Stand Up and Cheer!!

It was Summer 2006 and Bryan Singer’s ‘Superman Returns’ was on general release at the cinema and I was there, ready to rekindle an old childhood memory of watching the Man of Steel fly around in blue tights, bashing bad guys along the way.

Within a few moments of the film starting where the title sequence was whooshing in and out the actor’s names, my excitement was building. I could feel something inside stirring, ready for action, a force almost willing me to stand up and shout ‘GO ON SUPERMAN!!! YOU CAN DO IT’.

This emotional response my body was experiencing wasn’t to do with what I was watching, but in what I was listening to.

John Williams, in my view had created a ‘musical masterpiece’ that started off with the original Superman film in 1978 and had been reworked by other composers in subsequent films following the life of the Kryptonian, up to the most recent film mentioned above, 28 years later.
Was part of my excitement due to the fact that I knew what Superman was all about? He was a superhero who could melt metal with his eyes, fly around the Earth and perform a ‘quick change’ in a phone booth. As a child I would have been jumping around myself, taking on the role as the Man of Steel and at the same time singing away to the now infamous theme tune.
Was I excited whilst watching the 2006 film because of this association I already have with Superman and his cinematic presence, or had the music been powerful enough to shake me within without this past experience? Perhaps a bit of both.
I guess for many people who watched the original Superman films, the music was key in giving people that ‘hero feeling’ within themselves allowing a feeling of soaring optimism and at the same time making a statement about the film and main character they were about to watch. This music was the first thing that viewers would listen to (before any character dialogue) and it would say something about the film that may not have been possible by pictures alone, or a different score.

• Would a different piece of music have worked with this film?
• Is the music that important?
• Does it make a difference to our experience when watching moving images?
• How would we experience a film with no music? 

Along with the theme music to Superman, John Williams has also composed music to a huge amount of films including Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET.the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars, Jaws and more recently Catch Me If You Can and Memoirs of a Geisha.

If somebody were to ask John Williams if music is important in films, the answer I think would be a big yes and the list of films he has worked on and been nominated for Academy Awards, would be proof of this.

A film with no music, I think would be a bit dull and would certainly have made my trip to the cinema less exciting when watching Superman Returns.