Tunesday: The Music of Marvel Studios

The fact that MOKA won't be recording a new podcast until September isn't enough to prevent us from having public debates about movies.

Over on Twitter, MOKA's that_urban_punk, Action A Go Go's Andrew Allen and I had a small back and forth about the music of Marvel Studios. Punk, an admitted Marvel cheerleader, argued that the original scores to Marvel's The Avengers, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, etc. are effective but not nearly as memorable as the DC films of the 70s and 80s, specifically Danny Elfman's Batman theme and John Williams' Superman march. I agree with him to an extent, but I think that the compositions of Alan Silverstri, Patrick Doyle, Brian Tyler, John Debney, Ramin Djawadi, and Craig Armstrong are notable (though, if I must be honest, they aren't part of the collective conscious) because they underline the major difference between Marvel heroes and DC metahumans.

Before Marvel dominated the film world, DC heroes were the status quo. The grandiose, triumphant work of composers like John Williams and Danny Elfman really embodied that. Marvel Studios (and I'm referring mostly but not exclusively to the "Marvel Cinematic Universe") introduced a new breed of hero, one that dealt with internal and external threats in a way that seperates them from Michael Keaton's Batman or Christopher Reeve's Superman.

In my opinion, the best Marvel soundtracks don't try to mimic 1978's Superman: The Movie or 1989's Batman (a mistake that some of the pre-Iron Man films made). Instead, they encapsulate the genre of their respective characters, pulling on the diverse history of Marvel's heroes in comics.