Comic book Film research: Score and soundtrack

Score: Superhero movies often feature a dramatic and theatrical score that gives the audience feelings of excitement. However, like all scores, they must continue to reflect the mood of the film.
One of the most famous pieces of music from a superhero movie is the main title theme from Superman: The Movie by John Williams (of Star Wars & Jaws fame). Williams gives a grand orchestral feel to the music and the theme sounds powerful and iconic, like Superman himself. All live-action Superman films have subsequently used this fantastic music, which creates an incredible, spectacular atmosphere, foreshadowing the fantastic adventure that follows.


Spiderman also has fantastic music. Edward Scissorhands  composer Danny Elfman gives spidey's opening titles a theme that connotes the feelings of mystery, like we don't know how he is able to do these things he can do, yet. All will be revealed. It entices you in. As well as the mystery the music is also fast and loud to show that the film is action packed and exciting. Elfman's music also has this grand, theatrical style of the Superman theme, it just hides it a little more rather than blasting it straight into the ears of the audience. The fact that the music begins slow and quiet before getting gradually louder and faster builds the tension and excitement that the audience want to see in the movie.



Now, The Dark Knight Rises doesn't actually have opening titles, so here is a typical piece of music from the film composed by Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Inception). The music mixes orchestral music and modern sounds to create a piece of dark, complex, mature and serious music (making it much like the movie itself). Although the grand superhero-type style is present here, it's mixed with electronic instruments in order to give the film a modern feel. The music is also very dark and deep, connoting the subject matter and character exploration present in the film.

Watchmen uses a wide range of music in varying styles in order to give the emotion that music brings to a movie. For the most part, the film uses a variety of existing music in many different genres, from psychedelic rock:

Easy listning:


folk rock:


& even alternative rock:



In addition to this, Watchmen also contains original music created by Tyler Bates. Unlike most film music, the majority of this score contains ambient, dreamlike, electronic music. The fact that Watchmen doesn't contain traditional film music proves that it is not a traditional, straightforward superhero film.