SUPERMAN RETURNS SCORE

 

SUPERMAN RETURNS

 

Soundtrack.net

has posted a new article about John Ottman’s score for Superman Returns. The really special part of the article is just down the page a bit, where they’ve posted actual samples of tracks from the film’s score. If you’ve been waiting curiously for months to find out just how Ottman was going to approach such an important score, it’s time you found out –

Here is the article by Jonathan Jarry and the link to the score My favorite theme from the Superman canon is neither the March nor the opening Fanfare, but rather the Kent Family Theme. John Williams created such an infectious Americana melody for the wheat fields and simple life of Smallville, Kansas, a theme that owes a lot to Aaron Copland’s vintage style. The cue "Leaving Home" from the original soundtrack to Superman has to rank as one of my all-time favorite score pieces, but the great thing about the score as a whole is that Williams’ clarity of vision was such that it is a masterpiece every cue of which can be studied and appreciated. His modernistic clashes for the fall of Krypton are in sharp contrast to the elegiac and sweeping American vistas of his Smallville material which, themselves, have very little in common with the sometimes bombastic, sometimes quirky metropolitan life evoked by the second half of the score. It is an unavoidable part of the canon of film music, an orchestral tour de force that many composers must admire and few would want to touch for fear of tarnishing it, of not living up to it.

This curse has also plagued directors who have, in recent years, waltzed in and out of the project to resurrect the Superman line of movies at Warner Bros. Major names like those of Tim Burton, Brett Ratner, and McG were once attached to the project; the director shuffle continued for many years, public relations citing creative and financial differences. One man did recently step up to the plate to put a new shine on those red boots and dust off the old cape. Faced with completing the X-Men series he helped launch or take over the oft delayed revival of the Superman franchise, director Bryan Singer chose to leave the mutants aside and step behind the camera on a dream project of his.

For the major motion picture revival of the Superman franchise, Singer turned to long-time composer / editor John Ottman. The latter has had a pretty successful career outside of Singer’s sphere of influence, scoring a variety of films from the intense human dramas of The Usual Suspects and Incognito to quirky comedies like Bubble Boy and Eight Legged Freaks to the slasher genre, with Urban Legends: Final Cut and House of Wax. Some might argue that his talent lies especially with the dark psychological drama of tortured souls, such as Apt Pupil whose darkly Germanic score remains an underappreciated gem in Ottman’s collection. The composer has recently imbued his writing pen with super powers for the first sequel in the X-Men franchise, X2: X-Men United, and for the popcorn-popping adaptation of the Fantastic Four comic book legacy.

From Marvel’s first family, Ottman then went to editing and scoring duties on the Man of Steel himself, a DC Comics legend and worldwide pop cultural icon. Most of the raw material present in Williams’ original oeuvre (the Fanfare, the Love Theme, the Krypton Theme, the Kent Family Theme) is preserved here and it is with great anticipation and pride that SoundtrackNet presents an exclusive first listen to the official motion picture score release of John Ottman’s Superman Returns. Sit back, crank your speakers, and find out for yourself if John Ottman lives up to the monstrous and gargantuan expectations set forth by Superman fans all over the world (no pressure). Please note that we have not seen the film, and what follows is a track-by-track analysis of the soundtrack album.

Please note that the latest version of Quicktime is required to listen to the audio, and clicking the track titles below will pop open a new window. If the media server is overloaded, try again later!

 

http://www.soundtrack.net/features/article/?id=196