My feelings about John Williams are well known by anyone who follows my work. If you are a fan of John Williams, and want to be angry at me, tune in to The MovieByte Podcast Episode 42 where Joe and I talked with Dan Benjamin a bit about this topic.
The bottom line is that I love — LOVE — many of Williams’ iconic themes. And perhaps my favorite of those is the Superman March, Lois’ theme and much more from the original Superman film. In keeping with that, Superman, any Superman, feels “off” without that theme. I was definitely missing it in the latest trailer when we finally got a taste of Hans Zimmer’s score.
Now, with that said, I do feel like vey often, John Williams fails to caputre the nuances of a film, always opting for the overly bombastic approach and the less tender moments are neglected or over-scored (the big execption I have ever heard to this is John Williams’ score for Lincoln). In that way, I find Hans Zimmer to be a superior film composer. And I disagree with Dan from our conversation on the podcast that Zimmer does not write memorable or iconic pieces (The Kraken or Davey Jones theme from Pirates of the Caribean anyone?). But, I do agree that perhaps he has written less memorable film scores than Williams.
So all this to say I am extremely torn on the subject and don’t know exactly how to sort out all the feelings I have here. So I simply offer you this isolated track from the trailer as what is presumably a representation of the type of score we will be seeing from Hans Zimmer for Man of Steel. And I have to say that while I like it, it does not sound iconic to me, and it does not sound like Superman. What do you guys think?