Marvel Studio and its unmemorable film score

Spider-Man: Homecoming' started with a familiar melody. It was the famous 'Spider-Man' theme composed by Paul Francis Webster and Robert J. Harris for the 1960 cartoon show 'Spider-Man'. It was also played a couple of times during 'Spider-Man' movies in 2002, 2004, and 2007 (featured Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker) and also in 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' when Peter Parker's (played by Andrew Garfield) phone rang.

A couple of weeks before the movie was released, Michael Giacchino, the composer of the 'Spider-Man: Homecoming', tweeted about this leitmotif coming back to the latest movie. I was so excited to hear his arrangement of that melody. Also wondering if I would hear it in a scene when Peter Parker first received his Spider Suit, or when he’s doing his duty as the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, or if they would make it as the main leitmotif now.

Nope, it appeared only in the beginning. Almost like a teaser. That's a shame.

Let's go back to the theory of film music. Pauline Reay in 'Music in Film: Soundtracks and Synergy' quoted a line from Russell Lack;

If the audience came out of the theatre almost unaware of the musical accompaniment to the film, the work of the musical director has been successful.

That means, there is no place for the best melody in a movie. Music itself should support the story, not creating its own. When it’s an emotional scene, the strings instruments start playing slowly with minor notes. When it’s a funny scene, the music becomes playful.

I’m not saying that is wrong. I believe that is the basis of film scoring. But that is also what I always feel in Marvel movies. Their music always sounds ‘safe’ and the more we watch it with this kind of scoring, the more easily we get bored, even forget. The same thing happened when I watched 'Spider-Man: Homecoming'. It’s a great movie but after that, I didn’t feel anything special with the scoring. Especially when I adore 'Ratatouille' and 'Up' so much and those two are Michael Giacchino’s best works so far in my opinion.

So, what is wrong with Marvel movies? Or has it always been an extra challenge for any composer to create music for any superhero movie?

Last year, Hans Zimmer announced that he retired from composing for superhero movies. We know very well he had done a lot for DC and Marvel. His work for 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' was also a great one. Hans Zimmer with The Magnificent Six made a great theme for the villain, Electro, and the scene where he fought Spider-Man was something I could never forget after years. That was a great example of music supporting the scene with the existence of the music itself was something we would very well notice.

If we look at his other work, DC was very lucky with Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL leaving quite a legacy for 'Wonder Woman'. 'Is She With You?', the Wonder Woman theme, was so powerful that it wouldn’t just make you hum the melody, but also associate the music with a badass, powerful heroine Wonder Woman is.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember any memorable theme Hans Zimmer created for Ben Affleck’s Batman. As for Superman, there is one amazing theme from the 'Man of Steel'.

But if we’re talking about the whole history of Superman on screen, you will probably remember that melody, right?

What I mean is the masterpiece John Williams created for Superman. I remember very well when I was a kid, my brother hummed it and ran around as if he’s having a red cape behind him, and I knew right away what was the figure he was trying to impersonate. It has not just a memorable melody, but also the instrumentation that easily set the association of certain things. When you hear the brass sounds, it represents the heroism of Superman who’s ready to save the world. It’s so powerful that the music itself is the storyteller, it brings back the clip of the movies hidden in your memories.

In Hans Zimmer’s work for 'Man of Steel', he added percussion alongside brass instruments. I always feel percussion gives a sense of tribal, a beginning of something, or an origin. And yes, 'Man of Steel' told us the story of where Kal-El came from. Not a great movie, but still an amazing film score.

I never had the intention to compare DC movies with Marvel movies. But in this case, I wonder what happened with Marvel? They spend a lot of time building the universe, the movie franchise, but none of the music scores was quite memorable, except for the 'Spider-Man' theme but it was created years ago before the beginning of MCU. Did they force the composers to use temp music instead of letting their creativity go wild? Or is it because film score is something they take lightly?

I wish they would take a look once again at every element in a movie and maximise everything as a storytelling tool. Music is part of Sound, one of the four techniques used as the language of film, alongside mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing. The unique side of music is that this communicates not just the story, but also affects the audience’s emotions.

If you have watched 'The Girl With All The Gifts', you know that it’s a story of children who grew up in a world post-zombie apocalypse and the children themselves are the by-product of it. In that movie, you’ll hear that Cristobal Tapia De Veer, the film composer, created the score from the sound of children humming and something like a muffled voice of a zombie, which are two important aspects of this film. It’s always great to see a composer do this kind of thing in their work. It helps you feel more connected with the story and in the long run, it’s a great way to make the audience replay this movie once again in their head whenever they hear the score.

In the end, I don't think Marvel should always opt for something easy in the making of their film music, especially considering how big the MCU will be in the future (it's actually already so big now). Just like those superhero stories who always face their challenges, Marvel should also start challenging themselves in making great film music as worthy as the franchise itself.