Strings, Brass, and Spandex: The Musical
Mythopoesis of Hollywood’s Superhero
Renaissance
By
Mark Richardson
10847839
Candidate for Master of Arts and Culture: Musicology
26th June 2015
‘Wheels up, let’s rock ‘n’ roll!’
- Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)
Contents
Introduction 4
Hollywood’s superhero renaissance 5
Reasons behind the success 7
Tone and music in the twentieth century 10
What should Hollywood’s superhero renaissance sound like? 15
Five case studies 17
1. ‘Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place’ in
Iron Man (2008) and The Avengers (2012) 18
2. ‘Underlining psychological refinements’ in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) 25 3. ‘Serving as a kind of neutral background filler’ in Spider-Man (2002) 31 4. ‘Building a sense of continuity’ in The Dark Knight (2008) 36 5. ‘Underpinning the theatrical build-up of a scene, and rounding it off
with a sense of finality’ in Superman Returns (2006) 41
Conclusion 47
Bibliography 53
Filmography 55
Word count (excl. footnotes, bibliography, and filmography): 18,793
Introduction
Henry John Pratt has written that ‘comics [are] more suited than any other medium for adaptation into film’ due to the fact that ‘each medium requires us to make sense of a sequence of images.’1 It is perhaps for this reason that adaptations of comic book characters have been around for nearly as long as the comic books themselves. Even so, the recent spate of superhero films is unprecedented. In the fifteen years since the turn of the twenty-first century, the number of superhero film adaptations made in America has been more than double the number made during the entire twentieth century, and their average box office gross more than triple. Unadjusted for inflation, the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films is now the highest-growing film franchise in history, beating such stalwarts as the Star Wars saga, the James Bond series, and a certain Harry
Potter.2 The appetite for these films seems to be unwavering, and every year at least three blockbuster productions come to fruition. The “superhero movie” has not just come of age, it is now perhaps the most reliably bankable weapon in Hollywood’s arsenal. In the last seven years in particular, the two dominant comic book publishers, Marvel and DC (wholly owned by Disney and TimeWarner respectively), have even been able to map out their release schedules up to the early 2020s, such is the guaranteed demand for their films.3 This has also enabled them to situate individual films within constructed mythical universes that their characters share, not only creating a larger, richer sandbox to play in, but also rather cleverly making every film, however good, unmissable.
These films are not just bound together by shared characters or financial success: shared socio-political and moral standpoints, as well as a now-established aesthetic framework have given Hollywood’s superhero renaissance a common - even homogenised - “tone” or “feel” that is continuously reinforced with every release. In a sense, the “superhero movie” has arguably become a genre in its own right, with its own set of rules and conventions that usually must be adhered to in order to achieve (financial) success.
1
Pratt, Henry John, ‘Making Comics into Film,’ in The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, ed. Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), p.147.
2
A franchise is often defined as consisting of a film and all its subsequent sequels and/or prequels. It may also refer to a group of films that belong to a shared fictional universe but are not strictly narratively linked, such as the James Bond series. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the highest-grossing film franchise as measured by worldwide box office receipts. See http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises/sort/World, accessed 20/05/2015.
3
See Marvel’s official website for their current predicted output slate until 2020. At the time of writing, this was http://marvel.com/news/movies/24065/marvel_studios_schedules_new_release_dates_for_4_films and http://batman- news.com/2014/10/15/warner-bros-dc-movies-revealed-wonder-woman-justice-league-2017-justice-league-2-2019-plus-lots/, both accessed 20/05/2015.
4
In this thesis, I will explore the special role music plays in establishing the “tone” and “feel” in the films of Hollywood’s superhero renaissance, and the mechanisms through which this is achieved. Through a series of case studies, I will investigate how music functions alongside other elements in a film’s mise en scène, contributing to its overarching mythopoesis – that is, the production of a character-specific mythology, played out over the course of a film’s narrative. While this thesis will, at times, need to reach back to the comic books themselves, it will primarily try and treat the new era of superhero films as standalone works of art in their own right. However, as we shall see, some of these characters are over seventy years old and have accumulated considerable cultural baggage over the intervening years. Therefore, some contextualisation can be important when understanding why specific aesthetic choices, including the type and use of music, are made.
I will start by defining exactly what I mean by the term ‘Hollywood’s superhero renaissance’ and then examining the genre conventions that govern it. I will then perform a preliminary survey of the literature regarding the adaptation of comic books into films, before examining five case study soundtracks in detail (Ramin Djawadi’s score for Iron Man [2008], John Powell’s X-Men: The Last
Stand [2006], Danny Elfman’s Spiderman [2002], Hans Zimmer’s and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight [2008], and John Ottman’s Superman Returns [2006]). To conclude, I will explore
what these scores have in common and the implications of superhero music on contemporary Hollywood scoring practices more generally.
Hollywood’s superhero renaissance
In this thesis, Hollywood’s “superhero renaissance” refers to the body of films made in the twenty-first century, based on established superhero characters, and produced by one of the major American studios. Defining what exactly constitutes a superhero film can be problematic, as Dan Hassler-Forest has noted that characters from action films such as James Bond and Jason Bourne often demonstrate what could be considered superhuman characteristics.4 To avoid this confusion, Hassler-Forest uses Rick Altman’s three levels of genre signification as outlined in Film/Genre and specifically relates them to the superhero franchises: ‘semantically (by the appearance of costumes, superhuman powers, etc.), syntactically (narratives in which heroes save cities/worlds/communities from destruction by evil), and pragmatically (texts that are written and talked about as part of an
4
Hassler-Forest, D.A., Supeheroes and the Bush doctrine: narrative and politics in post-9/11 discourse (PhD Diss., Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2011).
5
existing superhero genre).’5 From this, he’s able to simply define ‘the term “superhero movie” as a genre that is recognized as such by general audiences.’6
This definition allows quite a distinct - albeit it varied – group of films to emerge, although it is not without its problems. The ‘pragmatic’ clause, while essential to separate out superhero films from action films that feature characters with above human powers, also seems to limit the inclusion of films that do not have a well-known, pre-existing comic book based mythology. For example, Peter Berg’s Hancock (2008) and Brad Bird’s The Incredibles (2004) have no print media precursor at all, the latter instead serving as a loving parody of the genre as a whole, while the characters from Disney’s Big Hero 6 (2014) only appear in two comic book miniseries, a total of eight issues. Yet these films both ostensibly featured superhero characters, had large budgets, were produced and released by major Hollywood studios, and performed well at the box office. Whether these films are considered “fully-fledged” superhero flicks is still up for debate, but one might posit that animated films (as the latter two both are) and those of a parodic nature (of which all three are to some extent) do not fit as comfortably into the genre, or to return to Hassler-Forest, would cause genre confusion ‘by general audiences.’
The definition also represents a syntactical simplification between good and evil/hero and villain that belies the often complicated relationships between these dichotomies that are played out in the films themselves. Not only is the movement of characters between these different “ base camps” of morality often absolutely critical to the narrative, but also the definitions of right and wrong rarely have much stability. In particular, those comics with a dark viewpoint, such as Watchmen, make these boundaries incredibly blurred.
Defining where the current superhero renaissance began is equally problematic. Stephen Norrington’s Blade (1998) and Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) were the first films licensed by Marvel Studios, a new division of the company specifically set up to make film adaptations of its library of famous characters. Ten years prior to this, Warner Brothers merged with Time Inc., the then parent company of DC Comics, bringing their intellectual property under the direct control of a film studio for the first time. This buyout led to the production of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), which was an unqualified success, becoming the first film in history to gross $100 million in ten
5 Hassler-Forest, p.17.
6
Ibid.
6
days and eventually making $411 million (from a $48 million budget).7 From a corporate point of view, the release of Batman and Blade therefore mark a new period in the relationship between the two major comic book publishers and Hollywood studios, DC with Warner Brothers, and Marvel with 20th Century Fox respectively. However, much like Richard Donner’s Superman, Burton’s
Batman can be viewed foremost as a successful action film, rather than heralding the arrival of a
new superhero genre proper. As Sharon L. Cohen has put it, ‘these movies were a teaser for what was to come in the new century.’8 Indeed, even though both spawned multiple sequels, none of these achieved the same financial success as their predecessors or inspired commercially viable adaptations of other characters. This contrasts with the current franchises based on the characters of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, for example, where each successive sequel has made more money than the film preceding it.9
Hollywood’s superhero renaissance proper really takes off after Sam Raimi’s Spiderman (2002). While Singer’s X-Men had, according to James Smith, ‘arguably created the modern form of the genre,’10 salvaging it from the burning ashes of the critically savaged Batman and Robin (1997), it was the blue and red web-slinger that realized the true box office potential of the superhero movie and laid the groundwork for a decade of rich financial rewards. Spiderman grossed over $820 million, at the time the highest-grossing superhero film of all time by a considerable margin (now only the 6th!), and in 2008 Disney bought out Marvel in its entirety, the $4 billion price tag a clear reflection of the earning potential of its stable of well-known characters.
Reasons behind the success
The success of Hollywood’s superhero renaissance is, in one sense, unsurprising. Big budget fantasy action films – a broad heading under which any superhero movie could easily sit – have always performed well at the box office. Star Wars, E.T., and Jurassic Park, for example, each successively became the highest grossing film of all time over a period that spanned from 1978 to
7
Worldwide box office revenue as recorded by Box Office Mojo,
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=batman.htm , accessed 21/05/2015.
8
Cohen, Sharon L., ‘History of Comic Book Superheroes’, Mania.com (2014), http://www.mania.com/history-comic-book-superheroes_article_116423.html, accessed 05/05/2015.
9 United States domestic box office revenue as recorded by Box Office Mojo,
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=superhero.htm, accessed 14/06/2015.
10
Smith, James, ‘The Art of the Superhero Movie,’ The Daily Lounge, http://dailylounge.com/the-daily/entry/the-art-of-the-superhero-movie, accessed 20/05/2015.
7
1998.11 Coinciding with this is the fact that special effects are now photorealistic, and relatively much cheaper and accessible than ever before. However, the sheer volume of superhero films produced in the last fifteen years and the eye-popping amount of money generated has left scholars wondering what other factors might be at play.
Some, such as Shaun Treat, have linked the superhero renaissance to the wider geo-political situation of the United States by using the phrase ‘post 9/11 superhero zeitgeist,’12 while Jason Dittmer has written explicitly that ‘superheroism resonates with the post-9/11 foreign policy of the United States and that this has enabled the genre to flourish at the box office.’13 Other commentators in the mainstream media have noted that ‘post-9/11, the traditional notion of superheroes rung hollow. They had to be reinvented so that they more realistically reflected the fears and concerns of a new, post-attack, America,’14 while Jeffrey Brown acknowledged in The
Guardian newspaper that ‘the metaphorical saving of major cities, be they New York, Metropolis
or Gotham, is a comforting tale in a post-9/11 world.’15
9/11 therefore seems like a watershed moment in the life of the superhero film, in the same way it has been across many other streams of American media. It is also true that comfort has often been sought (and found) in superheroes at times when the world (played by America) is in a period of difficulty, and that their fictional worlds intersect with the real one. Ian Gordon has described how The Human Torch was depicted burning off a Japanese soldier’s arm in a 1943 edition of the eponymous comic to prevent him from torturing a woman with a sword, and noted that soldiers wrote letters to DC Comics during the Vietnam War to request an intervention by Superman.16
The post-9/11 landscape has also brought about new moral and political frameworks that favour the cinematic depiction of superhero characters. On one hand, terrorists have made a convenient villain both in terms of a stereotyped visual representation and a supposed clear separation between right
11
Timeline of highest grossing films of all time according to Six Degrees of Film (2013), http://sixdegreesoffilm.com/2013/08/05/336/, accessed 14/06/2015.
12
Treat, Shaun, ‘How America Leaned to Stop Worrying and Cynically ENJOY! The Post-9/11 Supehero Zeitgeist,’
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Routledge, 2009), pp.103-109.
13
Dittmer, Jason, ‘American exceptionalism, visual effects, and the post-9/11 cinematic super boom,’ Environment and
Planning D:Society and Space, Vol. 29 (2010), p.114.
14
Hagley, Annika and Michael Harrison, ‘The amazing renaissance of the superhero post 9/11,’The Conversation (2014), http://theconversation.com/the-amazing-renaissance-of-the-superhero-post-9-11-25733, accessed 05/05/2015.
15
Brown, Jeffrey A., ‘How Marvel’s superheroes found the magic to make us all true believers,’ The Guardian (2013) http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/31/marvel-superheroes-true-believers, accessed 05/05/2015.
16
Gordon, Ian, ‘The moral world of Superman and the American war in Vietnam,’ Journal of Graphic Novels and
Comics Online (Taylor and Francis, 2015), pp.1-10.
8
and wrong (see my discussion on Iron Man). On the other, the Bush administration’s perceived mishandling of the Iraq War in the eyes of a critical public makes the idea of a vigilante operating outside of government control, guided purely by his own (correct) moral code, even more appealing. The separation of superheroes and their government is not new, for example Mike Dubose has shown that in the Captain America comics of the 1980s, the hero ‘is not just setting himself apart from the system here, he is setting himself above the system. Even though he is often at odds with the government, Rogers [Steve Rogers/Captain America] still follows his morals and sense of justice.’17 In another passage, Dubose writes how ‘true heroship did not occur without defining oneself as an entity separate from the powers that be and transcending traditional notions of law, order, and justice.’18 In Hollywood’s superhero renaissance we see these ideas occurring time and again, particularly in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, in which Batman is often seen as working outside the law, but still undoubtedly motivated by “good” intentions. A lack of trust in the government and those who keep law and order only fuels the popularity of these storylines.
Recent comic book adaptations have also reflected – and, arguably, contributed to - a growing mainstream awareness of civil rights issues, such as racism, feminism, and gay emancipation. In the 1960s, when movements against the oppression of minorities were in full swing, publishers introduced characters such as the X-Men and Spiderman as atypical “others” who were different, genetically or otherwise, and therefore cast out from “normal” society. While their differences were often the cause of social problems, they were also usually the source of their power, through which they could help society as a whole, and thus promote acceptance of their differences. In this vein, Ramzi Fawaz has written that ‘the seemingly impossible character of popular fantasies signals the continued “otherness” of the potential social relations they seek to describe, while making that otherness desirable as an alternative to normative social aspirations.’19 Comic books contribute to a continuing process of viewing otherness in a positive light, as can be seen in the recent outing and subsequent gay marriage of the Marvel character Northstar, as well as DC revealing that the character Alysia Yeoh is transgender.
17
DuBose, Mike S., ‘Holding Out for a Hero: Reaganism, Comic Book Vigilantes, and Captain America,’ The Journal
of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 6 (Blackwell, 2007), p.933.
18
Ibid, p.916.
19
Fawaz, Ramzi, ‘”Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!” Mutant Superheroes and the Cultural Politics of Popular Fantasy in Postwar America,’ American Literature, Vol. 83, No. 2 (Duke University Press, 2011), p.359.
9
In a wider sense, dichotomies of good and evil, patriotism and heresy, sameness and otherness, are all played out in the superhero’s identity itself: they are the personification of a post-9/11, (partially) socially emancipated society. Dittmer, with reference to the American two party political system, writes that ‘the Manichean nature of many superhero narratives dovetails nicely with the influence of the voting system on political discourse: both tend towards two polarized subjectivities,’20 while Clare Pitkethly has shown that ‘the repetitive shift in the form of the Other suggests something of a dialectical pattern; a spiralling outward as each subsequent excess is subsumed within a greater American whole.’21 Pitkethly’s point is that Superman’s classic slogan of ‘truth, justice, and the American way’ is, bit by bit, being chipped away to demonstrate a “universal” way instead. This is clearer in Hollywood’s superhero renaissance as it is in current comic books, which are largely sold and marketed to American audiences, compared with films that regularly make more than 60% of their box office revenue from cinemas outside of the United States.22
Tone and music in the twentieth century
If we accept that the events of 9/11 were in some way influential to Hollywood’s superhero renaissance, a look back across the previous century demonstrates that this recent movement follows a historical pattern of flip-flopping between “serious” and “camp” representations of superhero characters, and that these changes in tone often correspond with the predominant political and social climates in play at the time. If this was observable in comic books, it was even more pronounced in the television, film, and radio adaptations that followed them. And for every example of these, music was required.
Julian Chambliss and William Svitavsky have written that ‘Superman is – by most standards, at least – the first superhero, though the character was far from unprecedented.’23 He emerged in Action Comics #1, June 30th 1938, the successor of dime novels that became popular with soldiers during the American Civil War and the pulp adventure stories carried by newspapers in the early
20
Dittmer, Jason, ‘Captain America in the news: changing mediascapes and the appropriation of a superhero,’ Journal
of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Routledge, 2012), p.144.
21
Pitkethly, Clare, ‘The pursuit of identity in the face of paradox: indeterminacy, structure and repetition in Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman,’ Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Routledge, 2012), p.219.
22 Percentage of box office gross divided by U.S. and the rest of the world can be found at Box Office Mojo,
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/, accessed 14/06/2015.
23
Chambliss, Julian C. and William L. Svitavsky, ‘The Origin of the Superhero: Culture, Race, and Identity in US Popular Culture, 1890-1940,’ in Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience, eds. Chambliss, Svitavsky, and Donaldson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), p.18.
10
twentieth century.24 Superman and other early superheroes, most notably Batman, emerged from a wartime environment and generally held textbook wartime mentalities: a clear distinction between good and evil, unquestioning patriotism, and a belief in the collective will of the American people such that their powers were always used in the service of the populace and not for personal profit. This manifests itself in stories where the hero acts in the service of “the people” to fight collectively established wrongs, rather than supersede them altogether. For example, in Batman Begins, Batman (Christian Bale) captures crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) through unsanctioned, extra-legal activities, but ultimately leaves him outside the police station so that he can be brought to justice through the standard judicial process.
In 1941 the first Superman adaptation – an animated short film – was completed. The opening title music, which plays under the famous exclamations ‘is it a bird? Is it a plane? No… it’s Superman!' is stylistically similar to the wartime propaganda films emerging at the same time. Composed by Sammy Timberg, who scored as many as 200 cartoon shorts in the 1930s and 40s,25 the ‘Superman March’ is a quasi-military marching piece for full orchestra. The piece can be looked at as an example par excellence of the prevalent tone of superhero comics and their adaptations at the time. The two largest comic book publishers, Timely Comics and Detective Comics (now Marvel and DC respectively) both produced explicitly propagandist material. For example, in 1941 Captain America was introduced with a front cover that showed him punching Adolf Hitler. And these storylines were clearly effective, as Lance Eaton has estimated that ‘during World War II, comic books were read by over 40 percent of the armed forces and significantly outsold magazines such as
Reader’s Digest and Life.’26 Similarly, Batman’s first adaptation in a serial film, in 1943, saw him acting as a US government agent going up against the sinister Japanese Prince Daka during World War II. Lee Zahler provided the theme tune and the almost continuous underscore, which borrowed heavily from the composers of Hollywood’s Golden era, such as Korngold and Steiner. Despite the fact that Superman was animated and Batman was live action, both adaptations were either serious in tone or made a serious point, in so much as the battles they undertook paralleled the threats faced by the world by Nazi Germany. Comics of this era relied upon engaging with issues that resonated with their readership, rather than simply exploiting the limitless fantastical possibilities inherent in a fictional, illustrative medium.
24 Ibid, p.17. 25
Eder, Bruce, ‘Sammy Timberg artist biography,’ All Music, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sammy-timberg-mn0002002166/biography, accessed 14/06/2015.
26
Eaton, Lance, ‘A Superhero for the Times: Superman’s Fight against Oppression and Injustice in the 1930s,’ in Ages
of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience, ed. Chambliss, Svitavsky, and Donaldson
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), p.34. 11
Detective Comics never opted to picture Superman leaving America to fight in the war, choosing instead to keep him at home. Ian Gordon has pointed out that this not only allowed Superman’s ‘faith in American democracy to triumph,’ but that it also gave the character significant staying power after the war where other Superheroes who were explicitly drawn killing Nazis, such as The Human Torch and Captain America, struggled to find a new post-war purpose. Even so, Gordon points out that ‘the cover of the September 1945 issue of Superman showed Superman ineffectually trying to help Lois Lane defrost her well-stocked fridge.’ For a man who can fly and lift cars above his head, it’s quite a step down. By the late 1940s, superhero tales were in sharp decline and crime comics, or those that were more humorous in nature, became popular. In 1954, the Comic Code was introduced to help maintain the moral standards of comic books that had been established in what was an essentially propagandist environment. This included rules such as: ‘Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.’ In other words, the social influence of comic books had been recognized, and with it the need to protect and promote American values became clear.
By the 1950s and 1960s, and with the meteoric rise of home television sets, the tone had changed to an even greater extent. Batman, particularly with regard to the 1960s TV series with Adam West in the title role, became increasingly “camp.” Will Brooker summarises the criticism of the adaptation, citing its ‘burned-out celebrities in tacky, overblown costumes, “outrageous” dialogue, absurd situations treated with ludicrous gravity, “slumming” actors, corny jokes.’27 Unlike Zahler’s sinister underscoring, Batman of the 1960s was given a theme tune that reflected his new “pop” appeal. The now (in)famous track by Neal Hefti features a twelve bar blues structure with a James Bond-esque electric guitar riff and choral interjections of ‘Batman.’ It emerged around the same time as other superhero characters were given their own shows and their own theme songs. Notable examples of this trend includes The Superman/Aquaman Hour (1967), Marvel Superheroes (1966), and
Spiderman (1967), all of which open with songs that explicitly list the featured superheroes’ powers
in a semi-parodic vaudeville/cabaret style. This can also be seen as a reflection of the fact that superhero characters were becoming increasingly mainstream and these television shows were designed to appeal to non-comic book readers who might not be familiar with a particular character’s abilities. In any case, the stuffy military marches and sinister atonal piano sploshes of
27
Brooker, Will, Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon (New York: Continuum, 2000), p.174. 12
the 1940s were not in keeping with an America that was leaning away from the conservatism and conformity that had previously been dominant.
Even the Vietnam War, which brought about the reintroduction of Captain America and the creation of Iron Man (his suit built initially a means of escape while being held captive by communist Vietnamese forces)28 didn’t mark an immediate sea change in the prevailing tone of comics. Superman was once again relegated to the side lines, eventually joining the conflict as it neared its conclusion.29 But Vietnam was fraught with moral pitfalls, not least because the black and white separation of good and evil that dominated the superhero mind set in the Second World War now seemed outdated and inadequate. Gordon concludes his article by writing that ‘the Vietnam War showed [that] the world had shifted and DC needed to find a new basis for Superman’s morality; and it did so eventually by having him and other superheroes play out dramas about the nature of power.’30
This began in earnest in the early 1970s, when superheroes were given storylines that involved a great degree of self-doubt about their abilities, and featured real-world problems such as drug abuse, alcoholism, and poverty. The music accompanying the television and film adaptations of these stories can be divided into two different styles. The first, as can be heard in the theme tunes to
The Amazing Spiderman (1977) and The New Fantastic Four (1978), abandoned the explanatory
songs of the 1960s and replaced it with a more modern and upbeat sound, often featuring a blend of orchestral, jazz, and synth elements. The second is exemplified by John Williams's score to
Superman (1978) that, like many of his scores, harks back to the Golden era of Hollywood. As a
march, it is also reminiscent of the Superman cartoons of the 1940s and 50s.
The 1980s ushered in the so-called ‘Modern Age of Comics,’ sometimes called the ‘Dark Age of Comics’ such was the bleaker tone that prevailed over publications like The Dark Knight and
Watchmen. In the former, Batman re-emerged with the vigilante spirit that had been lost over the
previous two decades of campy cartoon television adaptations. In the latter, writer Alan Moore noted that he ‘was consciously trying to do something that would make people feel uneasy.’31 Film adaptations were few and far between, and generally both commercially and critically
28
Gordon, p.4.
29 Ibid, p.10. 30 Gordon, p.10.
31 Moore, Alan, Dave Gibbons and Neil Gaiman, ‘A Portal to Another Dimension,’ The Comics Journal #116 (1987),
http://www.tcj.com/a-portal-to-another-dimension-alan-moore-dave-gibbons-and-neil-gaiman/ , accessed 13/06/2015. 13
disappointing. Superman III made a mere $60 million at the U.S. domestic box office,32 while
Supergirl “bombed” to an even greater extent, recouping less than half of its $35 million budget.33
The difference between comic book and film adaptations of superhero characters had never been more pronounced, with Superman III heavily criticised for its comedic tone. It wasn’t until Tim Burton’s Batman arrived that the films began to be taken more seriously again. Danny Elfman’s score was praised – the driving strings in compound time were reminiscent of Williams’s Superman a decade earlier, but the gothic overtones were decidedly Elfman.
The 1990s saw an explosion of live action and cartoon superhero television programmes, including
Batman: The Animated Series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men Evolution, Iron Man: The Animated Series, The Fantastic Four, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and Spiderman Unlimited to name but a few. The connections between film and television also became
stronger, with Batman: The Animated Series using Elfman’s theme from the Tim Burton film of 1989 and carrying a much darker visual aesthetic to match. The New Adventures of Superman was a big-budget live-action show that ran for four seasons on ABC and was given a heroic, John Williams-esque fanfare opening. Synth became the order of the day in cartoon adaptations, particularly the themes to X-Men and Spiderman Unlimited, which both also have a sinister edge to them. Songs were not out of vogue altogether though, as exemplified by the popularity of Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles and its catchy title music.
At the same time that television superhero adaptations were numerous, film adaptations struggled to find significant traction and were invariably critically or commercially disappointing. Captain
America and The Rocketeer both performed poorly at the box office. Others, such as the sequels Batman Returns and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II did well, but didn’t make nearly as much
money as their predecessors. And almost all of them, Burton’s Batman Returns aside, were panned by the critics.34
In the second half of the 1990s Batman was the only true superhero to continue in film, but once again he began to drift towards the “camp” in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman and
32 Superman III box office data according to BoxOfficeMojo.com,
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=superman3.htm, accessed 14/06/2015.
33 Supergirl box office data according to BoxOfficeMojo.com,
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=supergirl.htm, accessed 14/06/2015. Estimated budget according to IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088206/, accessed 14/06/2015.
34 See list of aggregated critical ratings of Superhero films made between 1990-1999 at McKenzie, B., ‘The Best and
Worse Superhero Movies, According to Rotten Tomatoes,’ Superhero Nation (2011),
http://www.superheronation.com/2011/08/22/rotten-tomatoes-ratings-for-superhero-movies/, accessed 15/06/2015. 14
Robin. Other comic book adaptations such as Alex Proyas’s The Crow, Danny Cannon’s Judge Dredd, and Mark Dippe’s Spawn took a darker route – the latter two criticised for being overly
violent – however, the most successful comic book adaptation of the 1990s was Charles Russell’s deliberately campy and children-friendly The Mask. For this, veteran composer Randy Edelman produced a sweeping, full orchestral score that still maintained a humorous feel.
But in the mid-1990s the comic book market crashed. Marvel’s sales dropped 70% and the BBC reported that ‘shares that had been worth $35.75 in 1993 dropped to $2.38 in just three years.’35 Marvel ended up merging with ToyBiz whose boss, Avi Arad, took the helm of Marvel’s film division. They established a new way of licensing their characters, with the X-Men going to Fox, Spider-Man to Sony, and Blade to New Line Cinema. This is arguably when the renaissance started, with DC essentially playing catch up until Christopher Nolan entered the fray with Batman Begins.
What should Hollywood’s superhero renaissance “sound” like?
For a composer working at the beginning of Hollywood’s superhero renaissance, then, there was almost no precedence at all for the type of music they should compose, given the massive range of genres and instrumentation that have been employed over sixty years of prior adaptations. That said, as most superhero films fall into a subcategory of the action movie genre, there are certain musical expectations that audiences will likely want to be met.
The “sound” of the action movie was principally established in the 1930s when a number of Jewish composers emigrated to Hollywood to avoid the dangers posed by Nazi Germany, most notably Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. They brought with them the lush European orchestral sound that was predominant at the end of the 19th century, as well as the knowledge of how to musically underscore drama from their experiences of the German operatic tradition.
As James Buhler has commented, ‘Music’s role was to convince the audience that a continuity of thought, a narrative line, existed in the film, and that the audience could also discern this line.’36 One of the ways in which the composers of Hollywood’s early sound era tried to do this was by using leitmotifs to represent different characters or emotions in the score, for example in
35
Savage, Mark, ‘Marvel Avenged: From financial ruin to the biggest film franchise in history,’ BBC News (2015) http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32379661, accessed 15/06/2015.
36 Buhler, James and David Neumeyer, ‘Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film: The Classical Hollywood System,’
in The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. Neumeyer (Oxford: OUP, 2014), p.20. 15
Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood.37 As in a Wagnerian music drama, these motifs provided a means to “look” - or better, “listen” - forwards and backwards through the narrative, hinting at future character developments, or providing a depth of nuanced detail to events taking place in the present. Adorno was famously scathing of the application of the leitmotif to film, writing that ‘here [in film] the function of the leitmotif has been reduced to the level of musical lackey, who announces his master with an important air even through the eminent personage is clearly recognizable to everyone.’38 Despite his criticism, relating a theme to a character or a location became commonplace, particularly in the large orchestral scores used for action films. Two more recent examples of complex leitmotif association can be found in John Williams’s scores to the Star Wars films, of which all six share common themes across almost twelve hours of music, and Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which supposedly features more than eighty individual leitmotifs.39
In the 1970s and 80s the introduction of synthesized elements became commonplace, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s Hans Zimmer pioneered the combination of acoustic and electronic elements to form highly successful scores for films such as Rain Man and The Lion King. More recently, the rise of tech-savvy composers who work directly with digital audio workstations (DAWs) has led to an even greater manipulation of the sonic elements of a score, and increased integration between the roles of composer, sound designer, and sound editor. An example of this can be seen with Stephen Price’s music for Gravity, which used the setting of soundless outer space to construct a unique score inspired by the noise of vibrations transmitted through the main characters’ spacesuits.
A modern superhero score would be expected to include aspects of these modern scoring techniques while also reflecting on the musical heritage of the hero’s previous screen adaptations. As well as this, the importance of the principal character (or characters) in a given superhero film means that representational motifs are highly likely to be utilized. It can also be assumed that given the preoccupation with the (often literal) “fight” between good and evil, musical elements associated with conflict and the military, such as arpeggiated brass fanfares and snare drum patterns, will be present somewhere in the score.
37 Winters, Ben, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's The adventures of Robin Hood : a film score guide, (Lanham, Md:
Scarecrow Press, 2007).
38
Adorno, Theodor and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (New York: OUP, 1947). New edition (London: Continuum, 2007), p.3.
39 Handy, Bruce, 'Lord of the Rings' Composer Howard Shore Talks Hobbits, His Start on 'SNL' and Working With
Martin Scorsese,’ Billboard.com (2014), http://www.billboard.com/articles/6304248/the-hobbit-howard-shore-the-battle-of-five-armies-score-lord-of-the-rings-music, accessed 14/06/2015.
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Five case studies
In the five case studies that follow, each film score will be examined with specific reference to one of the five ‘ways in which music serves the screen,’ as outlined by Aaron Copland in his essay Film
Music (1940). These are as follows:
‘1. Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place. Not all Hollywood composers bother about this nicety. Too often, their scores are interchangeable: a thirteenth-century Gothic drama and a hardboiled modern battle of the sexes get similar treatment. The lush symphonic texture of late nineteenth-century music remains the dominating influence. But there are exceptions. Recently, the higher-grade horse opera has begun to have its own musical flavor, mostly a folksong derivative.
2. Underlining psychological refinements—the unspoken thoughts of a character or the unseen implications of a situation. Music can play upon the emotions of the spectator, sometimes counterpointing the thing seen with an aural image that implies the contrary of the thing seen. This is not as subtle as it sounds. A well-placed dissonant chord can stop an audience cold in the middle of a sentimental scene, or a calculated woodwind passage can turn what appears to be a solemn moment into a belly laugh.
3. Serving as a kind of neutral background filler. This is really the music one isn't supposed to hear, the sort that helps to fill the empty spots, such as pauses in a conversation. It's the movie composer's most ungrateful task. But at times, though no one else may notice, he will get private satisfaction from the thought that music of little intrinsic value, through professional manipulation, has enlivened and made more human the deathly pallor of a screen shadow. This is hardest to do, as any film composer will attest, when the neutral filler type of music must weave its way underneath dialogue.
4. Building a sense of continuity. The picture editor knows better than anyone how serviceable music can be in tying together a visual medium which is, by its very nature, continually in danger of falling apart. One sees this most obviously in montage scenes where the use of a unifying musical idea may save the quick flashes of disconnected scenes from seeming merely chaotic.
5. Underpinning the theatrical build-up of a scene, and rounding it off with a sense of finality. The first instance that comes to mind is the music that blares out at the end of a film. Certain producers have boasted their picture's lack of a musical score, but I never saw or heard of a picture that ended in silence.’40
Although it dates from 1940, it coincides with the emergence of the superhero character proper and reflects the cultural sensibilities prevalent at the time. This concept will act as the glue holding these separate close readings together, enabling wider conclusions to be drawn on the ways in which music might serve the superhero film genre specifically. That said, it must be noted that looking at
40 Copland, Aaron, Film Music (1940),
http://puffin.creighton.edu/fapa/Bruce/0New%20Film%20as%20Art%20webfiles/all%20texts%20and%20articles/film_ music_by__aaron_copeland.htm, accessed 14/06/2015.
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each ‘way’ individually will result in their artificial separation from each other, when in reality, as shall be seen, they are deeply intertwined. This is a necessary reduction if we are to explore fully how Copland’s ideas can be applied to the genre in question.
To aid these close readings, other ideas and concepts will also be employed as and when they are needed to enable an understanding of the musical mechanisms that contribute to Copland’s overarching theory.
1. ‘Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place’ in Iron Man (2008)41 and The
Avengers (2012)42
Iron Man is officially the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and was hugely successful at the box office at the time of its release, quadrupling its budget43 and finding significant critical acclaim.44 Directed by Jon Favreau, principally an indie director and actor (he appears in the film as Hogan, Stark’s bodyguard), the film follows the origin story of the titular character. The music was scored by Ramin Djawadi, at the time a relative newcomer to blockbuster film scoring, but who had cut his teeth at Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions company providing arrangements and additional music for films including Blade Trinity and Batman Begins; he was certainly familiar with the modern superhero aesthetic.
Favreau and Djawadi set out at the beginning of production to bring the electric guitar to the fore, an instrument they felt could more appropriately portray a character born of industry and rendered in metal. According to Djawadi, ‘Jon was very involved. He kept mentioning the idea of rock guitars. I loved the idea as it would give us a different tone than other super hero movies.’45 That said, the score also makes heavy use of orchestral elements, while the composed score as a whole sits alongside existing pop and rock music, forming a hybrid soundtrack. It is this hybridity of
41
In Iron Man (Dir. Jon Favreau, 2008), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the genius billionaire owner of a weapons company, is kidnapped by terrorists in Afghanistan. Forced to make weapons for his captors, he chooses instead to build a powerful suit of armour as a means of escape: Iron Man is born. Once back in the United States, he refines his design and uses it to fight crime and terrorism. But his second in command, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), wants to use the technology for other, more sinister, means.
42 The Avengers (Dir. Joss Wheden, 2012) follows the story of a group of superheroes brought together by Nick Fury
(Samuel L. Jackson) in order to stop Loki (Tom Hiddleston) using the power of the tesseract (a vessel containing unlimited energy) to take over the world.
43
For a breakdown of budget vs. worldwide gross see: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ironman.htm
44 Both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, film review aggregating websites, show that, on average, critics rated Iron
Man very highly. See http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man/ and http://www.metacritic.com/movie/iron-man
45 Brennan, Mike and Ramin Djawadi, ‘Breaking Out and Scoring with Ramin Djawadi (Interview)’, Soundtrack.net,
http://www.soundtrack.net/content/article/?id=253, accessed on 25/05/2015. 18
elements and the different ways they are used that allows the score to align with Copland’s first ‘ways in which film music works,’ namely, that of ‘creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place.’
In one of the opening scenes of the film, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is being driven through the Afghan desert by the United States military. The scene begins with a shot of a convoy of Humvees on the move, over which we hear a non-diegetic rendition of AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’ high in the mix. As we cut to a viewpoint inside the vehicle containing Stark, the music becomes diegetic; we see that it is emanating from a CD player and the volume and sound quality adjust accordingly. Moments later everything goes wrong when his convoy is attacked by terrorists using the very weapons he’d designed to keep Americans safe. As the first missile hits the Humvee at the front of the convoy, the music stops and the soundtrack then consists purely of dialogue and the sound effects of weapons being fired.
This opening passage of the film sets up a familiar superhero narrative whereby the American people and their values come under attack and must be saved. In this instance, freedom (in the form of rock ‘n’ roll), democracy (the American soldiers), and capitalism (Tony Stark) – three key tenets of America – are silenced, literally, in the face of evil (terrorism). Jerrod MacFarlane has commented that films such as Iron Man ‘serve as a crutch for American identity, shielding Americans from an unwelcoming world and newly revealed fragility.’46 Tony Stark’s Humvee and the people within it are the manifestation of that: a slice of American identity adrift in a stormy, Middle-Eastern sea.47 The attack reveals the fragility MacFarlane talks about, and after this the rest of the film then reads as America’s attempt to rediscover its voice, a process that is expressed musically as well as through other aspects of the mise en scène.
One of the ways in which this happens is by allowing the morally “good” characters, such as Colonel James Rhodes (Terrence Howard), access to music, while denying access to those who are perceived of as “bad.” When Rhodes is flying in Stark’s private jet at the very beginning of the film we hear the R ‘n’ B track ‘Slept on Tony,’ specifically written for the film by Ghostface Killah, a member of the Wu Tang Clan. A few scenes before this we witness Stark gambling at Caesar’s
46
MacFarlane, Jerrod S., ‘Desperate times and desperate measures: false-representation and distortion of terrorism in post-9/11 superhero films,’ Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Routledge, 2014), p.448.
47 The military equipment used in the film was actually supplied through an agreement with the U.S. Department of
Defense. See Mirrlees, Tanner, ‘How to read Iron Man: The Economics, Geopolitics, and Ideology of an Imperial Film Commodity,’ Cineaction (2014), p.4-11.
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Palace in Las Vegas, while in the background we can hear a big band arrangement of the old Iron
Man cartoon theme.
As with ‘Back in Black,’ both this old theme and ‘Slept on Tony’ are heard diegetically. In the case of the latter two we don’t actually see the source of the music, but the audio mixing and the way that the characters talk to each other (for example, raising their voices so they can be heard over the hi-fi in the private jet) imply that the music is audible “in” the scene and is therefore not ascribed to the unseen filmmaker/narrator. In contrast to the terrorists, who are accompanied with no diegetic music and indeed very limited non-diegetic music, Stark and Rhodes have privileged access to - and could be said to represent or protect - “culture” in the form of this music. While this might seem far-fetched, the Taliban’s banning of music upon their accession to power in 1996 was regularly held up by the West as a symbol of their barbarism and control. As John Street has noted, ‘one of the most vivid images used to illustrate their overthrow was a picture of Afghan citizens joyously waving their radios and cassette players.’48 To this end, when Tony Stark begins to forge his suit in the darkness of the cave where he is being held captive, the mechanical noises are slowly combined with the pulse of percussion and later the sound of the electric guitar and orchestra. In a sense, then, the music confirms that Stark is not only forming a suit of armour, but also his freedom.
The fact this music appears to emerge from the forging process also exemplifies the proximity of diegetic and non-diegetic music throughout Iron Man. As well as the aforementioned popular music that is obviously present “in” the scene, there are also moments when the composed, predominantly non-diegetic score is pulled towards the diegesis by employing a relatively similar sound set as that used by the sound effects department. For example, the sound of forging becomes the rhythmic underpinning of the music in the scenes depicting the suit’s creation. The link between diegetic sound and non-diegetic score is made even stronger when the former directly interacts with the latter. This is most obvious on two occasions. In the first, Stark blasts away from the terrorist camp in his Mark I suit only to have his flight propulsion fail, causing him to crash into the desert sand. His take off and emergence from a huge explosion bring about the first rendition of Djawadi’s heroic Iron Man theme, but the moment his suit fails the music stops, like the needle being pulled from a record. The second example is similar, where Stark’s flight in the Mark II suit, again accompanied by Djawadi’s theme, is cut short when he’s hit by a tank shell. This also results in the immediate cessation of the music.
48 Street, John, ‘Breaking the Silence: Music’s Role in Political Thought and Action,’ Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Routledge, 2007), p.324.
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It is for these reasons that Daniel Percheron’s term ‘extra-diegetic’ may be the most appropriate way of describing the music if, as Ben Winter’s has written, ‘it is understood as something added, rather than something external to the world.’49 This definition seems particularly apt when applied to the unique camera position: a close-up of Downey Jr. inside the Iron Man helmet (figure 1). While we may not be “inside” the head of Tony Stark, we are very much “inside” the character of Iron Man. The movement from the external shot of Iron Man flying, being chased by two F-22 Raptor aircraft, to one inside his helmet when he telephones Rhodes, for example, does not invoke a change in the music and thus has the effect of pushing the score closer to the diegesis. After all, we are “inside” Iron Man’s head and yet we can still hear the music. But this is also problematic, as Winters later writes that ‘the extra-diegetic might be understood as music or sound whose logic is not dictated by events within the narrative space’ and that this music ‘seems distanced from the narrative space.’50 This would, in theory, have the opposite effect of pushing the standardly non-diegetic score away from events that take place on screen.
Figure 1: The view of Tony Stark’s face from “inside” the Iron Man suit.
To reconcile this, Winters proposes the term ‘intra-diegetic’ and it is this that is perhaps most useful in the case of Iron Man. This music
49 Winters, Ben, ‘The Non-Diegetic Fallacy: Film, Music, and Narrative Space,’ Music & Letters, Vol. 91, No. 2 (OUP,
2010), p.232.
50
Ibid, p.233.
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‘exists in the film’s everyday narrative space and time, and is thus properly thought of as part of the film’s fabula: it may be considered to be produced by the characters themselves (either as a result of their physical movements, as with mickey-mousing, as an expression of their emotion state, or as a musical calling-card), or by the geographical space of the film.’51 In this respect, then, the second moment when Iron Man’s flight is thwarted seems to occur on the edge of intra-diegetic space, where the non-diegetic composed score is stopped by the diegetic mechanical “THWACK” of the tank shell. This isn’t problematic, as ‘the music can easily cross these boundaries’ and, indeed, it could be argued that throughout Iron Man it often does.
Regardless of exactly where we decide the music is located, it is clear that Tony Stark has privileged access to it, and indeed a measure of control over it. When we finally hear a full rendition of Iron Man’s theme (‘Driving with the Top Down’ on the soundtrack album) it really is a fusion of orchestral and rock elements: The tune is primarily carried by the strings, while a band rhythm section (guitar, bass, kit) plays underneath. This allows the score to allude to ‘Back in Black’ while simultaneous fulfilling action film expectations.
In contrast to Tony Stark’s proximity to the score, the terrorists are given hardly any music at all, and throughout the film there is a clear separation between the musical depiction of the “good” characters and the “bad” ones. Indeed, to MacFarlane’s statement that ‘nothing identifies them [the terrorists] besides their dialogue in Arabic and their generic desert locale’52 we could add the lack of musical accompaniment.
The idea of privileging music-as-culture can also be reversed to favour the villain, as can be seen in the superhero film The Avengers. Here, Loki, the film’s villain, descends upon Stuttgart in order to steal a block of iridium, the element that is required in order to stabilize the wormhole created by the tesseract. Dressed in his finery, he infiltrates an evening drinks party in order to rather gruesomely obtain the eye - needed for a retinal scan – of the man with access to the vault where this element is stored. The whole scene is accompanied by Schubert’s String Quartet No. 13 “Rosamunde,” which is played by the string quartet present at the party (figure 2). What starts as diegetic music quickly becomes non-diegetic as the camera moves away from the players, yet Loki’s eventual entrance and his attack are very consciously synched with the musical score.
51 Ibid, p.237. 52
MacFarlane, p.450.
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Figure 2: Schubert’s String Quartet No. 13, “Rosamunde”.
In the build up to this moment, Loki descends a staircase before incapacitating the man by hitting him with his staff. In the final bar shown above, the forte A minor chord is synchronised with this act of violence, and the subsequent E major chord with when he falls to the ground. Here, then, Loki appears to control the music directly – his staff a makeshift conductor’s baton - despite the fact that it is pointedly non-diegetic by this point; at least, as everyone else flees from the maleficent demi-god it seems highly unlikely the string quartet would sit and continue playing.
In contrast to the terrorists in Iron Man, who are excluded from participating in the music, Loki appears to be in charge of it. In part, this may be due to Loki’s character who, along with his brother Thor, speaks in an eloquent, albeit it archaic, manner – what Tony Stark/Iron Man jokingly describes as ‘Shakespeare in the woods.’53 They are from the supposedly highly civilized and advanced planet of Asgard, and these lofty ideals are easily represented with the long-established intellectual tropes of classical music and Elizabethan English. This is further emphasized by the fact that the well-spoken English actor Tom Hiddleston was chosen to play him, a former pupil of Eton and Oxford University.
Setting the scene in Germany also offers up other allegorical readings of this moment, particularly since The Avengers follows chronologically from Captain America: The First Avenger film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Indeed, in The Avengers it is Captain America who points out the Nazi
53
Wheden, Joss (dir.), The Avengers (Marvel/Paramount, 2012). 23
comparison when he says ‘the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.’54 Such a comparison may be writer and director Joss Wheden’s purpose, since there is no other narrative reason for the film to take place in Stuttgart, and particularly given that the actual filming location was Cleveland, Ohio.55
Loki represents ‘the elegant European aesthete [that was] a stock villain type of the 1940s,’56 a type of baddie that has pedigree in form of Hans Grüber from Die Hard. Robyn Stilwell has written about how composer Michael Kamen integrated the ‘Ode to Joy’ tune from Beethoven’s Ninth into the theme given to the villain. The introduction of this music plays out in a remarkably similar way to that of The Avengers, with Stilwell writing that
‘The 'Ode' is first heard being played innocently enough by the string quartet at the Nakatomi party in a simple, straightforward arrangement similar to the section around bar 140 in the last movement of the symphony, but transposed to E flat and with a rhythmicized dominant pedal. However, Hans wrests control from the string quartet even before his appearance on screen.’57
In this way, the character of Hans Grüber is set up, musically and otherwise, as the antithesis to that of John McClane, the film’s hero, whom she describes as ‘distinctly proletarian.’58 While The
Avengers differs in that its heroes are numerous and of mixed background and abilities, none of
them is similar to Loki. Even Thor, his brother, is depicted in his own eponymous film as being reckless, while Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, though intellectual, are not portrayed as being interested in the “high” arts.
Like Grüber, Loki controls the music, and as he stands above the humans, so too his music ascends beyond Schubert’s original scoring with the introduction of brass and woodwind elements. Clearly by this point any semblance of musical diegesis garnered from the string quartet’s presence at the beginning of the scene has dissipated, but Loki’s fuller orchestration of the music demonstrates that the reach of his power extends to the intra-diegetic - even non-diegetic - space. This is reinforced when the music continues to play even when the camera cuts away several times to catch up with the narrative progress of other characters.
54 Ibid
55 See The Avengers filming locations page at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/locations, accessed
05/05/2015.
56 Stilwell, Robynn J., ‘“I Just Put a Drone under Him…”: Collage and Subversion in the Score of ‘Die Hard,’ Music &
Letters, Vol. 78, No. 4 (OUP, 1997), p.558.
57 Ibid, p.563. 58
Stilwell, p.563.
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In the case of both Iron Man and The Avengers, pre-existing music is used to contrast with the composed score, particularly as a means of scene setting. By playing rock ‘n’ roll in their vehicle, Tony Stark and the soldiers he’s with are transported in a microcosm of America. This is shown to generate an atmosphere of freedom, exemplified by Stark’s abandonment of formal VIP conventions, and to produce a narrative whereby the attack on Stark and the soldiers is an attack on America itself. In The Avengers, using Schubert provides a simple means of placing Loki in Germany, at the heart of Western artistic culture yet also the scene of one of its darkest hours, and showing that culture to be under threat. These two films also demonstrate how privileged access to music can be given successfully to either the hero or the villain, depending on the nature of those characters. In the case of the former, he or she can be seen as a protector of culture, while when the latter has control, particularly of Western Art Music, American anti-intellectual tropes come into force: a suspicion of the “high” arts as elitist, distanced from the ordinary blue collar worker who represents a form of idealised national stereotype.
2. ‘Underlining psychological refinements’ in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) 59
The second of Copland’s ‘ways in which the music serves the screen,’ that of ‘underlining psychological refinement’ seems best exploited in films featuring superheroes who undergo a personal, internal struggle.
This is perhaps most common in those characters who fit into the third of Dittmer’s branches of American exceptionalism in the superhero genre, namely ‘the accommodation of difference.’60 This distinctive group of characters is primarily made up of human beings who, having been born with some sort of mutation or after going through a process that causes one, display superhuman characteristics. Amongst these individuals are some of the most iconic superheroes in the canon, including Spider-Man, The X-Men, and The Incredible Hulk. Emerging from the backdrop of the civil rights and gay emancipation movements of the 1960s, their differences, and the process of getting the “normal” human population as a whole to accept them, is often the basis for their
59 In X-Men: The Last Stand (Dir. Brett Ratner, 2006), Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) is the telepathic leader of the
X-Men: a group of “good” mutants whose aim is to live in harmony with the human population. Working against them are the “bad” mutants, led by Xavier’s former friend, the metal-manipulating Magneto (Ian McKellen), who believes mutants are superior to regular humans. At the beginning of The Last Stand, scientists have produced a cure for the so-called mutant ‘x’ gene, which Magneto sees as a step towards the elimination of his kind. He attempts to use the power of another mutant, Dark Phoenix (Famke Janssen), to destroy the source of the cure but underestimates her sheer destructive power.
60
Dittmer 2010, p.114.
25
storylines. Central to many of these narratives are the personal psychological struggles of individuals coming to terms with, and eventually overcoming, their differences – a process that could be seen as a sort of superhero “coming out,” at least to themselves if not to society as a whole. In some of the films that make up Hollywood’s superhero renaissance, composers have tried to portray this struggle musically.
Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand (20th Century Fox, 2006) features the binary character of Jean Grey/Phoenix (Famke Janssen) as its main protagonist. She was one of the five original X-Men from the eponymous comic books, appearing under the name Marvel Girl in issue #1, 1963. In the 1980s she underwent a transformation to become the Phoenix: ‘her origin was altered and she became the vessel for the cosmic Phoenix Force making one of the weakest members of the X-Men arguably the strongest entity in the entire Marvel Universe.’61 In the film adaptations, the maniacal Phoenix side of her personality is described as having been contained and controlled via the construction of psychic barriers by Professor Charles Xavier, put in place when she was a child. She emerges in The Last Stand with the Phoenix no longer caged after being assumed dead at the end of the proceeding film, X2. Without the ability to control her powers, she becomes the Dark Phoenix, a massively destructive, god-like force.
In a score that was widely praised62 – much more so than the film itself63 - composer John Powell created a theme for Jean Grey/Phoenix that displays the two conflicting sides of her personality. This is no mean feat given that her character doesn’t easily comply with action movie stereotyping, namely, a woman who is both evil and virtuous. In the opening scene of the film – a flashback to twenty years earlier – we see Professor Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr/Magneto meeting a young Jean Grey at her parents' home. A solo violin outlines the X-Men theme as they arrive but when Jean is introduced it shrinks away to a high, almost inaudible semi-tonal oscillation between the upper harmonics of C and B. When the girl shows off her immense power by telekinetically lifting all the cars in her road, this music assumes a more ominous feel by association. Although the Dark Phoenix theme isn’t played in full at this point, the music still signals that there is something dark lurking inside her character that is yet to manifest itself fully.
61 ‘Jean Grey,’ ComicVine (2015), http://www.comicvine.com/jean-grey/4005-3552/, accessed 15/06/2015. 62
See Brennan, Mike, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand,’ Soundtrack.net (2006), http://www.soundtrack.net/album/x-men-the-last-stand/, accessed 15/06/2015. Also Coleman, Christopher, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand,’ Tracksounds,
http://www.tracksounds.com/reviews/xmen_last_stand.htm, accessed 15/06/2015.
63 See ‘X-Men: The Last Stand,’Rotten Tomatoes, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/x_men_3_the_last_stand/,
accessed 15/06/2015.
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