> if they made a "Star Wars" movie or even a "Superman"
> movie without using the John Williams theme they would be outrage galore
> as there should be but they make a batman movie without Elfman's theme and
> it's okay because no one respects Elfman. the man rights one of the best
> themes ever composed and it gets sidetracked because he's not John
> Williams.
> Zimmer claiming he didn't want to use it because of a sequel is boring or
> whatever he said is pretty baseless because the new theme for batman in
> this movie sounds very similar to Elfman's's theme.
> and he also claims that he is paid to "invent" which is pretty
> laughable considering that all his music does tend to sound the same. the
> "molossus" track sounds just like his "backdraft"
> score.
I agree, Zimmer's pretty predictable. However, the biggest argument I have for not using another composer's theme is that composers can f*ck up each other's work pretty bad. For instance: the composer who wrote the music for Jurassic Park III did some horrible orchestration with the theme. Patrick Doyle, when writing with Williams' theme to the most recent Harry Potter movie, actually had WRONG NOTES. At least when using your own material, you can't screw over someone else's.
Not to mention, each movie is a new work of art. Unless a movie is written specifically as a sequel, there's no reason to use a similar theme. I see the Batman movies as more of a "serial," much in the way the old Batman TV shows used to be. There wasn't really a through-line for the shows, they were individual adventures. By that logic, to use the same theme is not a necessity. It's not like a TV show, where you have the main-titles music that identifies the show for us - these are feature length movies, in which you're WELL aware that it's the same Batman.
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