Tim Burton's Batman came out 30 years ago. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins came out 16 years later. In between these two Batman movies were 2 of the 3 Sam Raimi Spiderman films, a couple of Joel Schumacher Batman films and Tim Burton's Batman Returns. Obviously, there were a lot of other super hero films in this era, but I single these out specifically because the movie studios that put out these films, Warner Bros. and Sony, also had record labels, so most of these blockbuster films came accompanied with what they hoped were blockbuster soundtracks to "double dip" in profits. With the exception of Batman Returns, which features only a Danny Elfman score plus a new Siouxsie and the Banshees song, there were great expectations for these soundtracks to suck as much cash out of the pockets of the vaunted 18-35 age demographic as possible.
Warner Bros. definitely didn't mess around when it came to these soundtracks. Tim Burton's original Batman was put under the care of Prince, who may know a thing or 2 about putting together a hit soundtrack. Joel Schumacher's two entries into the franchise boasted lead singles by U2 and The Smashing Pumpkins, after both bands were coming off massively successful tours and albums, and neither band were signed to Warner Bros. records. Even though you could argue that Hollywood was still trying to figure out comic book / super hero films in the 90s, they definitely knew of the potential. Only the X-Men franchise and some lesser Marvel properties eschewed the idea of pairing their movie with a big pop soundtrack.
Blade, was one of those smaller properties, though in the 90s, Marvel gave him a push with their Midnight Sons series, and it ended up being both a box office and Billboard success. It made 70 million dollars at the box office and the soundtrack went gold. With Blade II, Guillermo Del Toro was brought in to direct the film, and Immortal Records/Virgin Records were brought into handle the soundtrack. The Immortal Records imprint is famous for putting together rock and rap collaboration soundtrack Judgement Night, so they decided to do the same with Blade II, albeit with a different twist.
The soundtrack to Blade was a hodgepodge of mostly hip hop, with some electronic artists and a remix of New Order's "Confusion". While this may seem like an odd mix of artists, it actually made a lot of sense at the time. In 1995, Mortal Kombat hit theaters and Mortal Kombat's electronic George S. Clinton (no, not that George Clinton) soundtrack kicked off a trend pairing these "darker" action/super hero movies with more dance driven music. This would continue with 1997 film Spawn, which paired industrial and rock groups with electronic music so Blade's soundtrack continues this evolution with electronic music and hip-hop.
As with most sequels, Blade II decided to double down on what made Blade successful, so the soundtrack pairs an electronic artist with a hip-hop artist on every track (excluding the bonus track). It's a pretty star studded affair on both sides. You have Mos Def with Massive attack, Redman with Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim with Eve, and The Roots with BT, just a year after he produced N'Sync's "Pop". Unfortunately, the soundtrack didn't climb the charts nor did it become the cult classic that Judgement Night ended up becoming. It wasn't for a lack of trying, but it also wasn't very good.
Before listening, I assumed the Redman and Gorillaz pairing would've been an easy layup, but it's just uninspired. There aren't any train wrecks, but there aren't any classics. It just failed to capture that lightning in a bottle that Judgement Night had and there's nothing that really captures the imagination like Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul getting together for a song. While the soundtrack didn't meet the hype, Blade II would be successful enough to green light Blade: Trinity, whose soundtrack would more closely resembled the first Blade.
We wouldn't get another soundtrack this strange until 2016's Suicide Squad, and that soundtrack isn't even that interesting. In between we got Macy Gray showing up in Spiderman, Dashboard Confessional getting the coveted end credits song during Spiderman II, and the previously mentioned Alicia Keys/ Kendrick Lamar/ Hans Zimmer/ Pharrell/ Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger song for The Amazing Spiderman 2. Perhaps, learning from the mistakes of its fellow Marvel but non-MCU properties, The Marvel Cinematic Universe has pretty much stayed away from new music when constructing their soundtracks.
I assume Kevin Feige made a conscious decision to use popular music, or popular references in the MCU sparingly to give the films less a more timeless feel. Sure, there may be a snippet of a Ghostface Killah song in Iron Man as a nod to Ghostface referring him to himself as both Tony Starks and Iron Man on his solo albums, but it's not a new song and it's more of an Easter egg. The Avengers featured a new Soundgarden song during the credits which is just confusing in the year 2012 and it wasn't treated like a big event. The only embrace of new popular artists by the MCU is with Black Panther, and Kendrick Lamar had already been nominated for Album of the Year twice before given the reigns to curate, and through his curation, he garnered another Album of the Year nomination. That choice was almost as bulletproof as James Gunn's decision to construct a 70's rock mixtape soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy. Not to call Gunn's Guardians soundtrack an easy call, since Zach Snyder did something similar with Watchmen, and his choices were so on the nose that it became distracting.
Unfortunately, with the more serious tone that has become in vogue with super hero films starting with Batman Begins, it looks like a Blade II style soundtrack gambit probably won't happen ever again. Whether it's because Kevin Feige has no interest in running an MCU record label or because Sony has realized that Spiderman is better served with The Ramones and The Jam, opportunities for a blockbuster soundtrack look like they will be few and far between, though I'm sure Warner Bros. is foaming at the mouth for their James Gunn curated Suicide Squad II soundtrack. So while there's been a huge uptick in quality for superhero films in the last 15 years, that also means there's been fewer puzzling decisions and sometimes those are the most memorable ones.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Monday, November 4, 2019
There's Something About Mary (1998)
There's Something About Mary was a huge hit. That's not an opinion, it's an objective fact. It grossed over $379 million worldwide on a $23 million budget. I watched the movie in the theaters but it was very late in the theatrical run, so I was late to the party. In fact, I kind of experienced kind of in the reverse order that I should've experienced the movie. I don't mean that I literally tried to watch it in reverse to see if was the gross out comedy version of Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I just mean that I listened to the soundtrack before I watched the movie.
So, it's probably best to backtrack to why I hadn't seen the movie but still had a copy of the soundtrack. My sister worked at a record label during my teen years and she'd send me some free CDs whenever she had the chance. Sometimes I'd get the new album from a band before it was released like The Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty, sometimes it would be an artist she recommended and sometimes it seemed like there was no reason at all. I was always grateful regardless since free music was free music, but There's Something About Mary definitely fell in the last category. Perhaps, she wanted me to realize that Jonathan Richman is a god damn national treasure, or perhaps because Ben Lee was in Noise Addict and Evan Dando was in the Lemmonheads, I'd be interested in them since I liked their former bands. Maybe, she figured I'd probably see the movie so she threw in the soundtrack for fun, I honestly have no idea.
I don't really have a set rule about watching a movie before listening to the soundtrack, but it just seems like common sense. Without seeing the movie, the songs on the soundtrack exist without any context, and there could be a minefield of spoilers for the movie. The Mallrats soundtrack, for instance, has dialogue from the movie spliced into separate tracks throughout the soundtrack. While it's hard to discern the plot of the film from these tracks, some funny exchanges do get spoiled, and obviously these exchanges are why you watch a Kevin Smith film. Not all comedy soundtracks employ this method, and while you can skip those tracks, in 1998, skipping those tracks had to be done manually.
Jonathan Richman wrote 3 songs for There's Something About Mary, including a song called "There's Something About Mary". Writing 3 original songs for a movie that aren't part of the score is uncommon for a movie, but not unheard of. Because I saw the movie so late in the theatrical run, most of the big gags were ruined for me in trailers and TV spots. The hair gel, the crazy dog, anything that could be deemed "safe" had been thrown into TV ads except for the cameos of a certain ex-boyfriend and Mr. Richman.
I'm used to artists featured on soundtracks making brief cameos in movies. Usually, they're almost just part of the set, playing in the background, often not even interacting with the characters. If the artist does interact with the characters, it's usually not part of any major plot development. So it was a complete surprise to me that Jonathan Richman is the onscreen narrator who shows up multiple times throughout the movie, and he actually takes part in a great comedic gag near the end of the film. That and the zipper accident were probably the only scenes that really shocked me during the screening. (I'm going to assume it's safe to refer to spoilers from a movie that's 20+ years old.)
Obviously, I wouldn't recommend listening to every soundtrack before watching the movie, but it worked out in this case. While I guess I could say the soundtrack gave me some spoilers for the movie, I actually think it actually enhanced the experience for me. I wouldn't have really thought about the narrating musician on screen. In a pre-high speed internet world, it would've taken some effort to find out who that was, either I'd need to pay close attention during the end credits or I'd have to go to the high school computer lab to look up the singer from There's Some About Mary. I probably would've assumed he was just some local musician friend of the Farrelly brothers and I probably would've left it at that, so in a way the soundtrack totally succeeded. I recognized Jonathan Richman and knew who he was, and while it didn't bring Jonathan Richman to the mainstream, it probably gave him a modest boost as well.
While I don't listen to the soundtrack all the time, I have listened to Jonathan Richman and his previous band, The Modern Lovers. I haven't seen There's Something About Mary since I saw it in theaters, but it's still impacted me 20 years later. Sure, it sounds weird that I discovered Jonathan Richman via a movie most famous for an ejaculation gag, but here we are. The universe is a strange place and I'm glad I have Jonathan Richman to help me make sense of it.
So, it's probably best to backtrack to why I hadn't seen the movie but still had a copy of the soundtrack. My sister worked at a record label during my teen years and she'd send me some free CDs whenever she had the chance. Sometimes I'd get the new album from a band before it was released like The Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty, sometimes it would be an artist she recommended and sometimes it seemed like there was no reason at all. I was always grateful regardless since free music was free music, but There's Something About Mary definitely fell in the last category. Perhaps, she wanted me to realize that Jonathan Richman is a god damn national treasure, or perhaps because Ben Lee was in Noise Addict and Evan Dando was in the Lemmonheads, I'd be interested in them since I liked their former bands. Maybe, she figured I'd probably see the movie so she threw in the soundtrack for fun, I honestly have no idea.
I don't really have a set rule about watching a movie before listening to the soundtrack, but it just seems like common sense. Without seeing the movie, the songs on the soundtrack exist without any context, and there could be a minefield of spoilers for the movie. The Mallrats soundtrack, for instance, has dialogue from the movie spliced into separate tracks throughout the soundtrack. While it's hard to discern the plot of the film from these tracks, some funny exchanges do get spoiled, and obviously these exchanges are why you watch a Kevin Smith film. Not all comedy soundtracks employ this method, and while you can skip those tracks, in 1998, skipping those tracks had to be done manually.
Jonathan Richman wrote 3 songs for There's Something About Mary, including a song called "There's Something About Mary". Writing 3 original songs for a movie that aren't part of the score is uncommon for a movie, but not unheard of. Because I saw the movie so late in the theatrical run, most of the big gags were ruined for me in trailers and TV spots. The hair gel, the crazy dog, anything that could be deemed "safe" had been thrown into TV ads except for the cameos of a certain ex-boyfriend and Mr. Richman.
I'm used to artists featured on soundtracks making brief cameos in movies. Usually, they're almost just part of the set, playing in the background, often not even interacting with the characters. If the artist does interact with the characters, it's usually not part of any major plot development. So it was a complete surprise to me that Jonathan Richman is the onscreen narrator who shows up multiple times throughout the movie, and he actually takes part in a great comedic gag near the end of the film. That and the zipper accident were probably the only scenes that really shocked me during the screening. (I'm going to assume it's safe to refer to spoilers from a movie that's 20+ years old.)
Obviously, I wouldn't recommend listening to every soundtrack before watching the movie, but it worked out in this case. While I guess I could say the soundtrack gave me some spoilers for the movie, I actually think it actually enhanced the experience for me. I wouldn't have really thought about the narrating musician on screen. In a pre-high speed internet world, it would've taken some effort to find out who that was, either I'd need to pay close attention during the end credits or I'd have to go to the high school computer lab to look up the singer from There's Some About Mary. I probably would've assumed he was just some local musician friend of the Farrelly brothers and I probably would've left it at that, so in a way the soundtrack totally succeeded. I recognized Jonathan Richman and knew who he was, and while it didn't bring Jonathan Richman to the mainstream, it probably gave him a modest boost as well.
While I don't listen to the soundtrack all the time, I have listened to Jonathan Richman and his previous band, The Modern Lovers. I haven't seen There's Something About Mary since I saw it in theaters, but it's still impacted me 20 years later. Sure, it sounds weird that I discovered Jonathan Richman via a movie most famous for an ejaculation gag, but here we are. The universe is a strange place and I'm glad I have Jonathan Richman to help me make sense of it.
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