Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: (Daniel
Pemberton) Sony had been long contemplating unconventional directions
for its "Spider-Man" concept, not remaining content with its endless
reboots in live-action form. Their answer is 2018's animated
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which opens a doorway to
multiple universes with their own Spider-Mans and associated villain
incarnations. The movie allowed Sony to twist the character's human form
into a new body and, frankly, dozens of other bodies, expanding the
appeal of the character beyond the limitations of the typical Peter
Parker depiction. All of this is accomplished with a comic book-inspired
2D animation style that required a record number of artists to render
for a motion picture. The dizzying story of
Spider-Man: Into the
Spider-Verse follows the opening of this "multiverse" via a
supervillain's particle accelerator under New York, which brings a slew
of other Spider-Mans and other characters into this universe
temporarily. This onslaught of characters allows a number of them to be
killed ingloriously, and the action inspires a young black and Latino boy
from Brooklyn to take over the Spider-Man mantle in the home universe. The
audience witnesses his transition into the role with extreme reverence
to the original comic inspiration. The soundtrack for
Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-Verse is dominated by the songs that would appeal to
Miles Morales, the lead African-American teenager destined to become
Spider-Man in our universe. Naturally, the blend of hip hop, rap, and
pop influences from those songs has an impact on Daniel Pemberton's
score for the movie. The English composer, a relative but already
well-awarded novice in the film scoring world, is known for his
unconventional blends of genres in his work for the screen, and that
knack for the unexpected is exercised fully in
Spider-Man: Into the
Spider-Verse. Any score competing with so many dominant song
placements is placed at a disadvantage, but this is not the first time
Sony has put a "Spider-Man" score in such a position. Pemberton responds
by combining five different personalities into one composition: his own
Oceans 8 suavity, Hans Zimmer's post-modern muscularity, Ludwig
Göransson's
Black Panther inventiveness, funk-evolved David
Arnold electronics, and awkward Looney Tunes juvenility. It's certainly
one of the most fascinating listening experiences of 2018, if only for
the sheer hideousness of its combined personality.
The result of Pemberton's blender concoction for
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is counter-culture superhero
action at its most bizarre, a sound not totally inapplicable to the
story but one so badly executed that the overall result of his approach
is a dizzying headache that concentrates only on immediate creativity
rather than effective cohesion of his highly disparate parts. No
previous theme in the franchise returns, but there's a minimal
acknowledgement of superhero genre norms evident in the composer's new
theme for the titular hero. (It applies to all versions of him here.)
Teased in "Only One Spider-Man" but developed fully in "The Amazing
Spider-Man" and especially "My Name is... Peter B. Parker," the idea is
simplistic enough that its bright, three-note phrases can be applied in
fragments throughout the work. That the theme sounds like a corny,
vintage Bill Conti tune with sound effects is unfortunate; the hip hop
overlays of "Spider-Man Loves You" could be interpreted as either
ass-kicking greatness or terrible parody humor depending on your mood.
There are some secondary motifs present, including sentimental romantic
material in "Mi Amor" and a notable piano in "For the Love of MJ." The
Kingpin villain and his cohorts also receive some recurring musical
representations, the most distracting of which is the manipulated sound
of a roaring elephant, blasting forth in "Escape the Subway" and earning
laughs at each recurrence. Other sampled animal noises, police sirens,
and beeping noises are immensely distracting in this score, as is the
intentional distortion mixed into the recording to simulate excessive
gain levels. A few of the most insufferable film music cues of all of
2018 exist in
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, courtesy of
Pemberton's plight for cool, inventive discord. Unfortunately, the
processed effects that he applies to his dissonant rhythms and
crescendos are never consistent throughout the score; some of the best
personality in these sounds, such as the whistling in "Visions Brooklyn
1, 2, 3," never return to connect the story's parts together. The
orchestral recordings strive for Zimmer bravado with extremely
simplistic structures and orchestrations while the percussion and loop
applications clearly attempt to emulate
Black Panther. There are
a handful of short rhythmic bursts in
Spider-Man: Into the
Spider-Verse, led by "Spider Training," that are genuinely cool in
their accessibility, but these passages are too infrequent to save the
score from dissolving into an absolute mess. Pemberton's attempt to
generate a new environment for this franchise was a great idea, but the
end result is offensively schizophrenic, overbearingly loud, and
obnoxiously processed. Be prepared for a wildly chaotic misfire.
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The insert includes no information about the score or film, not even
basic credits for the composition or recording.
