I’m a sucker for movie franchises. I love getting to see further adventures of characters that I’m invested in, especially when effort is put in to make it seem like a consistent universe (Burton vs. Schumacher Batmans is a good example of when it does not feel consistent).
The musical themes of a movie help get me wrapped up in the story, so I love when there is a consistency of music through a franchise, like in Star Wars or Indiana Jones. You get a lot of the same themes, with some new stuff sprinkled in to add to it.
But then sometimes you get movies where the theme is completely different from the previous, and that tends to take me out of it. I don’t think X-Men ever reused any themes. Ghostbusters 2 used a completely different theme. The Star Trek movies used several different themes, which I didn’t mind as much, except for IV. II and III used the same composer and the themes were related, then IV comes along with it’s Christmas style music and the ‘trilogy’ feels unbalanced to me. I realize that the mood of that movie was different, but it still always bothered me.
Anyway, I always assumed that anytime a franchise changed up it’s theme like that was because the composer wasn’t available, so they couldn’t use that theme. Then I learned that several movies were able to still use the original theme even though they had a different composer (Superman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man…).
So does the studio have to pay the composer to have the rights to use the theme again? Or does the studio own the rights since the composer created the theme while working for them? Also, am I the only nutjob, or does anyone else feel the same way as me about the musical themes in movies?
If I could switch off the fucking ever-present thematic music in the LOTR movies, I’d enjoy them more.
And someone needs to tell everyone to stop fucking using John Murphy’s In The House, In A Heartbeat for any movie theme ever again. Danny Boyle found it first, so fuck off and find your own theme music.
One of the things that kind of disappointed me about Man of Steel is that they didn’t use John Williams’ theme from the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Superman Returns (2006) was a lot truer to the Reeve movies, even if it wasn’t as successful.
Brad Fiedel only composed the music for the first two Terminator films. The rest of the films and the tv show borrow some of the themes, but I find it different enough to be notice that they aren’t using the original theme. Terminator- Kind of 80s lo-fi and sythisizery but awesome.
Also disappointing where they cut the extra scene of a massive 9/11 photo collage wall of people killed and missing from where Superman “saved” Metropolis.
Yeah, this is one complaint I hear a lot. I agree, the John Williams music is one of the most iconic themes there is. This change didn’t bother me, however, since this was a complete reboot of the series. The Burton Batman theme was also iconic (nowhere near as much as the Superman theme), and I hated that they changed the theme for the Schumacher movies, but I was fine with the change for the Nolan reboot.
Of course, how awesome would it have been if Warner Bros. had done their Batman/Superman crossover in the early 90’s with Keaton and Reeve and had both of their themes in the movie!
As much as I love Williams’ stuff (Superman particularly) I totally agreed with their decision to make a clean break with all new music for Man of Steel. And the new music was good, certain parts of it do summon up some real chills & emotion. But he simply did not create an indelible title theme as I had hoped.
A film score is generally a “work for hire,” so the studio does own the rights. However, under the typical film music contract, they still have to pay the original composer if the music is reused in another movie. If it’s a big-budget Hollywood franchise movie, this is something that the studio can easily afford. The decision to use (or not use) themes from an earlier movie is usually a creative decision, not a financial one.
I’m fan of both Williams and Zimmer, and I absolutely agree with ditching the Williams sound and going new. It’s a thoroughly different type of film and it needed that break in every way possible, including the score. Yes, Williams scores are always far more thematic, whereas Zimmer focuses more on capturing the impact of the moment in the film, and his aim seems to be particularly to not have the music stand out, but to accent it. Similarly, compare the Danny Elfman (Burton era) Batman theme to Zimmer’s scores for the Dark Knight trilogy, it’s a similar sort of dichotomy.
As an Easter Egg though, for those who are big fans, it seems clear to me that, despite Zimmer creating an original theme, he still took some inspiration from the original themes. There’s a really cool mix on Youtube that’s easy to find where someone super-imposed both versions, obviously with a bit of rearranging, but they work remarkably well together, particularly in terms of scales and rhythm.
To the OP, in general, I do think that there should generally be an aesthetic consistency in a franchise, but the degree to which it should be consistent depends on what they’re going for. In something like LotR, it was important to maximize the consistency as much as possible, to the extent that they were all filmed at the same time, and I think the films benefited from that. As for the Burton/Schumacher Batman franchise, it made sense to break that consistency because the visions of the directors were so remarkably different, the former going for a darker version and the latter going for a campier comic feel. The Danny Elfman theme just plain would have been out of place in the Schumacher vision, without regard to how poorly those movies are seen.
