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Probably most people on this board will say the greatest composer of all time is Goldsmith, but I also think it's Williams!
And still others would toss out names like Miklós Rózsa or Erich Korgold. And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong as long as you mean FILM SCORE composers. Because, as stated above, none of them hold a candle to the great classical composers.
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Probably most people on this board will say the greatest composer of all time is Goldsmith, but I also think it's Williams!
And still others would toss out names like Miklós Rózsa or Erich Korgold. And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong as long as you mean FILM SCORE composers. Because, as stated above, none of them hold a candle to the great classical composers.
Bull
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My first response is SUPERMAN, undoubtedly.
SUPERMAN has a really distinctive theme that is the embodiment of super-heroism in all of its compositional constructs.
I can second THE INCREDIBLES and SPIDERMAN 2, but those are in completely different categories than SUPERMAN, especially since their themes for heroism aren't the main musical core. Both films are about the struggles of a superhero in a modern world, with family obligations, so they miss the purity of SUPERMAN. THE INCREDIBLES is also a score that is a crazy, scattered James Bond score on steroids - very good music and fun to listen to, but more exciting than "heroic".
SUPERMAN has the purity of straightforward, solid, steady, aspirational, feel-good superheroism.
Which is also why I find it hard to agree to anything BATMAN, particularly the Zimmer films. Batman isn't technically a superhero, in that there is no "magic" that makes him "super". Musically, Elfman's music is undoubtedly virtuosic and fun and interesting, but the gothic nature of it isn't inspiring like Williams' SUPERMAN. Zimmer's music doesn't even compare. It's tremendously dour - and while I liked how it works for the drama in THE DARK KNIGHT, nothing feels very "super" about it, nor heroic. The Nolan films, while good, are dark, grimy, depressed films. Nothing very "super" to aspire to.
When you break it down that way, I'd agree with some of the comments here that beyond SUPERMAN, it's actually quite hard to find purely "superheroic" music and characters. You aspire to be like SUPERMAN: cheerful, strong, heroic, a good citizen. Aspiring to be like BATMAN? A dark, grumpy, repressed, reclusive billionaire? Nah...
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If we exclude "Superman: The Movie" and Burton's first "Batman" film, here's what the thread has given us so far. This is not a full list (I stopped halfway into Spinmeister's list). Some interpretation was needed since some titles mentioned seemed to be only of note and not to say "Greatest". I am not maintaining this list. Anybody who wants to, can.
"The Amazing Spider-Man" (Horner) (1x)
"Ant-Man [1]" (Beck) (2x)
"The Avengers" (Silvestri) (1x)
"Avengers: Endgame" () (2x)
"Batman" (Riddle) (1x)
"Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" (Walker) (1x)
"Batman & Robin" (Goldenthal) (1x)
"Batman Begins" (Zimmer) (1x)
"Batman Forever" (Goldenthal) (2x)
"The Dark Knight" (Zimmer/Howard) (4x)
"Captain America: The First Avenger" () (1x)
"Condorman" (Mancini) (1x)
"The Fantastic Four" (David & Eric Wurst) (1x)
"Hancock" (Powell) (1x)
"Howard the Duck" (Barry) (1x)
"The Incredibles" (Giacchino) (2x)
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (Jones) (2x)
"Man of Steel" (Zimmer) (2x)
"The Mark of Zorro" (Alfred Newman/Friedhofer) (1x)
"The Phantom" (Newman) (1x)
"" ()
"Robocop [1]" (Poledouris) (2x)
"The Rocketeer" (Horner) (4x)
"Supergirl" (Goldsmith) (3x)
"Spider-Man [1]" (Elfman) (2x)
"Superman II" (Thorne) (1x)
"Superman III" (Thorne) (1x)
"Superman IV" (Courage) (1x)
"Willow" (Horner) (1x)
"Wonder Woman 1984" () (2x)
"X2: X-Men United" (Ottman) (2x)
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Posted: |
Aug 6, 2022 - 4:47 PM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Probably most people on this board will say the greatest composer of all time is Goldsmith, but I also think it's Williams!
And still others would toss out names like Miklós Rózsa or Erich Korgold. And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong as long as you mean FILM SCORE composers. Because, as stated above, none of them hold a candle to the great classical composers.
Bull
Would you care to make a case to support your comment? Seriously, I’d be interested to read it.
I can't speak for judy, but if I heard the works of the great classical composers I may recognize some of it but would not be able to identify it. But I recognize and can easily identify almost everything by Williams, and that's something many people probably have in common with me, so I think that's one thing Williams has over the greats.
John Williams has clearly crossed over into the concert hall world, something not all film composers have done, could do, or would perhaps even want to do. That’s an exceptional achievement and I honour him for it.
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I can't speak for judy, but if I heard the works of the great classical composers I may recognize some of it but would not be able to identify it. But I recognize and can easily identify almost everything by Williams, and that's something many people probably have in common with me, so I think that's one thing Williams has over the greats.
Henry, I love your passion and devotion to Williams, I feel the same way about a few myself. However, your personal recognition of the works of the great classical composers, or lack thereof, really has no bearing on it. You can place a lot of Williams' scores easily because you're a fan. As for the general public, John Williams had the massively good fortune to be attached to incredibly popular films (and I agree that the music may have aided in that popularity). Look at the themes most people would recognize:
Jaws
Star Wars
Superman
Raiders of the Lost Ark
ET
Jurassic Park
Harry Potter
Only one of these isn't a franchise film and all of them have been recorded and rerecorded (often by Williams himself) on dozens of albums and played in concerts for decades. But if you're not a fan of film scores, you won't be familiar with the majority of his work.
Honestly, how many people out there could place the themes or any music from
The Towering Inferno
War of the Worlds
Catch Me if You Can
Memoirs of a Geisha
Saving Private Ryan
Empire of the Sun
A.I.
Always
Far and Away
Brilliant scores all, but zero public recognition. No reflection on his talent in the slightest, they're just not hammered into the public consciousness. Time will tell how long film score compositions will survive but they're barely a blip on the public radar right now. They only come to the forefront when here's a huge movie attached to it or a pop song (ah James Horner, how your star rose and fell with the popularity of a single song).
And if someone really wants to argue that Williams, Goldsmith and the like, as much as I love them, can truly compare with Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, and others...well, I'll pass on that one.
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I love how conversations here completely derail and end up far from topic. Makes me smile.
These were questions which I think are really interesting for us all to consider:
What IS a "superhero" in this sense?
How should "superhero" music make us feel?
I'd agree that James Bond and Zorro and John McClane aren't superheroes in this topic, so does that mean Batman isn't either? What about the Shadow?
And if a superhero score doesn't feel "superheroic" and "uplifting", should we even consider it a "superhero" score?
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I wish we could open it up to simply "heroic" themes because the INDIANA JONES theme and the JAMES BOND theme are very heroic and cool. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN also hits all the right buttons and, dare I say, AIR FORCE ONE's main theme as well.
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I wish we could open it up to simply "heroic" themes because the INDIANA JONES theme and the JAMES BOND theme are very heroic and cool. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN also hits all the right buttons and, dare I say, AIR FORCE ONE's main theme as well.
Well, you could just open a new thread and ask for greatest "heroic" scores. Nobody's stopping you.
I think "SUPERHEROES" is fairly easy to define genre, simply as there is a lot of literature on the subject.
"Heroic" is of course much, much broader, as indeed, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Alan Quartermain, Moses, Jesus, Hercules, Ripley, Mulan, etc. are all "heroes" in one way or another.
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