- This topic is empty.
- Posts
Even though I’ve had the Spider-Man 3 DVD for over a year I finally listened to the commentary track this afternoon. It’s interesting that Raimi mentions Chris Young several times yet in the other two DVDs he never mentions Elfman. It’s been a few years, but if I recall correctly…Laura Ziskin is the one who mentions Elfman in the first DVD and Tobey Maguire in the second one. Weird, huh? I wonder if Raimi was un-satisfied with Elfman even before Spidey 2. He probably just didn’t say anything cause he wasn’t a “big shot” yet.
I don’t think Raimi hates Elfman or vice versa. It’s likely that Raimi wanted to give a shout out to Young who was more than willing to go the extra mile to please his boss.
I always liked the Tobey Maguire comment on “Spider-Man 2”. He says something along the lines of, “I love the music, it makes you feel the emotion, but it is never distracting….” What made it funny to me was that he was talking over a tracked piece of music!
Raimi doesn’t give kudos to the Batman theme in Evil Dead 2. In fact, it was borderline insult. What he said was, “Joe’s music here sounds like Danny’s Batman theme. I’m gonna have to give him a call later…”
Actually, Raimi speaks very warmly of Danny and his score in the Spider-Man (’02) DVD music featurette, saying, “Danny is a great person, and he’s a very talented composer, and he’s really the heart and soul of Peter Parker and Spider-Man through is music.”
Moreover, I don’t see how Raimi could dislike Elfman’s music when it’s pasted all-over Spider-Man 3.
I think you are mis-interpreting what Sam is saying. I think it’s meant as a joke — as in Raimi has realized LoDuca’s music sounds too much like BATMAN, so he’s going to call and take a strip off him! Raimi’s sense of humor is very dry at times.
I know that Sam spoke kindly of Elfman’s work in the Music Featurette but I don’t think that was done specifically for the DVD. It looks like someone asked him the question during the press junket and an editor working on the DVD threw it in there. So, technically Raimi hasn’t said anything specifically for the DVD on any of the three movies. Yet he mentions Chris Young several times.
As for the use of Elfman’s music in Spidey 3, wasn’t it reported like a month or two prior to the movie’s release that Sony was un-satisfied with Young? And then Grant Curtis (producer of the movie) wrote on his blog that Elfman was coming back to work with Young on the music? Then, it turned out that it was actually Steve Bartek who showed up. So, this was Sony’s doing and not Raimi. Also, notice how Young’s score was never released.
Young did some good stuff like the Birth of the Sandman for example but I have a feeling that he mostly did crap work. That’s why John Debney and Deborah Lurie were brought in to score several cues.
Well, your sequence of events isn’t entirely correct.
-Raimi did want Elfman to come back for part 3, but he declined to do so.
-Grant Curtis said in a blog post that it was the producers hope that Elfman and Young would collaborate together on the score. A buddy of mine heard Chris Young give a seminar where he confirmed that that’s what the producers were trying to do, but it wound up not happening.
-Elfman did, however, write some thematic material (in part to keep his relationship good with Sony, who was nervous about switching composers). Raimi didn’t have any input on that, and understandably decided to let Young come up with his own themes which he could collaborate with him on instead.
-In an interview, Young said that he would be keeping the main Spider-Man theme, obviously, and also the “responsibility” theme (or whatever you want to call it) and the Goblin theme. He specifically said that he would _not_ be keeping the love theme.
-Every once in a while, Elfman would get a call from Sony or Young asking for his input on adapting certain musical ideas. Such as, “if there were a heroic version of the Goblin theme, what would it sound like?” Elfman would briefly sketch that out and send it over to them, but it wouldn’t be much more than a few lines.
-Young started to record his music. The executives really liked it, but were a little concerned that it didn’t sound like Elfman. There was particular concern over Young’s new love theme, which is more lush and theatrical than the earlier theme.
-The decision was made to insert Elfman’s love theme from the first two pictures into score. Young was busy finishing the remainder of the score, so John Debney and Debra Lurie were hired to do their own adaptations of the Elfman material. Lurie, of course, had served a similar function on previous Elfman projects, working with him more or less directly, and probably was working on the movie with his blessing, if not supervision. There’s no official word on that, however.
-At later recording sessions, Young would record his cues for a certain scene in the morning, and then Debney and Lurie would come in and record their own cues for the same scenes in the afternoon, meaning that there were several versions to choose from in the mix.
-In the end Young’s love theme was left out of the SM3 mix completely, replaced by Lurie and Debney cues as well as material tracked in from the first two pictures. Pretty much all of Young’s action material made it, though.
-Elfman later commented that it was crazy because there was a lot of concern over the love theme on the first movie too, and he had to record a ton of extra variations on it then. When part 2 rolled around, however, they loved the theme, and tracked it in all over the place, even where it didn’t make sense to hear it. Have a look at the “Aunt May Packs” cue, which is on the OST but not in the movie. There are great variations on the sadness theme and the “responsibility” theme as May gives him a pep talk. In the movie, though, it’s the love theme. Oh well.
Anyway, my guess is that Young got a few extra shout-outs on the SM3 commentary because Raimi knew he put him through hell, and in spite of that, Young stuck it out. Elfman had said that he mostly walked from part 2 out of frustration: In several cases, they were basically asking him to recreate what he had done for part 1 (in other words, not allowing him to change or expand on material), and he could not get Raimi to come to the scoring stage and listen to particular cues as they were being recorded (especially the Train cue, which there had been a lot of back and forth on). He eventually had enough and did what he had to do.
Personally, I think SM2 is one of Elfman’s very best scores, written during a period when he was really at the top of his game. When you listen to the cues that are on the CD, but not in the movie, I think it’s insane that the people involved allowed the situation to go down the way that it did. Do they really prefer the hacked together temp at the end of the train scene to the last two minutes of Elfman’s “Train / Appreciation” cue?
Elfman didn’t deserve what happened to his music on that picture, and I doubt Young’s music deserved what happened to it on SM3 either.
Not sure what your point here is. But if you think about it, Raimi probably had a lot more to say on the commentary for parts 1 and 2 than he did by the time part 3 rolled around.
Heh, johnmullin’s posts ALWAYS leave me wondering if he’s not Elfman himself posting here in disguise.
Admit it!
rkeaveney, if anything…Raimi had less to say in part 1 and 2 than in part 3. It is well-known by now that Spidey 3 was a pain in the butt for Raimi. For starters, he had originally intended to make an entirely different movie. Then, Sony and Marvel forced him to adapt the Venom storyline from the comics. By the time that happened it was too late to do write a new draft of the script, so they had to start shooting without a completed script. As a result, changes were being made all the time. Thomas Haden Church who did the commentary with Raimi talked about how some scenes had 4 different versions! And, James Franco was also there and said that it was the first time EVER that he saw Raimi lose his cool and explode on set. That’s how much stress Raimi was under during production. The man literally lost his cool. So, he had a lot to say about Spidey 3 yet he still had enough time to drop a few references to Young. Was it really so hard to mention Elfman ATLEAST during the opening credits of the first movie.
Hm, if what you said is true, then I extend some sympathies to Sam Raimi for his troubled production. I still hate that film, though.
The movie is flawed but I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone says. Although a good score would have helped. When symbiote spidey shows up the last thing people wanted to hear was Batman Forever-esque music. Young did a better job with Venom. Maybe he should have scored symbiote spidey that way.
Uh.. I hated the movie… I left the theater saying “OH MY GOD! That ending sucked!” The movie-as a whole-was cheesey!
The last thing people wanted to hear was Batman Forever-esque music
Finally, someone agrees with me! Even before I became interested in film scores, I remember watching the opening credits in the theater, thinking, “Hey, that sounds like ‘Batman Forever'” (:24-:26 of the Main Titles, to be specific).
I wanna know how a second sequel that had a LOT more development time than it’s predecessor (two years between Spidey 1 and 2, three years between 2 and 3) still feels like a rush job. It felt like three underdeveloped movies in one!
Spidey 3 got an extra year for visual effects. There was three villians this time as opposed to one. The script development time was the same as usual if not less since Venom was thrown in at the last second.
The Spider-Man series was abnormal because instead of the director earning more control as the sequels went on, word is they actually micromanaged Raimi more closely with each successive movie. I think he was allowed to put his directorial stamp on certain parts of 2 more than part 1, but clearly he was forced to include story elements he wasn’t entirely comfortable with in part 3.
Oh, I don’t know if Raimi is completely without fault. The dancing scenes are completely unforgivable. I have faith in him making a great fourth movie since he did so well with the first two, but the third film was nearly without any redeeming qualities. It was quite terrible in so many ways. Thank goodness Young’s love theme was rejected… I’ve heard it and it’s pretty awful, especially in comparison with Elfman’s theme (by the way, why was Sony so opposed to it on the earlier films?). However I do think that there were some nice statements of the Spidey theme in the first Sandman fight and in the end of the final battle.
I’m surprised about the love theme as well. I would think that if they had any problems with the score it would be the actual Spider-Man theme. I recall that when the movie was released in 2002 the general complain was that it wasn’t Batman enough. And by that I mean that it wasn’t in your face enough.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.