall where in the film the track/piece appears.
An example I like to cite, within the context of comic book movies is Elfman's 'Descent Into Mystery', which is played as Batman drives Vicki Vale through the tunnel that leads to the Bat Cave in the 1989 Batman film. The track utilises a very common - and historically rooted use of the rising crescendo (there are, I am sure, other names for it, which at the moment escape me), which build towards the eventual coda.
All of which helps give a listener a connection to the location, the identities of the characters, and ultimately an overarching sense of musical identity, examples of which include John Williams' scores for Superman, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica scores (the first season in particular stands out in its clear use of identifying musical identities), Brian Tyler's work on Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Children of Dune, Jeremy Soule's Amen: The Awakening, Elder Scrolls IV/V: Oblivion/Skyrim, Knut Avenstroup Haugen's haunting The Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Jerry Goldsmith's The Ghost and the Darkness, or more recently, Howard Shore's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Nothing in Junkie XL's repertoire up to this juncture suggests to me, as a listener, that he would have applied such considerations to the film. Particularly given what was heard in collaboration with Hans Zimmer in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and in Deadpool - a film that excellently integrates pop songs into the film, but whose orchestral offerings sound so indistinct that they could have come from Money Train, The Rock, Point Break, Lethal Weapon, or any number of other action films. There's no musical identity or cohesion in the film's orchestral offerings.
Which makes Justice League's musical offerings that much more astonishing, given the short amount of time Danny Elfman had to write the score. As he said an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/justice-league-danny-elfman-hates-reboots-scrap-classic-themes-1059632):
"I had a lot of storyboards in place of action. There would be full scenes and then a five-minute sequence of storyboards. Honestly, it was like working on an animated film," says Elman. "I didn’t score any of the unused footage — the movie that came out is the movie I scored, it was just in very rough form."
Whedon turned Elfman loose on the Justice League score, asking only that he add humanity, warmth and some fan payoffs, including restoring his original theme from 1989's Batman into the Dark Knight's mythos, as well as bringing in John Williams' classic Superman theme.
"I twisted it and my Batman theme … the DNA is there, but the themes aren’t necessarily obvious in the film. Except for one specific moment in the final battle," says Elfman. "Joss said, ‘Let’s do it [Batman’s theme] on the nose. Fans love this kind of stuff.’"
Elfman also has strong words for reboots and reinterpretations of character themes. Batman, for instance, has had numerous themes over the years, courtesy of Hans Zimmer's work on the Dark Knight trilogy, as well as his Junkie XL collaboration for Dawn of Justice.
"The whole concept that every time a superhero franchise is rebooted with a new director, then you have to start the music from scratch, is a bullshit idea. It’s only for the ego of the director or the composer," says Elfman. "They need to learn the incredible lesson that Star Wars and James Bond have known for ages, which is that keeping these musical connections alive is incredibly satisfying for the people who see those films."
Elfman's Justice League score is quite remarkable, but also, of course, written by someone with decades of experience in the film industry. Despite the short amount of time he had to work on the film, he managed to produce a distinctly superhero-sounding score with identifiable themes, clear musical identities, integrate Williams' original Superman theme, his original Batman theme, Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams' Wonder Woman theme, and still provide each location in the film with its own identity (be it Kansas or the nuclear reactor in Russia - presumably Pozharnov, per the name of track 58).
It's a remarkable effort, and one for which I am quite grateful.
