Every day that passes brings us that much closer to the release of Marvel's superhero all-star sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron, with the recent release of new character posters, the movie's third full-length trailer, and new details on the movie's Iron Man vs. Incredible Hulk action centerpiece.
Meanwhile, we learned some time ago that Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3 composer Brian Tyler is scoring Age of Ultron, taking over for original Avengers composer Alan Silvestri. Plus, a close look at the movie's recent team poster revealed that the legendary Danny Elfman is also involved.
Elfman, famous for scoring Tim Burton's Batman movies, Ang Lee's Hulk and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, is credited on Age of Ultron as "contributing additional music" to Tyler's score. While speaking to Australian news talk radio station 891 ABC Adelaide (by way of CBM), Elfman talked about reimagining the score of another composer and touched on Age of Ultron.
According to Elfman:
"I was doing the same thing actually just last week because I've contributed music to the new Avengers movie. I took part of Alan Silvestri's theme on the original [movie], which I really liked, and I pulled it into it new theme, which became kind of a hybrid. I really enjoyed that."
Silvestri's original theme was a rousing, bombastic march which actually seemed to take some cues from Danny Elfman's trademark circus-inspired style. Some of Elfman's more recent movie scores (Fifty Shades of Grey) have been less recognizable and more mainstream, but his history with the superhero genre makes his contributions to Age of Ultron something to look forward to.
Given Brian Tyler's less-than-memorable themes for Thor 2 and Iron Man 3 (try humming them right now), it will be interesting to see how much - or how little - he builds off of Silvestri's work.
In that vein, how much will Elfman's contributions stand out? Given his comments above, fans can expect some kind of new flourish from Elfman with the main Avengers theme. Might he be coaxed back in the future for the MCU version of Spider-Man?
The Avengers: Age of Ultron releases in theaters on May 1 2015, followed by Ant-Man on July 17 2015, Captain America: Civil War on May 6 2016, Doctor Strange on November 4 2016, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on May 5 2017, Spider-Man on July 28, 2017, Thor: Ragnarok on November 3 2017, Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1 on May 4 2018, Black Panther on July 6 2018, Captain Marvel on November 2 2018, Avengers: Infinity War – Part 2 on May 3 2019 and Inhumans on July 12, 2019.
Source: 891 ABC Adelaide