The Marvel Symphonic Universe

It's not purely the sampling that's doing it to Hollywood: In some fashion, it's the heavily-derisked blockbuster formula to blame, and technology comes along for the ride. Tony Zhou's Every Frame A Painting [0] offered a take on how the tendency is to work very closely to a temp track and then ask for something identical, which of course can only get you increasingly similar sounds. Dan Golding responded to this by adding some nuance, noting that temp tracks have always been in use, so the answer has to be a little more complicated, and he points back to the technology. [1] I would say that the technology is just a piece of the puzzle; you can order in a different type of sound and get it, whether or not you're using a computer-heavy approach. That's aptly demonstrated by the variety seen in indie games, for example. This is a problem that movies have made for themselves by being focused on fitting everything to a formula. The occasional film does slip through that has a great score that draws on something bigger than other films(for one example: Scott Pilgrim vs the World). [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]

The YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting talked about the usage of temp music in movies on one of its video, titled Marvel Symphonic Universe: [VIDEO]

In that vein, I recommend this video about the Marvel Universe music and the general use of "temp music". It touches a lot of the points you mention: [VIDEO]

Every Frame a Painting has a video talking about how big budget movies tend not to have recognizable melodies, as well: [VIDEO]

I think we're sort of aggressively agreeing with each other. It's not the CGI (or lack thereof) that makes the modern superhero films bad (except as a sort of demoscene-with-infinite-budget visual spectacle where they're great). It's the writing. To a lesser extent the cinematography is poor, which makes it hard to really feel what's going on. There's lots of unnecessary camera movement, frenetic jump cuts during fights, and all the colors are dull and muted. Every Frame a Painting has a good video on Kurosawa's use of movement in his films, and actually uses The Avengers as a contrasting example and how the cinematography & direction makes the scene in question feel meaningless.[1] So I agree that it's not the CGI that's the problem. It's the writing, the direction, the cinematography, the editing, the music[2] (though they improved since the linked video came out, directly in response to it), etc. The films are bad in many ways, but the CGI isn't really one of them. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

Temp music and the idea that music shouldn’t be noticeable in a film. Every Frame a Painting has a great video essay on this - [VIDEO]

The YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting has an excellent video about music in films. Why are some scores so memorable while others are easily forgotten? The Marvel Symphonic Universe (2016): [VIDEO] You don't have to have seen any Marvel movies, the insights are universal. (Also worth watching the follow-up video: Hollywood Scores & Soundtracks: What Do They Sound Like? [LINK] )

Read about the concept of Leitmotif [1], that some claim was introduced by Wagner but seems to have already been present in the early 17th century. Leitmotif represents the idea that you can imply dramatic progression through music. The idea is that by using short melodies and simple chord progressions you can bind together elements of a story. Also see [2] for a birds eye view on soundtrack design by major movie makers. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

That's more due to how movie scores are produced these days. Every Frame A Painting explains it really well in this video on why you can't remember any music from Marvel movies: [VIDEO] (well, up until they made that video, at least)

This statement might be more poignant than you think, there's an interesting video here comparing Marvel with Star Wars and James Bond in terms of how memorable any of the music is, because it's almost all cookie cutter: [VIDEO] I think all the points here have value, I've definitely played some really good games recently including some that were mentioned above, but I definitely think there's a general risk averseness because AAA game studios are too big to experiment so a lot of games are rehashed sequels or incremental "improvements" (as in the movie industry or whatever's in the music charts). I'd put some of the blame of this on the outcome bias, things are judged on whether the outcome was favourable (e.g. profit) not whether it was the right decision (e.g. let's try something different with novelty, but riskier). As Julia Galef covers in one of her podcasts (will have to find the link), the exec that tries something risky might get a promotion if it succeeds and get sacked if it doesn't as opposed to getting promoted from suggesting something novel regardless of whether it worked. See also "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM". How many films that get critical reception now, got poor/indifferent reviews initially because they were just too experimental/novel for the time, e.g. Original Blade Runner. What will people think in 10, 20, 50 years about Marvel films.

> comprehend why Blade runner even has the possibility of being boring then I'm likely too stupid to be communicating with you Step away from the sugar drinks and try a digital detox. :-) People paid to see Vangelis sound and light shows, when there wasn’t even a movie rolling. Surely with a movie attached, the sound and light isn’t that dull? [LINK] Buried in that thread is a pushback to your premise about MCU, a video that actually excerpts from Inception while taking down those “MCU scores” (pun intended) in particular . Nobody can hum from Marvel movies because they play it safe (aka boring)! [VIDEO] I appreciated a quote from that discussion, tying back to your hypothesis: “People do not remember safe choices. Only bold, original music.” Blade Runner wasn’t safe, though they almost ruined it with the release voice overs trying to make it safer… Interestingly if you go down the rabbit hole, a reply video to that one points out the Star Wars theme everyone remembers was “copied to hell” from countless old movies before it. That response goes on to say the problem is, roughly, digital production sameness. > there is absolute truth to the statement when someone says that movie is in general quite slow and boring Well, no. Boredom comes from within. When you have too many thoughts, or too few, to focus, boredom happens. Blade Runner is an experience, the pacing makes room to take it in. If you don’t open your mind to take it in, if your mind wanders off, or loses the plot, yo

It will most likely cause a "genericization" like "temp music" caused in Hollywood movie music. See "Every Frame a Painting" for "The Marvel Symphonic Universe": [VIDEO]

There was this video which showed film directors doing something similar. They film their scene with “filler” music previously used in some other film. Then they hand the scene to the music director and ask a score for it, which forces the director to make something very similar to the filler music. It then makes all film music sound similar. This was only possible due to the “productivity boost” of digital editing pipelines, which allowed directors to edit immediately after filming. [VIDEO] from 5:50 on but the whole video is a masterpiece.