Why are Marvel movie scores so bland?

When you think of Marvel movies, you don’t necessarily think of the score. Sure, they have fantastic visual effects and cohesive plot elements, but the music doesn’t really stand out. Why is that? YouTuber Every Frame a Painting made a great examination of what it takes to make a memorable score, and what leads to a forgettable one.

The video starts by asking people to sing along to some of the most memorable scores of all-time—Star Wars, James Bond, Harry Potter—and each person hums along dutifully. They all become stumped, however, when the interviewer asks them to hum a Marvel score. No one could remember a single melody from the 13 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

It all boils down to a few points: predictability, failing to challenge expectations, aiming to not be noticed and temp music. The video points out how Marvel has crafted a template to crafting the scores for their movies. Certain sounds for particular moments make the music boring and fade into the background. Sad moments evoke a high note while other moments have their own sound, and this plays out like clockwork for each Marvel movie. Each of these factors slowly hides music in these movies until no one notices it, but the most notable factor is temp music.

Temp music is when a movie uses another movie’s score to edit the movie, until a new score is composed for it. The problem is that a director has listened to a specific scene with this specific score possibly hundreds of times, and eventually the director can’t have one without the other. This forces the composer to create a score that is near identical to the temp music.

“That’s partially why you forget the music. It’s like the A/C in the background, after a while, you tune it out,” states Every Frame a Painting. Every boring score bleeds into other movies and they all become the same monochromatic sound.

Marvel movies aren’t the only guilty ones, but they are the most high profile and continue to make the same creative decision over and over.

Check out the full video above to see a comprehensive breakdown by Every Frame a Painting.

See full gallery on TechnoBuffalo