Five theme tunes 10 times more memorable than the movie they appeared in
Music is such an integral part of movie-making that sometimes it can be just as important, if not more so, than the visuals on the screen.
There’s no way that Jaws would be anywhere near as scary as it is without John Williams’ ominous repeated cello note preceding some unfortunate teens getting chomped, or imagine that cornfield chase scene in Interstellar without Hans Zimmer’s outrageously stirring orchestral work underpinning it; it wouldn’t be the same at all. The staggering talent of movie composers to match the directors’ vision and translate it into theme tunes we know and love is not something to be taken lightly.
And sometimes, those theme tunes are much, much better than the movies they’re attached to; quite simply, either the film itself doesn’t work or the director has an off month or two, resulting in a bit of an onscreen mess, while the composer continues to float to the tune of their own baton.
Here we have some examples of movies where you can nip straight out and get the vinyls while leaving the Blu-rays on the shelf.
Five theme tunes that bested their film origins:
‘Magnum Force’ (1973) – Lalo Schifrin
The world lost a genius when Lalo Schifrin passed away in June this year, unfortunately, to nowhere near the fanfare his abilities should have prompted. I mean, this is the guy who wrote the Mission Impossible theme for crying out loud, and this opening tune is a great example of just how cool the stuff he was doing in the early 1970s was on the second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force.
To be honest, one Dirty Harry film was plenty, with Clint Eastwood doing it all the first time round without necessitating four more bouts, especially not all the way up until 1988. But if there hadn’t been another, we wouldn’t have got this theme tune in all its dirty basslines and breakbeats glory.
‘The Polar Express’ (2004) – Alan Silvestri
Much as it’s difficult to throw any criticism at Robert Zemeckis for the sole reason that he directed Back to the Future, he does deserve some rightful flak for birthing the bizarre Christmas nonsense that is The Polar Express. A movie where seemingly every part is played by Tom Hanks doing that voice from Toy Story and some janky CGI rendering all facial expressions to look like a Playstation-generated Hagrid.
Nevertheless, Alan Silvestri still came up with a suitably festive theme tune that owes no small debt of gratitude to Perry Como’s ‘Magic Moments’ and ‘Silver Bells’ to soundtrack this uncanny valley of thought.
‘Pearl Harbor’ (2001) – Hans Zimmer
You don’t need ‘Team America’ to tell you how abysmal the movie Pearl Harbor was and is; the fact that some people, not naming names, thought the event itself was less traumatic than sitting through the three-hour film tells you everything you need to know.
Yet, Hans Zimmer strapped on his composing goggles, took a long sigh and probably a sip of Bavarian beer, and duly supplied an emotional and stirring soundtrack to Ben Affleck looking longingly at Kate Beckinsale.
‘Flash Gordon’ (1980) – Queen
Even as a kid watching this movie, you were aware that it was pretty abysmal. The effects were terrible, there were flying people with monkey faces that seemed to have something to do with the Wizard of Oz, some kind of gold Skeletor and a blonde bloke who didn’t appear to be able to act.
Even shouty Brian Blessed couldn’t save it, but at least Queen stepped in and provided an ELO-style synth-driven banger for people to enjoy something about the disaster train.
‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981) – Vangelis
This is probably the pinnacle of ‘theme tune being way better than the film’ as Blade Runner genius Vangelis provided one of the most inspiring pieces of music in movie history while a few skinny English blokes ran not very quickly on a beach in the 1950s.
Based on Roger Bannister’s ‘feat’ of sprinting a mile in four minutes, which is possible if you just barely miss a bus, it paled into insignificance when compared to the Greek composer’s piano riff, which he performs in the video, brilliantly, while puffing hard on a cig.
