I recently hinted at my distaste of Captain America‘s score and how anti-excited I was for Alan Silvestri to score The Avengers. As it turns out, this score is much more appealing than I could have hoped for.

            Silvestri’s most recent works haven’t been based in themes. That’s not to say he hasn’t made themes for his scores. Avengers features a solid theme glimpsed throughout before it ultimately is revealed at the very end. Hell, even Captain America’s theme peeks through here and there. It just means that he does not use themes as the ground work for his scores, like say Williams, Elfman, or Zimmer.

•             The Avengers theme can be heard in “Arrival”, the end of “Tunnel Chase”, the end part of “Assemble”, “I Got a Ride”, and “A Promise”, and is heard in full in “The Avengers“.

            Instead, to make a generalization, his action formula consists of continuing one musical idea for about a minute — all of a sudden, “Bum Bum BUMMM” — optional silence — quiet build up before bursting into a new idea — repeat. This formula isn’t the worst thing when it’s accompanying a scene, in fact it usually works, but as a stand alone listen can be a little aggravating.

•             Some highlight action tracks include “Tunnel Chase”, “Don’t Take My Stuff”, “Assault”, “Assemble” and “I Got a Ride“.

            But the aspect that sets this apart from Captain America is the variety of sounds. I honestly can’t recall off the top of my head anything from Cap that wasn’t heavily textured cacophony or loud patriotic marches (equally heavy). With a different array of characters this time, much more musical range is heard.

            “Stark Goes Green” features electronics that are germane to the character. “Helicarrier” admittedly sounds similar to “Sub Lift” from last year’s X-Men: First Class soundtrack, at least in how both are orchestrated, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Subjugation” toys with some sinister sounds for Loki. And “A Promise” uses some peaceful sounding acoustic guitar to sooth the ears after half an hour of non-stop action. Even the piccolo makes an appearance in an action track.

            Besides my preference for scores that stay on an idea for a decent amount of time, the only other criticism is that, for a movie of this caliber, it’s not as instantly iconic as it probably could have been.

            But how memorable something is is more subjective than not. The score to The Avengers works well as an accompaniment and well enough as a stand alone listen. (3.5/5)

• The focus on how dysfunctional the characters are when put together proves to be just as intriguing as the ‘splodies and becomes that one unique thing that gives the movie its own identity.

• Not only is no character overlooked in such a large cast, but each character gets their moment in the sun. To highlight a few, Robert Downey Jr. can do Tony Stark in his sleep by now, yet the movie never turns into Iron Man and Friends like early trailers made it seem. Mark Ruffalo’s take on Banner is different from Ed Norton, but just as interesting, while The Hulk is used to the best effect yet. Black Widow is more developed than she was in Iron Man 2. Samuel L. Jackson has a few of those moments when he opens is eye really wide just to show you he’s pissed. And, most surprising, Captain America is far more interesting here than he ever was in his solo movie, getting to play off some more quirky characters.

• But the most impressive thing is that the movie is pretty damn funny.  Director/Writer Joss Whedon keeps everything light and spry with one memorable quip after the other. Downey is comedy dynamite as usual (especially when paired with Gwyneth Paltrow), but who would have guessed even our intended straight-men like Thor and Captain America would get their own belly laugh moments. I never thought I could get so much amusement from shawarmas.

“You were made to be ruled. In the end you will always kneel.“

            Crowd pleasing at every turn, The Avengers is everything you would want in a summer popcorn flick and I see no reason not to give it an unabashed recommendation.


9.5/10

Ever since the first footage of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus debuted, it seemed clear it was not a light-hearted sci-fi romp. Scenes like these…

…didn’t exactly scream family-friendly (though there were screams). So speculation ran rampant as to whether the movie would be rated a hard PG-13 or R.

Now, advance tickets have revealed that Prometheus has indeed been rated R for “Sci-fi violence, including some intense images and brief language.”

This news has both a major benefit and possibly a major cost to the film.

BENEFIT: The movie will not have to water itself down. It will be able to tell the story it wants to, free from studio interference, and will likely end up all the more terrifying because of it.

COST: It likely won’t make all that much money. Alien fans and film geeks who appreciate all the clout the movie has behind it will rush out to see it, but the R rating closes off the possibility of a large audience going to see it. We are in an age where the PG-13 is king of the box office & R rated movies without Jesus being tortured or Keanu Reeves as a Jesus metaphor (inadvertently torturing the audience) only go so far in the horse race of grosses.

Only time will tell, regardless of whether it’s good or not, how much Prometheus will bring in.