The Recent Evolution of Film Music - Part 3

It has been a while since I last wrote about that topic but nevertheless there is one essential part missing in our discussion about why current film music is the way it is compared to how it used to be.

In the previous parts, we were looking at the technical disruptions that have changed the industry and about how the upbringing of media composers nowadays differs tremendously from just a few decades ago.

But there is one big factor that we have ignored so far which is that movies today also differ radically from their predecessors just a few years ago. The way of telling a story in cinema has shifted dramatically.

The best ways to see these differences is to compare franchises that saw new movies over several decades. It is worth comparing for instance the Superman from 1978 vs Man of Steel from a few years ago. Even better to compare is Tim Burton's Batman from the late 80s and the Nolan Batmans from the 2000s. In spite of the story having the same origin, they feel like they are playing in different universes. With Burton's Batman, the whole atmosphere and look is considerably more "entertainy", the characters are written and played in a way that they feel like their character traits are sourced from the prototypical catalogue of personalities. Same goes for the '78 Superman who is the prototypical superhero and quite one-dimensional. The struggle about his parents and heritage play a role but never seem to leave "scars" on his soul.

The complete opposite happens in the newer versions of the movies. Nolan's Batman is a conflicted person with a lot of personal stuff to deal with. His character is painted considerably more nuanced and ambivalent. Same goes for the character of the Joker which in The Dark Knight is portrayed as a person driven by his inner demons, even more in the more recent The Joker movie while in the older movies, the depiction of the motivation of the character remains relatively one dimensional.

Just the other day, I was rewatching the Back to the Future trilogy and while I absolutely love it, from today's perspective, the entire thing is so incredibly overacted and the characters are extremely one dimensional. Just take Doc Brown who constantly moves and acts like the "nutty professor" or even worse, the character of Biff whose motivation to be evil is never explored but he really uses every chance to have an over the top evil facial expression.

In a way, stories and characters have become more "real" in recent decades. The audience expects a deeper look behind the motivation of a character and more layers to their character than just the prototypical protagonist/antagonist roles.

This development has a tremendous influence in how music can depict these characters or movies in general. You can't just write a "dun dun duuuun"-evil guy motif for a character like the Joker anymore or a blazing fanfare for a character like Superman. The music needs to respect the multi layered characters which on the other hand prevents it from "going all in" on a character trait, remaining in an ambiguous state of "inbetween".

We can even observe this in the way how franchises like Star Wars portray characters. In the newest trilogy, the character of Rey gets a considerably more "emotionally toned down" theme by Williams compared to the heroic and fanfaric Luke Skywalker Theme in the original trilogy in spite of both characters being relatively similar. But even Williams went the more "modern" approach of putting the emotional weight that the character is carrying into their music compared to going the straight forward route that he did with Luke of giving him a Hero Theme and musically dealing with his "inner demons" by employing other (darker) themes when the story gets to these points.

But imagine how a fanfare like Luke's Theme would have felt on Rey's character. The one-dimensionality of such a theme would not have worked in a movie that is made today for an audience of today.

In a way, movies today have lost a lot of the character of escapism that they had several decades ago. Of course, people back then were absolutely aware of how overwritten and overacted certain characters were and how unrealistic they were. But the higher purpose of having fun and being entertained by the performance outweighed the lack of realism. In a movie that portrays figures that are "larger" than reality, of course also the music can be more expansive and allow for a bolder approach. In the more realistic settings of today where characters are painted like they could actually exist, the music needs to hold back more to allow more of the multi layered facets.

Of course, this can't be generalized and is also heavily depending on the genre but I feel that this point is valid as a general observation.

Another development that we see nowadays is that mainstream movies in general have become considerably darker and grittier. 85% of the blockbusters deal with an overwhelming threat to humankind or the protagonist. The Joker in Nolan's Batman feels like he is miles ahead of his counterforces in the way how he brings destruction to the world. Huge monsters of gigantic proportions destroy cities or countries, intergalactic threats endanger the surivival of the entire humankind, the villains have sheer endless power and ressources to create destruction and mayhem. Usually, the power of the antagonist seems to overshadow the small chances of the protagonists of winning the battle. Accordingly, the entire colour palette and lighting of such movies are very often dark, greenish, blueish, grayish often lacking bright colours. It is astounding how movies from the 80s and 90s feel like a candy world compared to today's movies. This general tone of course also has an influence on how the music can react to the movie.

There is yet another factor at play here. The technical limitations in earlier times required the movies very often to tell the story without actually showing many things but by just using the fantasy of the audience. For instance, the actual screen time of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 1 is incredibly short while in the newer Jurassic Worlds, we feel like almost every frame has at least one dinosaur in it. The gap that was created by technically not being able to show everything needed to be filled by music in the "old days". Today, thanks to CGI, even the most bombastic visuals can be shown leaving nothing to the imagination of the audience. Movies are often made with the premise of being visually overwhelming and not with challenging your imagination.

A great example of this is personally for me the great Season 1 of Stranger Things, where the "monster" is not shown properly before the very last few episodes. This absence and the imaginary danger that they create in the viewers mind is so much more effective than the relatively weak 2nd and 3rd season where the monster is constantly on screen. These moments where the imagination of the audience is triggered are wonderful playgrounds for the music which just become boring and "redundant" if the visuals show everything and you just double it with the music.

Covering this topic in all its entirety is impossible in an article like this and there are many more aspects in modern films that influence how music works in them. But the above mentioned points are the ones that personally for me stand out the most as reasons for the way that music has changed.