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There seems to be a trend that when a ‘lesser’ composer surprises with a *** (let’s say) score there’s a lot of celebration and appreciation in the film music community. But Elfman’s scores are pretty much always of a certain quality (let’s say ****) but there’s little fanfare or even acknowledgement these days when a new score is released. Anyone else noticed this?
It tends to be ‘oh here’s yet another solid Elfman score’ instead of ‘It’s been 31 years and Elfman is still writing quality music.’ He also moves between genres more than any composer I can think of yet Clemmensen is the only one to routinely give him credit for it.
I find it rather frustrating.
I think that’s fairly common for any big composer of Elfman’s calibre. But yeah — I know what you mean. For example, I wish there was more “hooplah” surrounding his smaller, more intimate, textural, minimalist, pop-infused scores these days, as that’s my main attraction to him now (I don’t care much for his big blockbuster scores; it often comes off as noisy approximations of what he did much better 15 years ago and beyond).
I first went online in 1994-1995. Trust me, not much has changed since then. The sad reality is that in the film music fandom, Danny will have a cloud hanging over him for his entire career — and likely well beyond his time on Earth.
Imagine if Danny had turned down ALICE 2, and James Bobin had hired Chris Beck (whom he’d worked with on MUPPETS.) Stay with me here, cause I’m going to theorize that if Beck had been hired to use the Alice theme, and wrote the exact same score we’re hearing today, it would be universal praise. Rich orchestrations, dynamic action. “Beck takes the Alice theme in places Elfman never would!”
I’ve got nothing against Beck. The point is that sometimes it’s the composer, not the score, that’s being judged.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the 20+ years, it’s better just to enjoy the music without consideration of what you read on message boards, in reviews, etc.
Elfman’s music always sounds sweet that way. Trust me.
Honestly, the film music boards are filled with most pedantic, full of certainty and boring people I know, so I just stopped caring.
I can’t speak for the film music fandom since I normally visit general entertainment sites. So I think the under-appreciation comes from his choices. I can’t think of many people who gave a crap about Goosebumps or Fifty Shades of Grey. And his score for The Avengers 2 was buried under sound effects. So, truth is, most people just aren’t exposed to his recent scores. Hans Zimmer, love him or hate him, sticks to high-profile projects. His Wonder Woman theme from Batman vs Superman is one of the few things people liked about that movie. “No Time for Caution”, from Interstellar, might have been the most hyped score cue from 2014. In the last 5 years the only Elfman scores that got any mainstream attention were The Wolfman, mostly thanks to the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy trailer, and Oz: The Great and Powerful which had such a popular opening title scene that Disney uploaded it to YouTube while the movie was still playing in theaters.
Well it might seem that way to us but the Fifty Shades has the most Amazon reviews of any Elfman score in recent memory and FilmMusicReporter’s post about him scoring the sequel is by leaps and bounds their most popular ever post. All this comes with the territory with a fanbase as rabid as that but still.
ddddeeee Wrote:
> Well it might seem that way to us but the Fifty
> Shades has the most Amazon reviews of any Elfman
> score in recent memory and FilmMusicReporter’s
> post about him scoring the sequel is by leaps and
> bounds their most popular ever post. All this
> comes with the territory with a fanbase as rabid
> as that but still.and Carter Burwell’s most “popular” score is Twilight.
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