Continuity Problems

Imagine now, if you will, it’s 1980.  Three years ago you were blown away by a science fiction movie so epic and revolutionary that you could barely believe your eyes and ears.  The movie was Star Wars: A New Hope and you’re now sitting in a theater, eagerly awaiting the anticipated sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.  But as the gold opening credits fly into outer space you hear something different from the recognizable fanfare of the Star Wars theme.  What if John Williams only composed ANH, but not the other two films?  Would the experience be the same?  What if the ever classic themes of the Imperial March and Han and Leia never existed, but something else was heard in its place?  Would there be any musical connection to the film that started it all?  What I am trying to elicit is the culture that movie music provides and how it supports any film series by providing cohesion between sequels and depth in story.

One of my biggest pet peeves involving film score is when movie directors and producers decide to not keep the original composer on for a film sequel.  I feel this happens way too frequently these days and it is exceptionally disappointing when the first film in a series has a really impressive score attached to it.  I do understand that not everyone appreciates film score as much as we do, listening to it on our mp3 players and embracing it beyond the movie, and I’m also aware that budgetary and logistical concerns do play into the choosing of a composer for a movie. But to me it is just as important as having an actor reprise their role.  What is film score if not another actor in the movie, one that has a remarkable impact on the tone of the entire work.

One movie’s whose score I did not initially appreciate was the remake of Clash of the Titans (2010), but over time I grew to enjoy it.  It definitely had thematic elements in it that greatly added to the tone of the film.  Tracks like “You Can’t Hide From Hades” build from soft to loud in such a way you’d think the god of the underworld was really conjuring his presence among you.  Another thing that struck me was how the main theme of the movie was altered based on what was going on in the film, deepened and made harsh when enemies were faced, and made triumphant upon heroic actions; hardly a new notion, but very well done for this movie.   Though I’m still a great fan of the original Clash of the Titans, the film score definitely supplemented the visuals in the experience. 

The sequel, Wrath of the Titans (2012), was visually enjoyable with a plot that was fairly interesting, but one thing it was lacking was musical continuity.  The same way it was good for us to see Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Sam Worthington reprise their roles, I watched it hoping for musical themes to be reprised as part of the saga.  To my utter disappointment, it was not Ramin Djawadi who composed the score, as in the first film.  That’s not to say Javier Navarrete didn’t do a good job on Wrath, but it was simply lacking something that may have helped make it epic beyond the plot and numerous special effects.

Unlike Star Wars, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was planned to be released as a trilogy and was not simply banking on the success of one film, before filming the others.  In this vein, Jackson signed on Howard Shore to score the films.  As a result, the trilogy was jam packed with recurring themes and a musical continuity that made the films a sort of mythology, even apart from Tolkien’s canonical novels.  It simply would be a different experience if there were different composers for each film.

Some of my favorite movies are ones that stem from other media such as comic books and one franchise I came to love is X-Men.  Of all the X-men and X-men related movies, not one of them had shared a composer, even the first two films which were both directed by Bryan Singer. As much as I did enjoy the films, I can’t help but wonder why Singer did not have the same composer attached to both films.  After all, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin and Patrick Stewart (among others) came back to portray their characters.  So why not make the movie comprehensively continuous?  The same is true for both Iron Man movies, and because of this, I found the movies lacking something that could’ve made them greater and ultimately more entertaining.

So what are your thoughts? Does the lack of composer continuity annoy you as well? Or do you like the musical variety?