Splendid bit of writing.
Confession time: this may be my favourite film score ever.
Discovering Goldenthal's music toward the beginning of my love affair with film music--after tuning my ear to the symphonic wonderment of Williams and Goldsmith and Arnold--was like having eaten bland food all my life and discovering spices. I didn't know you could write film music like that. Goldenthal and Danna were the biggest sharp turns in that journey: styles that were so different from what I had been used to that they opened up a whole new landscape.
I'm also drawn to artists who inherit an ailing property and decide to give it way more than that property maybe deserved. When Alan Moore took over the comic book Swamp Thing in the 80s, he did something really special with it. Same here with Goldenthal. Batman was doing well, but it was on the cusp of turning into treacle. And he just wrote insanely complicated music for it just because he could.
It's bold, it's sophisticated, it's fun, it's weird. It hits all the right notes for me. If Elfman's Batman is a horse running in a straight line, Goldenthal's Batman Forever is some sort of glorious squid monster that goes in every direction and you can't take your eyes off of it.
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