TSMefford

Nah. Note: I don't think this is good per say. It's nothing compared to Williams or a slew of other composers and scores, but did any of us expect it to be? Junkie has done better with Zimmer's material than Zimmer did IMO.

Lol. It's interesting to be someone that hated both the Man of Steel score and Batman V Superman score which most here also hated. However, Wonder Woman 1984 got considerably more praise on here than I think it deserves, meanwhile this score is immediately being disregarded by some people as Trash. This is a better score than Wonder Woman 1984. It raises to higher highs and has far more interesting moments than almost anything from 1984. I'll elaborate with some of my personal highlights later on, but yes, there's several cues where it's a lot of highly compressed pounding drums. You get tired of that Wonder Woman drum beat by track 9 and yes, it does take some time to get going. But there are quite a few good heartfelt moments. This score is at it's best when it embraces a more rock and roll driven sound for the action cues, it's lower key emotional moments, and when it decides to be hopeful and heroic.

Well. Some of it is Snyder. Whedon reshot a lot of stuff (Working on a more detailed breakdown now) and most of Whedon's material is significantly worse I find. You know, the very first time it appears in the film, I felt it was too much, but every time after that I was fine with. Almost like that moment needed to be a little subtler or build to that full vocal idea. I didn't end up having a problem with it after that. Personally, these DC films, now including the Snyder Cut have more thematic continuity than the Marvel Universe. I can forgive adding a new motif for the Amazons simply because I am tired of her cello riff over and over again. In other news. Let's talk a bit of comparison and contrast. This is kind of rough and mostly focuses on what ended up being confirmed changes by Whedon. OVERALL Whedon very much "Marvelified" this film. Honestly the result is the worst of the worst when it comes to Marvel tropes. Even when Marvel has done them, they've accomplished it far better. Whedon added a ton of unnecessary, poorly dubbed one-liners at nearly every opportunity. He is also entirely responsible for the Parademon tropes, adding the plot device of them feeding on fear as well as adding the weird alarm sound thing that pisses them off. Whedon also added his tried and true "team in-fighting" scenes to...create fake drama? To give the team something to work through? I don't know. He uses this not once, but twice in this one film. Almost no scene remains untouched by the reshoots. Either he has completely reshot scenes or he's gone back and needlessly added lines. In some cases the reshoots were "necessary" to condense backstory or accommodate plot changes that he inevitably had to make in order to fulfill the studio requirements, but there's a pretty significant amount of useless crap that could've been cut in favor of better material that they clearly had. MAIN CHANGES BY WHEDON Having just combed through the Theatrical Cut of Justice League, I isolated any full scenes that have now been confirmed to be things that Whedon added or reshot to see how much it accounted for in the runtime. Whedon completely reshot and added approximately 40 minutes of the final runtime. That time does not include lines or additions that were added to existing Snyder scenes. I imagine that would increase the time quite a bit, but honestly: Out of a two hour movie, you're talking about nearly half of it when you roughly account for everything he added. I may go more in-depth, but main point. I think Whedon and Warner Brothers really were quite a determent to this film and I am happy Snyder got to release what is clearly and easily a better film. Whedon / WB added tons of unnecessary shit, lines, etc. on top of really losing the emotional core of the story. Further more, Whedon created absolutely ridiculous continuity problems, not only between Snyder footage and his own, but even within his own completely reshot scenes, and I'm talking about things that absolutely shouldn't have been hard to get right like Aquaman gaining and losing a row of triangles on his body tattoos from shot to shot or Wonder Woman spawning a random shawl for one scene when she didn't have it on immediately prior and then it's never seen again. To also combining Bruce Wayne's airplane hangar and the Batcave. You're telling me that the team takes an elevator down several floors, arrives in the Batcave, says it's the Batcave and then we can see windows with daylight streaming through them in the background? The theatrical version truly is hot garbage, especially after seeing the Snyder Cut. Sure it's not the most mind-blowing film ever and it doesn't fix every problem, but it is truly one hell of an improvement.

Haha. I can agree with that. Zack uses a lot of slow-mo for an average length film so there was like twice as much in this one. LOL

Eh. I don't really think they give a shit about any of this. They're making money for their streaming platform. While I do think there are some minor scenes and subplots that could've been removed, I really only think (at least after the initial watch) that removing what I deem to be unnecessary scenes would probably only make a 15 minute dent in the film. 4 hours doesn't necessarily make it too long. The extended Return of the King is an incredible film and it runs at 3 hours and 48 minutes. Not saying the Snyder Cut is anywhere near as good, but just making a point that the length of something shouldn't really be an automatic negative. As someone who thought Batman V Superman felt obscenely long, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the pacing so I'll disagree. Sure there's some moments that could've been tightened, but I think this certainly felt better than an assembly. And again perhaps it's getting some artificial elevation because of what we got from Whedon, I do acknowledge that. But I honestly feel like the runtime was well-spent, properly fleshing out all these new characters and making them feel like more than some new random heroes. Personally, I have never read the comics and was not remotely aware of Cyborg, Flash, or Aquaman's origins in any way. This doesn't quite fully cover those bases, but I feel like I get those characters far more than Whedon was able to convey. Cyborg got absolutely screwed over by Whedon's cut, so the 4 hours is worth it just for all his new material in my mind.

Yeah that’s been on a couple of things at this point. WB changed up there logo. I hate it. In my mind it’s been answered already. Whedon’s is stupidly the canon version. It would be quite a day for the studio to admit they were wrong.

As far as I've heard, a condition to releasing the Snyder Cut was that it can not be considered canon. WB is sticking with Whedon's version.

Wasn't that in front of Tenet as well? They've been working on this rebrand for some time. I have watched the Snyder Cut. Shockingly, I feel like I must start by saying that I was certainly too hard on this before it came out. To be clear: I am not a fan of Snyder's previous efforts. Man of Steel was disappointing and Batman V Superman still remains one of the worst blockbuster films I have ever seen. But honestly, I was expecting something that would completely exhaust me even worse than BVS. I was also expecting it to be just as convoluted and ridiculous. Not to mention being a dark, gloomy, and depressing mess. I am actually surprised to find that the Snyder Cut is actually decent. I don't know if it's good per say. Perhaps it might be (especially for a Zack Snyder DC Film), but I don't think it's great necessarily. I still have lots of problems with certain things. Here's my full thoughts (nested under spoiler tags for spoilers sake and mainly, to save precious page space. LOL) HIGHLIGHTS OF THE GOOD (OR AT LEAST...THE BETTER) THE NOT SO GOOD THE UNFIXABLE All that being said, this is probably the best Snyder DC film now. I certainly enjoyed it the most of his DC Films. I'm currently working on a comparison post of the two versions of the film, but it's tough. There's a different structure and quite a few plot changes in Whedon's version, but I'll do my best. Did you watch the Theatrical Version or the Ultimate Edition? Lol.

So let's talk about that. What I'm about to say applies to any industry, but we're using film scoring as an example because it's relevant here and is especially an issue with creative positions. In my opinion, if you work in a system where you hire a world-class composer to do a film, but said composer doesn't feel like they alone can complete the full score in the amount of time allotted and feels the need to bring on additional people to help finish it just to "get the job done" to quote the composer you brought up earlier. What does that say about that system? What it says to me is that your system is moving too fast if even the top composers can not keep up with it on their own. And when the mentality is to just "get the job done" it also tells me that getting the score finished is the main concern where, in my opinion, story and the quality of the music should be the top priority. If they are being distracted from those things then it lessens the music and it tells me shit is being churned out too fast. And it is. Okay I have to address this one too, because whoever said that is wrong, on even a pure factual level. Him writing to a script or writing music before the film is shot is something extremely common. Quite often a film even necessitates that music exist from the composer prior to shooting so that they can shoot with said music. John Williams had to write Double Trouble for Azkaban before they shot the sequence. Plus, almost every composer I know comes up with pieces or suites of ideas before seeing a finished film and scoring it to picture. That's just part of the process. I would not think anyone is a bad composer for doing that. I think my issue there is when it is done without consideration to the story. Does that make sense? For example, Hans Zimmer's choice of drums to represent Superman in Man of Steel doesn't bother me, because it's a "risk", but because it doesn't make sense to me, even when he explains it. I'll go on record as saying that there are scores that use electronics and sound design that I do like, but I don't like all of them. I suppose there's two parts to the risk thing I mentioned. There's actually taking the risk and there's also doing it because it's the right thing to do for the story. As another example, Last Jedi can probably be considered a risk, and even though I like some of the things it did, many of the risks (to me) don't make sense for the story or characters and therefore isn't paid off. I suppose that's why it's a risk, but you shouldn't take risks for risks sake. You should take risks to make something better and somethings basically require risks to do it right. Honestly these days I feel like doing a traditional orchestral score is more of a risk. Lol. I don't agree with it, but mass audiences are more used to the sound design and Zimmer style scores now it seems. Some people consider Williams' scores to be too intrusive.

I missed this in my giant ass response, but on this note. I don't dislike scores automatically because of the "teamwork model". Some people manage to pull it off. I'm not going to refuse to listen to a score because it was done via teamwork. I just find that typically those scores are quite diluted and are lacking heart that I can connect to, but that's not always true. So of course I'm not going to only listen to Williams. Also, yes, I agree. Any composer that works with multiple composers should have them credited on the cover. I never meant to imply that I only hold Zimmer to that standard. It bothers me across the board.

Good for him. I don't know how he's managed it. After Angels and Demons I really have just not found much I like about Zimmer's work anymore. He did honestly used to be near the top for me. I don't know what the general audience or these creatives see that I don't, but it's just not there for me. As an example, I found Rupert Gregson Williams' Wonder Woman score to be immensely superior to 1984 in every way. His music used to give me that feeling of awe that people still seem to have with him, but it feels so hollow now. Lion King and DaVinci Code resonate far differently for me than Man of Steel or Interstellar or Batman V Superman and even WW1984. I truly can't say exactly what it is. Some of it is how the mixing and mastering squashes any power out of it that it had, but even the compositions just don't do it for me anymore. That's all I can really say.

Wow. Alright. I well understood the point of what we're talking about. I was responding to things directly mentioned by you in your post where you seemed to misunderstand what I was saying initially, that's why I quoted each segment and responded. Just because I chose to respond to certain things in your post doesn't mean that I missed what the overall discussion was about. I read your post and had specific thoughts on certain things you mentioned. I chose not to respond directly to the bigger issues because it's a LOT to cover in my eyes. Instead, I opted for a direct response to the more specific points in your post. Responding directly to things that you mentioned yourself. The only reason I started discussing front cover credits is because you mentioned it as if it was something that Zimmer and everyone who does this always does. That's not true at all. That's why I went into that because you mentioned it. I'm well aware what the discussion was about, because I can read. Thanks. Now, if I have to get into the bigger topic at hand or else I get treated like an idiot. Fine. I'm well aware that this is the reality now. Most of us are. I mentioned several times that I'm not a huge fan of it, which means I know it exists. Perhaps I was too focused on RCP and didn't also directly critique everyone who does it. That's my bad, but yes I am aware of how it works. Again. Thanks. From my perception, it has definitely been going on for awhile, but RCP has sort of lead the charge on that sort of thing. And many of the composers you keep mentioning have some connection to that. Here's what I'm saying so that it is crystal clear: RCP seemed to be the frontrunner in this collaboration, score by committee, mentality and basically speeding up the workflow. That made them very attractive to studios who want to make them as quick and as painlessly as possible as well as please as many people as possible. Other composers have had to start doing it to keep up with them. So yes, Marco Beltrami works with people, James Newton Howard works with people. Tyler works with people. Giacchino works with people now as well. That disappoints me. It doesn't have to just be Hans Zimmer that's doing it for it to disappoint me. I have far more respect for composers who can complete the work on their own (which it seems now that Junkie XL is capable of, so good for him), sometimes even within a similar timeframe, and I find that it seems to result in better scores, in my opinion. Less cooks in the kitchen. I also don't find that I personally would ever feel comfortable slapping my name on something and taking all the credit if I was not the only person doing the work. That very much rubs me the wrong way and I'd prefer people credit who they work with on the front covers. Zimmer is not the only offender, but he is for sure, one of the biggest ones as far as I've seen. That is very much an issue I take with the culture of collaboration. If it's collaborative then list your collaborators. That's why I focused on that, because it's a very obvious issue I have that is part of the bigger issue. This may be considered too political...I'm not sure. It depends on how it's perceived, so if I need to remove this or just delete this post altogether I can. No qualms from me on that. I know that it's true for most industries and I think it's bullshit. Yeah, I have and do work in a competitive industry and yes, I am aware that if you can do work fast and maintain some level of quality then the business rewards you. I experience that most days. I'm critiquing that very mentality. I do think that if we slowed down a little bit then quality would go up. I know many projects of mine that could've turned out better had I had a bit more time. So why not everyone slow down and take a little more time? Because then we can't make more money faster. It's a very business first approach of looking at art. If great business is your primary function, then great art won't be. Great art by it's very nature doesn't please everybody and takes risks. Risks and not pleasing as many as possible is also bad for business. So when you make art into a business you have to walk a very fine line. I found nowadays we've ventured far more into the business side of the film industry. I suppose I used to perceive the film industry as trying to capitalize on great art, but now it seems like it's just trying to use business to make any other product. Maybe it's because I've gotten older, but (and I don't know about you or anyone else on this board) I have found myself loving and looking forward to current crops films and film scores less as time goes on. I remember years where there were tons of scores or films to be excited about and now? Well. I buy less and less of the new stuff, because when I hear it in the film or even stream it somewhere first... it's just not interesting to me anymore. It doesn't speak to me anymore. I have even more fondness for these expansions of older film scores and rediscovering scores that I still love, even including scores by Hans Zimmer. But Hans Zimmer doesn't seem to make music I love anymore. A lot don't. Williams still does. I don't want to seem melodramatic or anything. I do still find stuff I like, but it's definitely far less common now for me than when I remember to years ago. To pull this point back up from one of your previous posts. Yeah, we romanticize it, because we used to get absolutely incredible music that was complex, beautiful art with so much to say, even in the context of the business of Hollywood. It felt more like an artform and so we treated it as such. As far as pen and paper. I don't think anyone here is under the assumption that everyone outside of RCP writes only with pen, paper, and piano, so no need to generalize and treat us all like idiots. Giacchino does synth demos, Desplat does demos, Powell does demos just to name a few for you. Most people write shit in the computer. We're even getting scores from composers I like that are using synth orchestra due to the pandemic (I believe, but I could be wrong) We're all well aware, thanks. Again. As far as why I don't care for RCP specifically? Well, again, it seems like they're the ones that spearheaded this whole quick and mass production of film scores state we're in and also seem to be the largest offender of not crediting people properly among other things. Plus, in my opinion, their "product" is diluted a lot. Very little of what they make resonates with me. Someone like Bear McCreary on the other hand has interested me and spoken to me with his scores more often recently. Why? I don't know. It's subjective. I imagine the rigorous commitment to being a film score shop may have a little to do with it, but that can't be fully it since Bear also "collaborates". I don't know man. There. I tried. I don't think we'll come to any more of an understanding, because we both seem to be frustrating to each other, but those are my thoughts as flawed as you may find them to be.

Great point. Here's what it says on IMDb: Junkie XL: Man of Steel (additional music and rhythm design) / (conductor - uncredited) I honestly didn't know that he'd worked on it. Probably because it just says "Hans Zimmer" on the cover. Look. I'm not going to lie and say I hate every single cue that RCP has ever put out. That's not really true, but I find it increasingly annoying that they more commonly ignore the teamwork that people praise them for. If the score was basically written by everyone on the staff of composers, just brand it as "Remote Control Productions", but I suppose that's not as marketable as Hans Zimmer. Just because Zimmer's RCP group can keep up with the hustle and bustle of Hollywood now a days by using 6 people constantly, it doesn't mean it should be commended. If anything it tells me that everything should slow the hell down so these guys can dedicate the time to make even greater music and use their distinctive voices, which commonly come out more once they move on to more solo oriented projects. Teamwork is cool and fun and can produce great results, but if I were to work on a group project back in school and slapped my name on it while putting the rest of the team in the footnotes then I'd get chastised for it.

Sigh, Good grief. You really have no idea what I'm saying do you? Let's unpack this. I can't tell you how many scores out there from RCP that have co-composers that are NOT on credited on the cover. Most commonly, Hans Zimmer gets cover credit and you barely ever know that other people worked on it. Even Amazing Spider-Man 2 lists the team of people he worked with as "The Magnificent Six" (featuring the marketable names of Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr). How about Angels and Demons? Cover only lists Hans Zimmer with solos by Joshua Bell. Meanwhile Lorne Balfe, Atli Orvarsson, Geoff Zanelli, Mel Wesson, and Nick Glennie-Smith are all listed as composers on various cues. I...what? They could each be off composing their OWN scores. Instead they're all working on ONE score together. What are you on about? You realize that most scores RCP does are big blockbusters right? Those are almost always a huge time crunch. It's VERY common that Zimmer scores have 4-6 composers on them. I just listed two above: The Amazing Spider-Man, Angels and Demons. Here's some more for Zimmer specifically: The Simpsons Movie (6 Additional Composers, only Zimmer is credited on the cover) The Da Vinci Code (4 Additional Composers) Pirates of the Caribbean (Basically all of them, which you mentioned already) Man of Steel (3-4 Additional Composers) Inferno (4 Additional Composers) Batman V Superman (4 Additional Composers) Shall I go on? That's a completely different thing. In that case those are two composers that always work together and are always listed as co-composers especially on the cover. In that case, they are commonly doing equal work on the score. There's a big difference between saying a score was composed by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross and it literally JUST being those two and saying a score was written by Hans Zimmer when there are anywhere from 2-6 or even 7 other people attached to it that are not listed with him. Who knows how much actual work each person contributed to that score? At least I know that when a Williams score comes out there's a lot time and dedication from exclusively one guy put into this score. Are the RCP composers successful? Clearly. But they're successful in the modern day industry where movies are pumped out so fast that you need a team of 5-7 people to keep up with it. Who's score even is it then? Does that not dilute the music to have to also pump it out so fast? They might as well just start marketing all their scores as "Music by Remote Control Productions". You're essentially arguing that quantity and speed is the marker for success and skill and that is simply not always true. When you are dealing with doing things fast and doing more things in a year...the quality itself tends to suffer. And that is my issue with RCP scores. They're almost never as good as they could be and it makes a lot of sense why a lot of that stuff sounds the same. It probably makes it easier to pump them out.

@Mephariel There's a difference between having assistants, interns, orchestrators, etc. vs 5 - 6 actual established composers on a score. Yes, most composers have teams of people who do various things for them. I'm not denying that RCP is the top of the industry. It probably is, but I don't like that it is or how they do things. Just a part of making everything more into a machine when it comes to movies these days.

That's kind of a cool perspective!

Like perhaps it's cool that he did all the live performances too? But yeah. I still find it baffling that so many people work on scores at RCP.

Not gonna lie. I am actually still surprised by how little I feel like I've seen of this movie.

Yeah. I’ve heard some talk of female vocals being highlighted in the score. Also yeah, it’s a slightly new version of the BVS riff for the rest of it.

Sounds about right! Gosh I am struggling a LOT to keep an open mind about this

Honestly. I imagine it could have something to do with the fact that this is probably better than the Whedon version in a couple of aspects and it's getting elevated a bit for that. Plus, a lot of people want this film to succeed for Snyder, which is fair enough. He went through hell to get here and seems like a good dude so I wish him well on this. I just wish I liked more of his films. I don't honestly have many issues with his visual style, but the scripts bog these DC movies down a LOT. If I had to name the primary issues I have with the DC films, it's not the CGI, the Style, or the Direction: It's the Script and the Music for me. If Snyder were paired with far better screenwriters then I think he could produce far better films. In the end though, for pre-release reviews that's about what I'd expect. The really passionate people will probably see this film first and I expect it to go down a bit as it's released. If many of the other positive reviews are like the one linked above, then I think it's being elevated a bit just due to the fandom and hype of the situation. When I eventually share my thoughts I am honestly going to try and look at this film as it's own thing and have that set of thoughts and then discuss and think about the comparison aspect separately. Just because it's better / different than the Whedon version does not necessarily mean it's good in my eyes, but the reviews do at least make it seem promising that it's different and better than the Frankenstein we got.

Here maybe. There’s a ton of Snyder Super Fans that will watch as well.

I feel like the same people who end up liking this, also liked The Ultimate Edition of Batman V Superman, which I found even worse than the theatrical cut, despite hearing that it greatly improves it. More does not automatically mean better. Still looking forward to seeing it on Thursday, but it sounds like even people who liked it didn't think it needed to be 4 hours, which means this is gonna be a drag to get through... yaaaaay. That shot at 1:11 is looking REAL rough.

That's a great point. I forgot about that. Then yeah, I'd probably say to save time and money they just dropped in some cues from BvS and MoS in some parts. Now, they could be remixed or altered from their original since I'm sure they were able to get access to those stems and what not, but I'd wager that it's the original recordings.