So I just got around to watching Infinity War a second time and noticed very early on that something felt off about the score as opposed to other films of similar scale.
When I think back to famous soundtracks like the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars the first things that come to mind are profound emotion in the music and how it plays to a scene. The tone is rather broad and sweeping, it could be energetic and flighty to symbolize an escape or risky maneuver like the hobbits fleeing from the Nazgul. It can even be intimidating and militaristic, basically any scene involving the empire discussing attack plans on the rebellion. I'm not going to list 20 examples covering the entirety of human emotion felt through music and their corresponding cinematic moments, but the point I'm trying to make is that these themes are developed throughout the score and quite intricate, they become what our minds 'hear' in memory, and they're consistent. The themes of Mordor, the Empire, the Jedi, all these different factions and characters have their own common threads throughout the score.
What I noticed in the Avengers film is that there's no theme in any song. Now that Infinity War is on netflix, go back and watch the first fight between Stark, Strange, Spiderman, and the Thanos cult guy. Quite literally with every cut the musical tone changes. A hero could be plummeting to their death, at the last second get saved by an ally, and then knocked back down by the enemy, all the while the music goes from jumpy and nervous, time is running out to a split second later heroic, the tables have turned, and back to DUN DUN DUN all in the span of 10 seconds. What do you want me to feel!?
It's very calculated, as if there's a soundboard of orchestral recordings that each convey a different emotion and the buttons are pressed to sync up exactly with what's taking place on screen. It's a fight in which our heroes are clearly losing, we know there's true danger and the situation is dire, or at least that's what my brain is telling me I should think, yet the score keeps jumping between that and BUT WAIT, there's a fighting chance! And when it's all over, I feel nothing, because the music it all took place to couldn't make up its mind.
This sounds like a small nitpick and I'm obviously exaggerating and comically oversimplifying the musical process, but when I hear the common complaint about Marvel films being that the music is forgettable, I think this might be what people mean. There's a disconnect between the music and what takes place on screen.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Submitted December 26, 2018 at 02:07AM by TheSynicalMispeller http://bit.ly/2BQ10zV