Fancyarcher

Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, Hellboy, Avengers, and now Justice League. That's quite the superhero lineup. That's an unexpected choice. He's scored so many superhero films at this point, might as well try his hands at the Justice League I guess. BTW a lot of his own material for AOU was fairly good, his rendition of the Avengers theme was great, so I have confidence he'll deliver something good. He stepped in to shoot some scenes after Snyder said he was taking a break because of his daughter's death.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - 9 / 10

Yeah, sometimes. Half the other time he seems to prefer loud textures above anything else.

Most of the score has been uploaded on youtube, if you care.

Composers that could actually make themes with counterpoints and clear melodies too.

The Cat Returns - 7.5 / 10

Still that "today's song comparison" doesn't work, that's aside the point though. Hollywood these days seem to be allergic to themes. Good film music shouldn't have to be music wallplayer. Good music should be able to know when to give the rights emotions and tone above anything else. A lot of modern film music for me fails precisely because often I get nothing out of it. It's ridiculous.

If that was even really the case, at least 90% of Hollywood blockbusters scores these days wouldn't sound like musical wallpaper.

Thankfully it was released around Christmas and in limited, it still lost a lot of money sadly.

1492 is also very good, though that's the 1990's of course. Big fan of Vangelis as well BTW, Missing is in need of a proper release.

Not very long. It wasn't super successful, it's not exactly an audience friendly film, so I'm not surprised.

If that was the case then there'd be hella more techno-beats and auto-tunning in these scores. Not to mention that most studios these days seem to hate actual melodies.

Marvel at least had the curiosity in 2008 to treat Iron Man like a one and done film, save for Nick Fury's cameo in the after-credits because even they realized it may have not been a hit at the time. All these studios want their own franchises these days, that they don't think ahead of time about the possibility of failure. It's very frustrating to say the least.

Fade To Black - Craig Safan - The suspense rock bits don't do a whole lot for me, but I do like the shimmer strings theme, and the French like waltz classical sounds very nice. Overall an uneven score, though it's fairly effective in the film itself. Those are good examples, some of my other favorite 80's synth scores would probably be Escape From New York (most John Carpenter stuff as well), Day of The Dead, Blade Runner, The Blob, Flight of The Navigator (cheesy Silvestri synclavier score, but I really love it honestly, nostalgia man), among others. There were a lot of actual horror films that used only electronics around that time to usually fairly effective results.

I've been told that one of the biggest problems with The Mummy is that so much of it just feels like set-up for more dark universe. If Universal is going to continue with the dark universe somehow, they're going to have make these films better, if they can. Studios don't want "old-fashioned" adventure scores, they want mood / noise music these days because strong themes are actually considered too old-fashion and or distracting, apparently. Not surprised by the composer / music choice.

The synclavier is all there of course, but I find its use effective. The album and film are actually different though. The music in the film was actually quite restrained, while on the album it seems to strangely more "beepy / melodious", which was Shire's original intent. BTW apparently according to an interview with Shire in 1985, the reason why Hyams wanted a electronic score was because he "felt the score needed a bit of the “other-worldliness” that electronic realization would evoke", so in that sense I can understand why he went with that type of music, well that and it was the 80's.

Likely Peter Hyams, who originally hired of all people to do the music, Tony Banks, but they had a falling out. If you watch the film though, much of the music is dialed back quite a bit anyway. Personally I really like the music because while it is very 80's, it does manage to create quite the atmosphere at points too, and I'm a fan of the sound. Of course it has nothing on the original in terms of actual music, but it's good. On that note, 2010 and Short Circuit are the only Shire scores that I'm aware of that are largely synth based, unless I'm mistaken.

2010 - David Shire - Really quite good, one of the better all electronic scores of the 80's I've heard so far.

Oh it's different I'll admit, I just wish it was the kind of different I like more. Way too much of BVS sounds utterly "bleak" for me to enjoy for example. It's certainly better then a lot of the Zimmer clone scores at least.

Zimmer's score for MOS and BVS is exactly the kind of issue I have with modern superhero scoring and scoring in general. He makes fine themes, but his underscoring for both films is full of largely noise and irritating Junkie XL electronic, not my cup of tea really. I suppose it could be worse though, like Jackman's work for The Winter Soldier. Shudders!

Farewell My Lovely and Monkey Shines are also great. Anyway... The Mummy - Brian Tyler - After a promising if good start (Egypt's Next Great Queen actually features some decent Tyler scoring that isn't overdone), the album starts to head into typical chaotic Tyler territory. There's some fine modern adventure, including a nice theme for Cruise's character, but boy does Tyler need to learn how to quiet things down more often. Sometimes it feels like he thinks like he's composing for a huge opera or something. Also the album is just way too long, which is typical of a Tyler release really, otherwise it's a fine score I suppose.

He had the perfect voice for Batman and I love how much he was willing to parody himself later. "Ready to move out!" Damn! RIP!

Film and score both go to Dunkirk. That film certainly has interested me out of the films this summer, and I'm almost equally interested in Zimmer score as well. I do appreciate that the film is less then 2 hours though, much as I am fan of Nolan's previous films, this one doesn't sound like it'll be so "excessive". Should be good, hopefully.

Wake when we get actual "epic romantic music" in our superhero films again. I liked Logan, and parts of the Wonder Woman score are starting to grow on me but damn if the action music isn't the same RC pumping noise we've heard a million times. Certainly the MCU could do better to have actual recurring themes playing throughout their films, but they seem adverse to that, as well. Article is good and well-meaning but I don't entirely agree with the subject.

La Pella - Lalo Schifrin - Found this while searching online. It's an obscure Italian film with a score by Schifrin, written during what I consider the composers most varied period. It's great, with a sweeping main theme, some dissonant strings, and old-timey source material, as well as classical music references. The original album is short but apparently the music was re-released in Spain in 2006, running at over an hour in total as well. Good stuff!