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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Superman (1978) John Williams' score
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Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 12:23:16 -0700
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In article <v5hksf$28sr0$1@dont-email.me>,
 "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> Throughout June, TCM was playing various movies to celebrate the scores
> of Hollywood's best-known composers. To honor John Williams, they chose
> to play Superman. In the host's comments, it was new information to me
> that Jerry Goldsmith had turned the movie down as he was scoring
> something else, although you'd think the guy who scored Chinatown over a
> weekend after the earlier composer was fired would been able to do it,
> just by never sleeping for two months.
> 
> It's a great score, but it's always always always annoyed me that you
> cannot hear the score properly over the opening titles because of all
> the whooshing noises as each title flies by. I've always hated that.
> Salkind hired the guy who had just received an Oscar for Jaws, so I
> think the audience really wants to hear the music.
> 
> Yes, I know the main theme is derivative (of previous works of his own,
> plus the usual romantic composers that movie music is supposed to sound
> like), but the first four notes of that one major theme in the music
> conveys such a sense of joy and optimism, it's just perfect.

So much of the criticism many film composers have of "being derivative" 
is wholly undeserved. Almost every time it's done specifically and 
intentionally by the composer on orders from the director.

For example, the opening scene of STAR WARS, with the huge Imperial Star 
Destroyer rumbling in overhead, almost endlessly. People say Williams 
just lifted that part of the score from Holst's "Mars" from "The 
Planets", but the reality is that Lucas actually temp-tracked that scene 
with Mars and when Williams came in to score it, Lucas kept sending him 
notes saying, "Make it sound more like Mars. I really like the sound of 
Mars there." So Williams basically mimicked Holst's piece as close as he 
could without risking a copyright violation.

So now all these years later, we have lackbrains like Hutt claiming 
Williams all but plagiarized Mars in STAR WARS.

The same is true for so many composers whose creativity is leashed by 
whatever the director wants, not what they can actually produce.

> One of the pieces I really like is "Welcome to Krypton" (I really have
> no idea what it's called), slightly reminiscent of Aaron Copland and
> early Charles Ives.

1M1 Prelude / 1M1A The Planet Krypton

> Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor isn't the way I ever pictured Lex Luthor but
> he made it work. Of course it would have been better to create an all-new
> character for the movie. Why was Valerie Perrine a henchwoman? Yes, she
> got to distract Major Nelson in that one scene

Which doesn't age well, as a bunch of soldiers surround a pretty girl 
passed out on the side of the road and instead of summoning medical 
help, they all giggle and start planning on how they're going to 
sexually assault her.