Friday, April 26, 2013

Iron Man 3, Hans Zimmer, and Melodic Themes in Modern Film Music


(Unorganized Bloated Ponderings)

Musical elitism is not a particularly attractive trait, yet I must admit in my early days as a film score fan, I exhibited it to some degree (notwithstanding the fact that I rarely vocalized my thoughts on the subject in any form, spoken, written, or otherwise). Any film music that had any hint of rock or pop elements I dismissed as lowest common denominator pap. My gradual appreciation of these elements, if done effectively, came slowly (Danny Elfman’s “Costume Montage” from Spider-Man was an early favorite).

Despite my increasing admiration for more musical styles, the rich, melodic orchestral idiom popularized by John Williams remains my decided favorite. Lush, memorable melodies bolstered by sweeping, complex counterpoint and clever harmonies—this is the kind of music that most touches, excites, and even enlightens me. Unfortunately, this style of scoring has fallen out of favor with many filmmakers, both talented and untalented. There are still composers who write great melodies and who have impeccable ears for orchestral color and thematic development—Giacchino, Elfman, Silvestri, and (of course) Williams are a few. But good melodies seem to be harder to find these days.

I will admit that when I heard the theme to Iron Man 3, by Brian Tyler, I loved it. The word ”epic” is criminally overused these days, but the theme does impart a sense of large-scale glory that I find invigorating. When one looks closer, however, one realizes that the theme isn’t too different from some of the others Tyler has written previously. Not only that, but it’s rather simple, with basic harmonies and little counterpoint and complexity. This puts the theme in “power anthem” territory.

Which brings us, as it always seems to these days, to Hans Zimmer. Zimmer’s music is far from complex, yet lots of people find it effective—probably more because of its similarity to rock and pop music than anything else. Is Tyler’s Iron Man 3 theme, then, little more than a modified Zimmer melody? I’m not a musicologist or composer, so I can’t tell whether there are compositional differences between Tyler’s theme and the common, garden-variety Zimmer anthem. What I do know is that I enjoy it, just like I enjoy many of Zimmer’s early (up to 1998) scores.

While Tyler is not quite one up on my list of the top 10 film composers working today, I still prefer him to Zimmer post-1998. This might be blasphemous, since so much of Tyler’s current style owes a debt to Zimmer. But I do think Tyler has adapted that power anthem style well, and Zimmer’s last really good power anthem was in The Peacemaker in 1997.

In fact, Tyler’s simplified style of writing these days (exemplified by scores such as Battle: Los Angeles, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Expendables, and Transformers: Prime) resembles a path Zimmer might have taken after 1998 and his wondrous scores to The Prince of Egypt and The Thin Red Line. And I must say I may have been happier with his music had he taken a similar direction—Tyler’s more modern music does have moments of complexity not found in most Zimmer scores, but Zimmer in fact ended up going the opposite direction. He began focusing more on creating “new” sounds, though in honesty I don’t find them all that new or refreshing, and worse, the actual music began to suffer as a byproduct. I understand Zimmer’s decision to move on from his older style, but it’s the case of a film composer merely doing something different (not better) in lieu of actual growth and development; James Horner is another example. All this is my opinion, of course. And I have churned up more words regarding Zimmer than most other composers, so that’s something.

Anyway, the fact that I liked Tyler’s theme so much when it is so simple made me wonder if it was just because there are so few good melodies in film music today. That may be part of the story, but there are plenty of other recent scores with melodies I’ve liked: John Carter, War Horse, Super 8, Captain America, Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, Kick-Ass, Dream House, Harry Gregson-Williams’s melody for Prometheus, etc. And it’s not just the case of me going nuts over any old melody, as I’ve been underwhelmed by tunes from scores like Jack the Giant Slayer, Mars Needs Moms, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Croods, and The Amazing Spider-Man (though with the exception of the last, I did enjoy these scores—at least they had melodies!) But it’s clear that relatively speaking, these melodic scores are sparse, outnumbered by countless drone scores now in vogue—including the score for the first Iron Man!

A bit of a tangent: It’s a microcosm within a microcosm, but the scores for the Iron Man films have certainly gotten better. I am not slamming John Debney’s great score to Iron Man 2 at all, but hearing that wonderful melody he wrote in the track “I Am Iron Man” get used only once, and almost buried by sound effects (when Iron Man suits up in the Monaco race scene) was painful. And the full “I Am Iron Man” version itself never appeared in the film—not even in the end credits! (Shades of Alan Silvestri’s score for GI Joe: Rise of Cobra). I haven’t seen Iron Man 3 as of this posting, so I have yet to hear whether the score is audible in the film. But at least the filmmakers allowed Tyler to actually use and develop his theme as heard on the album. And the less said about the first film’s score, the better.

Tyler has shown with his score to LEGO Universe that he can still write in that robust, adventurous style that he established in early scores like Children of Dune, Darkness Falls, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and Eagle Eye. Perhaps it is Tyler’s background with writing this kind of music that has allowed him to imbue Iron Man 3 with unidentifiable or subtle musical elements that allow the score to connect with me more than the average MV/RC score. Or I could be typing out of my posterior. If someone had told me that Zimmer wrote the score to Iron Man 3, I might have believed it. But more importantly, I still would have liked it, and hope that this would represent a style that Zimmer would continue to explore (and develop) in future scores.

Ultimately, it’s all about what’s effective to each listener. But this “essay” is an attempt for me to find out why I like something, especially when it doesn’t fit into the more lush, complex (but still accessible) style that I like and is more similar to the more simplistic music that I find, for the most part, less appealing. Maybe my musical elitism (if I ever had it) is being chipped away. Or maybe not; I still find the scores to Christopher Nolan’s Batman films terribly pedestrian (aside from some tender moments in the first two scores and, to a lesser extent, the Joker “theme”). And I can’t really be accused of being a musical elitist when I‘m a fan of film music, the “bastard child” of classical music (the little classical music I own, mostly Mahler and Beethoven, I love, and I do realize I need to hear more). In any case, I clearly haven’t been successful, and maybe that’s how it should be. Over-analyzing something you like can kill your appreciation for it, but that doesn’t preclude analysis period. However, it doesn’t take much to discern that this piece is far from analysis, and more like scatterbrained observations. One thing is certain, however: Despite listening to more than two dozen of Tyler’s scores, Iron Man 3 will be the first Tyler-scored film I’ll see (and the first I’ve wanted to see.)