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The Suicide Squad: (John Murphy) Is it a sequel? A
reboot? A spin-off? Does it matter? The most important thing about
2021's
The Suicide Squad is that it carries over some actors from
2016's
Suicide Squad and retains the same irreverent attitude.
With characters and a plotline insanely stupid by design, the concept is
unashamed in its quest for campy comic book craziness. The gang of
misfits that comprises the Squad is brought out of prison to invade a
mysterious South American island and annihilate a Nazi-inspired lab that
is, not surprisingly, experimenting on people. Along their merry
journey, they kick some ass, are betrayed by comrades, and discover that
the enemy lab actually consists of Starro the Conqueror, a giant space
starfish that wipes people out and uses their bodies for its various
world domination schemes. Writer and director James Gunn, having been
dispatched from the
Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, attempts
to balance gore and humor with interludes containing backstories for
some of the more interesting characters. While Steven Price's score for
the 2016 telling was certainly adequate, Gunn had always been impressed
by composer John Murphy's music for
28 Days Later and
Sunshine and approached him for the 2021 project. Murphy was just
starting to re-enter the composing scene after a ten-year absence
following
Kick-Ass to spend more time with his family. While he
embraced the challenge given his tendency for rock and experimentation
in his music, he also described tackling
The Suicide Squad with
the following eloquence: "It was fucking terrifying!" (Murphy is known
for his colorful language.) Fortunately for him, Gunn is the type of
director that does not interfere with the artistic process, and when
Murphy provided to him a few alternate options for vital moments in this
score, the director invariably encouraged him to go with the most
brazenly unintuitive variant. Murphy is not well-versed in the
complexities of orchestral music, a reality he freely admits, but his
approach to
The Suicide Squad did include a sizable traditional
ensemble pressed into sectional recording duties as required by the
pandemic. The composer wrote the score via guitars rather than keyboard,
though, and ultimately used his guitars as a method of boosting the
ambient sound of the orchestra when its less-than-desirable size failed
to yield enough muscle. Don't expect complicated orchestrations in the
work, for like Price's score, it's the style of the individual soloists
that wins the day.
Murphy throws a lot of paint at the walls in
The
Suicide Squad, defying expectations with unconventional tones for
certain scenes and characters. Sometimes this involves vocal elegance
while at other times resorting to smashing rock explosions. Chilled
keyboarding offers respites in between these and the crescendos of
orchestral force. The overarching simplicity of the constructs will
annoy some listeners, however, especially in the main theme. That
primary identity isn't really a theme; rather, it's a rhythm of five
notes on key for electric guitar, pounding away repeatedly on end. It
dominates the early cues in the score and on album and eventually, by
"The Star-Crossed Wake Up," becomes a continuous rhythm without any
limitations of the original five notes. It's simply a staccato blasting
on key. Murphy does adapt it into a military-tinged counterpart, though,
building off of the five-note rhythm but adding strings in "Waller's
Deal - Meet the Team." It's expanded with a more dynamic identity in
"The Squad Turn Back" and translated to a rock variation by "The Squad
Fight Back." The ensemble fight sequences generate several versions of
this material, often with basic but sufficient orchestral heft. From
there, Murphy opts to handle the score as a series of vignettes for
individual characters. Harley receives slowly ascending tonal chords for
choir in "Harley Gets the Javelin" and "Harley Sings" before shifting to
action mode in "Bombs Go Off." A Polka-Dot Man theme in
"Interdimensional Virus" presents soothing keyboarding of an old, analog
Moog synthesizer tone. For Ratcatcher, acoustic guitar and strings offer
a more European flavor in "Ratcatcher's Story." King Shark is treated to
a catchy lullaby for acoustic guitar and female voice in "King Shark and
the Clyrax," another rather dour retro expression of whimsy. Bloodsport
eventually enjoys a quietly redemptive motif for keyboard and woodwinds
in "Bloodsport's Deal." Finally, the music for Starro the Conqueror
stomps with vintage Media Ventures-like blasts in "Suicide Squad vs
Starro the Conqueror." The defeat of that beast, after a reprise of the
main five-note rhythm, is handled with a happy-go-lucky choral, rock
and, orchestral expression of glee in "Ratism" that reaffirms the
score's ultimate, counter-intuitive panache. The whole score struggles
to develop its thematic ideas but doesn't necessarily suffer as a result,
the narrative strong enough to serve the story well and translate into
an engaging album. While not opening with much intelligence and
remaining simplistic throughout, Murphy supplies remarkable touches of
creativity in style to match the attitude of the movie. It's definitely
a souvenir score, one that tortures the brain but tickles the heart.
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