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During another listen to Alice Through the Looking Glass today I was thinking to myself whether her hero theme or her more emotional (Little Alice) theme was the main theme to the score. This got me thinking about how, with the exception of Batman Returns, Elfman’s approach to sequels tends to be to take his old themes and expand upon them.
Well duh – that’s what most composers do right? I actually think Elfman takes this further than most. The new themes Elfman introduces, the love theme in MIB II, Doc Ock’s theme, Boris’ and Griffith’s themes in MIB3 and now Time’s theme are all very much secondary to the already established themes. John Williams, on the other hand, tends to allow new material to generally dominate (I feel so anyway) while the previously established material takes something of a backseat – acting more like musical glue to connect the movies.
But instead of reinventing the wheel Elfman tends to go back to what he’s already created. The main theme for Men in Black is utilized far more in the sequel scores than in the first, he also takes K’s theme from the first and makes it a more general ’emotional’ theme for the sequels. Spider-Man 2 features much more use of the love theme and Peter’s theme, and if anything there’s much less music for Doc Ock than there was for Green Goblin. Now in Alice Through the Looking Glass he took a secondary theme from the first and turned it into a second main theme and he took rather undefined ideas from the first score (Hatter and Red Queen’s themes) and makes much more use of them.
Contrast this to how in Deathly Hallows Part II Desplat created a new main theme and largely ditched his old ones, The Force Awakens is completely dominated by new material despite frequent appearances of old themes and in Catching Fire James Newton Howard ditched a few themes from the first and wrote a new theme for the main character. If anything the trend seems to be to ditch old thematic material – like in most of the Marvel sequels.
Is this just because Men In Black 2, Spider-Man 2, Men In Black 3 and Alice Through the Looking Glass are all similar to the original movies? After all, Batman Returns is decidedly different to Batman. I still think it’s pretty interesting. I imagine the Fifty Shades sequels (I’m assuming Elfman will do the third too) will follow a similar route.
Any thoughts on this or Elfman’s sequel scores in general?
Interesting, someone once mentioned to me how on the MEN IN BLACK sequels, Elfman seemed to be almost avoiding using the main theme. At least give him credit for not over-relying on his themes in sequel scores.
Granted my music knowledge is borderline non-existent but the main theme is in virtually every track of Men in Black 2 and 3? Or at the very least some component of it.
I like Elfman’s approach, it makes the scores cohesive. I feel like the last two tracks of Elfman’s album for Alice 2 (Goodbye Alice and Kingsleigh and Kingsleigh) feel like the conclusion of a two-part story instead of one. Same with the ‘Mission Accomplished’ cue from Men in Black 3 or when the love theme is finally complete at the end of Spider-Man 2. I feel those themes have all gone somewhere which I don’t really get from many sequel scores these days. The callbacks to Skyfall in Spectre seem obligatory and rehashed for example.
More than anything, I think it’s cool that with musical continuity seemingly being thrown out the window in Hollywood Elfman is going in the opposite direction.
Yeah I was referring to a full-blown version like in the main titles from the first film. You’ll hear sprinkles, a bar or two, but the theme never rolls for very long in the sequels.
I think I agree with Ryan. The Men in Black II score doesn’t take itself too seriously, probably cause the movie doesn’t either, and Men in Black III was mostly lazy. Neither are in the same atmosphere as the Oscar-nominated original. Spider-Man 2, yeah, I can see your point. But I mostly think of Spider-Man 2 as an IMPROVEMENT as opposed to an expansion of the original. Which is why it’s so tragic that Raimi and his sound editors butchered the score in the film. But when it’s all said and done, Batman Returns remains the gold standard. No one wants repetition. They want new themes and revisions of the old ones. This is something that goes back to John Barry’s 007 scores from the 1960’s. Each movie deserves its own musical identity.
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