The Musical Mythopoesis of Hollywood's
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Strings, Brass, and Spandex: The Musical Mythopoesis of Hollywood’s Superhero Renaissance By Mark Richardson 10847839 Candidate for Master of Arts and Culture: Musicology 26th June 2015 Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Maarten Beirens ‘Wheels up, let’s rock ‘n’ roll!’ - Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) 2 Contents Introduction 4 Hollywood’s superhero renaissance 5 Reasons behind the success 7 Tone and music in the twentieth century 10 What should Hollywood’s superhero renaissance sound like? 15 Five case studies 17 1. ‘Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place’ in Iron Man (2008) and The Avengers (2012) 18 2. ‘Underlining psychological refinements’ in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) 25 3. ‘Serving as a kind of neutral background filler’ in Spider-Man (2002) 31 4. ‘Building a sense of continuity’ in The Dark Knight (2008) 36 5. ‘Underpinning the theatrical build-up of a scene, and rounding it off with a sense of finality’ in Superman Returns (2006) 41 Conclusion 47 Bibliography 53 Filmography 55 Word count (excl. footnotes, bibliography, and filmography): 18,793 3 Introduction Henry John Pratt has written that ‘comics [are] more suited than any other medium for adaptation into film’ due to the fact that ‘each medium requires us to make sense of a sequence of images.’1 It is perhaps for this reason that adaptations of comic book characters have been around for nearly as long as the comic books themselves. Even so, the recent spate of superhero films is unprecedented. In the fifteen years since the turn of the twenty-first century, the number of superhero film adaptations made in America has been more than double the number made during the entire twentieth century, and their average box office gross more than triple. Unadjusted for inflation, the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films is now the highest-growing film franchise in history, beating such stalwarts as the Star Wars saga, the James Bond series, and a certain Harry Potter. 2 The appetite for these films seems to be unwavering, and every year at least three blockbuster productions come to fruition. The “superhero movie” has not just come of age, it is now perhaps the most reliably bankable weapon in Hollywood’s arsenal. In the last seven years in particular, the two dominant comic book publishers, Marvel and DC (wholly owned by Disney and TimeWarner respectively), have even been able to map out their release schedules up to the early 2020s, such is the guaranteed demand for their films. 3 This has also enabled them to situate individual films within constructed mythical universes that their characters share, not only creating a larger, richer sandbox to play in, but also rather cleverly making every film, however good, unmissable. These films are not just bound together by shared characters or financial success: shared socio- political and moral standpoints, as well as a now-established aesthetic framework have given Hollywood’s superhero renaissance a common - even homogenised - “tone” or “feel” that is continuously reinforced with every release. In a sense, the “superhero movie” has arguably become a genre in its own right, with its own set of rules and conventions that usually must be adhered to in order to achieve (financial) success. 1 Pratt, Henry John, ‘Making Comics into Film,’ in The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, ed. Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), p.147. 2 A franchise is often defined as consisting of a film and all its subsequent sequels and/or prequels. It may also refer to a group of films that belong to a shared fictional universe but are not strictly narratively linked, such as the James Bond series. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the highest-grossing film franchise as measured by worldwide box office receipts. See http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises/sort/World, accessed 20/05/2015. 3 See Marvel’s official website for their current predicted output slate until 2020. At the time of writing, this was http://marvel.com/news/movies/24065/marvel_studios_schedules_new_release_dates_for_4_films and http://batman- news.com/2014/10/15/warner-bros-dc-movies-revealed-wonder-woman-justice-league-2017-justice-league-2-2019- plus-lots/, both accessed 20/05/2015. 4 In this thesis, I will explore the special role music plays in establishing the “tone” and “feel” in the films of Hollywood’s superhero renaissance, and the mechanisms through which this is achieved. Through a series of case studies, I will investigate how music functions alongside other elements in a film’s mise en scène, contributing to its overarching mythopoesis – that is, the production of a character-specific mythology, played out over the course of a film’s narrative. While this thesis will, at times, need to reach back to the comic books themselves, it will primarily try and treat the new era of superhero films as standalone works of art in their own right. However, as we shall see, some of these characters are over seventy years old and have accumulated considerable cultural baggage over the intervening years. Therefore, some contextualisation can be important when understanding why specific aesthetic choices, including the type and use of music, are made. I will start by defining exactly what I mean by the term ‘Hollywood’s superhero renaissance’ and then examining the genre conventions that govern it. I will then perform a preliminary survey of the literature regarding the adaptation of comic books into films, before examining five case study soundtracks in detail (Ramin Djawadi’s score for Iron Man [2008], John Powell’s X-Men: The Last Stand [2006], Danny Elfman’s Spiderman [2002], Hans Zimmer’s and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight [2008], and John Ottman’s Superman Returns [2006]). To conclude, I will explore what these scores have in common and the implications of superhero music on contemporary Hollywood scoring practices more generally. Hollywood’s superhero renaissance In this thesis, Hollywood’s “superhero renaissance” refers to the body of films made in the twenty- first century, based on established superhero characters, and produced by one of the major American studios. Defining what exactly constitutes a superhero film can be problematic, as Dan Hassler-Forest has noted that characters from action films such as James Bond and Jason Bourne often demonstrate what could be considered superhuman characteristics.4 To avoid this confusion, Hassler-Forest uses Rick Altman’s three levels of genre signification as outlined in Film/Genre and specifically relates them to the superhero franchises: ‘semantically (by the appearance of costumes, superhuman powers, etc.), syntactically (narratives in which heroes save cities/worlds/communities from destruction by evil), and pragmatically (texts that are written and talked about as part of an 4 Hassler-Forest, D.A., Supeheroes and the Bush doctrine: narrative and politics in post-9/11 discourse (PhD Diss., Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2011). 5 existing superhero genre).’5 From this, he’s able to simply define ‘the term “superhero movie” as a genre that is recognized as such by general audiences.’6 This definition allows quite a distinct - albeit it varied – group of films to emerge, although it is not without its problems. The ‘pragmatic’ clause, while essential to separate out superhero films from action films that feature characters with above human powers, also seems to limit the inclusion of films that do not have a well-known, pre-existing comic book based mythology. For example, Peter Berg’s Hancock (2008) and Brad Bird’s The Incredibles (2004) have no print media precursor at all, the latter instead serving as a loving parody of the genre as a whole, while the characters from Disney’s Big Hero 6 (2014) only appear in two comic book miniseries, a total of eight issues. Yet these films both ostensibly featured superhero characters, had large budgets, were produced and released by major Hollywood studios, and performed well at the box office. Whether these films are considered “fully-fledged” superhero flicks is still up for debate, but one might posit that animated films (as the latter two both are) and those of a parodic nature (of which all three are to some extent) do not fit as comfortably into the genre, or to return to Hassler-Forest, would cause genre confusion ‘by general audiences.’ The definition also represents a syntactical simplification between good and evil/hero and villain that belies the often complicated relationships between these dichotomies that are played out in the films themselves. Not only is the movement of characters between these different “ base camps” of morality often absolutely critical to the narrative, but also the definitions of right and wrong rarely have much stability. In particular, those comics with a dark viewpoint, such as Watchmen, make these boundaries incredibly blurred. Defining where the current superhero renaissance began is equally problematic. Stephen Norrington’s Blade (1998) and Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) were the first films licensed by Marvel Studios, a new division of the company specifically set up to make film adaptations of its library of famous characters. Ten years prior to this, Warner Brothers merged with Time Inc., the then parent company of DC Comics, bringing their intellectual property under the direct control of a film studio for the first time. This buyout led to the production of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), which was an unqualified success, becoming the first film in history to gross $100 million in ten 5 Hassler-Forest, p.17. 6 Ibid. 6 days and eventually making $411 million (from a $48 million budget).7 From a corporate point of view, the release of Batman and Blade therefore mark a new period in the relationship between the two major comic book publishers and Hollywood studios, DC with Warner Brothers, and Marvel with 20th Century Fox respectively.