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| Williams |
Superman: (John Williams) Few fictional characters
have been as prolific in mainstream entertainment as the Man of Steel.
From the original comic stories in the 1930's to the Clayton Collyer
radio show and Paramount's animated shorts in the 40's, the Kirk Alyn
television shows of the 50's, the musical adaptation for theatre and
George Reeves series of the 60's, the feature films of the 70's and
80's, the television spin-offs of the 90's and 00's, and finally, a
resurrection to the big screen in 2000's and beyond, the legend of
Superman has thrived for more than 80 years. Upon the first major
motion picture adaptation in the mid-70's, director Richard Donner and
his producers determined that the character would be treated with
respect while, after all his adventures, providing him with a massive
scale on which to generate his wonder. Their success in that endeavor
yielded four Oscar nominations (with one win) and a permanent "most
favored Superman" status for actor Christopher Reeve. While the sequels
for the 1978 film maintained much of the same cast, the legend was
watered down to campy levels. One member of the crew who refused to
kneel before General Zod was John Williams, whose score for the original
Superman was such a natural fit with both the legend of the
character and audiences' expectations that he had nothing left to prove
by scoring the laughable sequels. In retrospect, Williams' music for
Superman was so perfectly placed in both the film and in the
history of cinema that this score, perhaps more than
Star Wars,
confirmed the renaissance of the operatic orchestral fanfare to the big
screen. It proved that his Oscar-nominated work for
Close Encounters
of the Third Kind and
Star Wars the previous year was no
fluke, leading the composer on the journey of five subsequent years that
would change film music forever. His Wagnerian extravaganza was so
beloved by both fans of the legend and the mainstream that his sound for
the character endured prominently in three immediate sequels and become
the benchmark for future adaptations. Jerry Goldsmith would give the
title theme a cameo in his mid-80's score for
Supergirl and John
Ottman eventually utilized all of Williams' major themes for the
successful continuation of
Superman Returns nearly 30 years
later.
The key to the longevity of Williams' music for the
Superman legend is its timelessness. The instant recognizability
of the composer's multitude of shamelessly obvious themes is also a
contributing factor. Whether it's the unequivocal heroism, the patriotic
feeling of soaring optimism that it instills in listeners, or even the
brassy, overwhelming orchestral power that hooked so many people into
the genre of film music at the time,
Superman is a score of such
quality that it cannot be completely eclipsed by the
Star Wars
and
Indiana Jones franchise works also by Williams. When
remembering the impact of
Superman on listeners at the time, most
people point to the themes rather than the style. And while the grandeur
of the London Symphony Orchestra's performance of Williams' densely
orchestrated and intelligently designed ideas are as alluring as ever,
the themes do indeed define the score. The opening march provides the
title character with a noble persona of galactic proportions, its
simplistic octave-loving major key progressions serving the dose of
superhero elixir that has, to some degree, worn badly with audiences
through the years due to the brightness of its own light. So blatantly
heroic is the melody's construct that the title march is more difficult
to enjoy decades years later than the other themes from the film. The
underlying rhythmic introduction, becoming the driving force of the
entire affair, has fared better. In many ways superior in its
agelessness is the love theme, highlighting the magnificent "Flying
Sequence" in the film. Its lyrical sense of movement coincides with the
fact that theme was originally designed with lyrics in mind ("Can You
Read My Mind") and several pop variants were recorded for the scene
before the now-famous instrumental performance and associated concert
arrangement was used instead. Given the beauty of the theme and the
remarkable personal tragedies that tormented lead actors Christopher
Reeve and Margot Kidder in the following decades, the
Superman
love theme's only detraction is its bittersweet legacy. Still, in both
its interlude position in the primary march for the film, as well as its
own generous song variants and concert arrangements, it is the best that
Superman offers. Keeping its numerous original recordings by
Williams straight is another matter, left for discussion about the
albums below.
While the march and love theme are the best remembered
themes from
Superman, there are several notable subthemes that
each receive considerable development. The most intriguing of these is
one that knocks the viewer over the head immediately after the opening
fanfare is finished. The remarkable crescendo that builds from a solo
trumpet into a monumentally tonal performance of the "Planet Krypton"
theme is the single favorite minute of music for some listeners of the
score. After the planet is introduced in its glory, the film never
allows such a restatement. Unsatisfying incorporation of the theme into
the scene of the planet's destruction and subsequent references in "The
Fortress of Solitude" cause the theme to be underutilized. To his
credit, John Ottman relied upon clever references to the theme more
often in his 2006 film score. One curious note is that the 1998
re-recording alters the woodwind solo after the end of Krypton's famous
crescendo to match the "Force theme" from
Star Wars. Slight
synthetic effects during the sentencing of General Zod in this cue make
up the bulk of the employment of electronics in the score, and their
impact is barely noticeable. For "Destruction of Krypton," Williams
foreshadows the danger with a distantly dissonant adult choir, though
Star Wars fans will delight in the timpani-pounding,
cymbal-crashing full ensemble tonality of the Death Star's glory during
the actual scenes of destruction. A theme for the Kent family is
introduced and maintained until Clark Kent's departure for Metropolis.
Sometimes referred to as the "family theme" or the "Smallville" theme,
this identification with the character's childhood features the same
heroic stature as the fanfare, but with less obvious statement until the
closing of "Leaving Home." The only somewhat weak theme in the score for
Superman is the one for Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty's villainous
duo. Williams' "March of the Villains" treads dangerously close to the
comical territory that the production was trying to avoid, serving as
something of a preview of the composer's handling of the Ewoks in
Return of the Jedi, though it's obvious that Williams was merely
attempting to play off of Hackman's confidently snickering performance.
Much of the concert arrangement of this irritatingly prancing theme was
never actually used in the film.
The remainder of the score often uses fragments of these
themes for its substance. One cue of singular beauty is "Trip to Earth,"
which offers some of the wondrous atmosphere that Williams later fleshed
out to a greater degree in
Hook. A minor-key variant of the
Krypton theme in "The Fortress of Solitude" is an emotional play aided
in the cue by eerie, high female voices. The straight action cues are
overshadowed by moments like the latter half of "The Big Rescue" (or
"Helicopter Sequence"), which cranks out a reprise of the title fanfare.
Some of the better action cues were never available on the original LP
or CD albums for
Superman, further diminishing their
memorability. The album situation for this score was initially
frustrating for many
Superman fans, though they would be
ultimately rewarded for their patience with two stunning releases of the
score in 1998 and 2000, as well as even more astronomical treatments of
the score in 2008 and 2019. The original 1987 release on CD was far from
complete, not even featuring the same quantity of music contained on the
LP release. For some mainstream listeners, however, it could be argued
that the 73 minutes of music presented on that original CD was all that
was really necessary for a cursory appreciation of the composition's
highlights. In 1998, Robert Townson commissioned an effort to completely
reconstruct the score for a re-recording by John Debney and the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra. The resulting 2-CD set on the Varèse
Sarabande label not only maintains the integrity of Williams' original
composition, but it added 13 minutes of noteworthy material not
available on the 1987 Warner release. Although there were skeptics at
the time who did not believe in the concept of the multitude of
re-recordings that were undertaken by Varèse and other labels in
the late 1990's, this presentation of
Superman features a
performance among the best of all the efforts of the era, ranking
alongside
Vertigo on Varèse and
Raise the Titanic
on Silva Screen Records. Rather than serving as an interpretation of
Williams' score, the beauty of the coordination effort for this
recording of
Superman is its total and complete faithfulness to
the original composition. Debney and the ensemble achieve stellar
results in their goal of producing a sound that recreates the original
feel and power of Williams' work without resorting to any temptation for
embellishment.
Outside of the crisp digital sound of the 1998
re-recording provided by Varèse, casual listeners won't likely be
able to tell a difference between that product and the original. While
the additional selections and better arrangement of the music may not be
sufficient to alone attract your purchase, the sound quality will.
Hearing the majority of the score in outstanding digital quality,
especially with such precise attention to the restoration of the music,
makes this set a must-have for collectors of Williams' classic Bronze
Age scores. The opening few minutes of the "Planet Krypton" cue alone
will blow you out of your seat. The packaging, complete with
track-by-track analysis, is a fascinating read as well. It could be
argued that Varèse and the RSNO never reached these soaring
heights again. The 2000 Rhino release really met most demands by
Superman score fans, presenting forty additional minutes of
previously unreleased music from the original recordings in what was
considered at the time to be a definitive release. If you were for some
reason deterred from the Varèse album, the early 2000 set of
double CDs offered the complete score with such attention to detail that
it was originally thought that a significant revisional album release of
Superman was never again to be necessary. As comprehensive as it
could possibly be, the Rhino set combines the superior arrangement of
the Varèse album with a collection of previously unreleased and
alternate cues. Along the same lines as similar treatment at the time
for
Jaws,
Close Encounters, and a number of other classic
Williams scores, this Rhino set, despite a somewhat cumbersome slip
case, competed well while in print. Some of its additional cues were
necessary additions to your collection at the time, including the
rousing "Star Ship Escapes" and "The Big Rescue." A large portion of
missing cues from the second half of the film was also finally made
available, leading to a very satisfactory chronological presentation.
For good measure, Rhino also included the pop versions of the love theme
performed by Margot Kidder, as well as source cues, alternate takes, and
the score's familiar concert arrangement. Despite the 2000 album's
strength, Film Score Monthly and Warner Brothers teamed up in 2007 to
produce an even more comprehensive
Superman set for release in
February of 2008. The resulting 8-CD product was devoted to all four of
the original feature film scores and Ron Jones' 1988 animated series
music. Its selling point was the extensive, newly available material
from the Ken Thorne and Alexander Courage sequel scores arranged from
Williams' original themes.
While the music from
Superman isn't
significantly different on the 2008 set when compared to the
out-of-print Rhino one (there is a handful of additional alternate
material that was discovered but it only amounts to a couple of minutes
in length), the improvement in sound quality was an attraction for those
already settled on the 2000 set. Only after Rhino had produced that set
were original, first generation masters of
Superman discovered,
and it from this source that FSM's presentation is made. Even so, for
99% of casual listeners, the awesome FSM product is redundant when
considering only
Superman. The related material from the
subsequent scores, however, is in many places similar enough to the
original work by Williams to serve as alternate music of the first
composition. The only problem with the FSM set is that it is clearly
targeted at the most devoted of concept and film music collectors. At a
hefty price of $120, it was one a few sets available from the label that
topped the hundred-dollar mark. Somewhat surprisingly, the first edition
of this set, limited to 3,000 copies, sold out relatively quickly, and
FSM pressed a second edition of another 3,000 copies that remained
available at the same price. The production quality of the FSM product
is truly stunning, easily the most attractive and fascinating item ever
to come from Lukas Kendall's company. The extensive information in the
hardcover book included with the eight discs will keep you occupied for
hours. But that wasn't the end of the
Superman saga on album. In
2019, La-La Land Records took advantage of the discovery of even better
sources, namely the actual tapes used to record the orchestra in the
studio, to press roughly the same contents but with a few notable
additions. The 2019 "40th anniversary" product is highlighted by its
incredible sound quality, the kind of rousingly crisp clarity that
really shames even the prior remastering work. Several fascinating
alternate cues are also a major attraction, including a notable early
rendition of "The Fortress of Solitude." The original LP presentation is
supplied in magnificent sound, too. Missing from this set, however, is
all the bevy of supplement source materials that FSM had offered; the
2008 product thus remains relevant. If you're only interested in the
best-sounding performances of music for the first
Superman film,
however, the Varèse and La-La Land presentations are nothing less
than 5-star products that will serve most needs. Any of these albums
will continue to make you wonder how this score could have lost the
Academy Award to Giorgio Moroder's
Midnight Express. Fickle,
those voters are.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Score as Written for the Film: *****
- 1987 Warner Album: ***
- 1998 Varèse Sarabande Re-Recording: *****
- 2000, 2008, and 2019 Original Recording Albums: *****
- Overall: *****
| Bias Check: |
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.8
(in 75 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.66
(in 348,418 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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