It's a bird... it's a plane...

I just noticed that the link I posted yesterday knocked off my little “about me” sidebar. I hate when that happens. If I’d noticed it earlier, I would’ve felt compelled to change it so the sidebar remained in its place. I’d better see if I can get that to come back…

So last night I saw Superman Returns, and I just have to say – John Williams is like a movie theme music-writing genius. I mean, I seriously probably would’ve paid just to watch the opening credits. Which I thought were really well done – they had sort of a retro, return-to-the-style-of-original-Superman look to them. Accompany that with John Williams’ instantly-recognizable score, and you’re sitting there thinking, “Yeah! Superman! Superman’s gonna save the world!” And I’m not even a big Superman fan to begin with…

I was thinking about all the movies John Williams has composed for – Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, E.T., Jurassic Park… even Home Alone and Harry Potter. And there are some really talented composers out there writing for movies right now – James Horner and Hans Zimmer come to mind – but there’s something about John Williams that can’t be duplicated, it seems. He has the uncanny ability of taking a very few musical measures and fashioning them into something that can immediately spark the imagination. He’s a master of musical onomatopoeia – in other words, he can compose a score that effortlessly invokes the theme of the movie. When I hear that Superman music, it SOUNDS like a guy who’s about to go rescue someone from falling off a bridge. When I hear the music from Jurassic Park, it SOUNDS like an island full of dinosaurs. When I hear the music from Star Wars, it SOUNDS like some kind of big space battle. I’ve always been amazed by the way music can conjure up emotions and images, and John Williams seems to be very attuned to this knowledge.

Anyway… I thought the movie itself was pretty good – I liked it more than I thought I would. I think I shocked Rick when I told him I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually seen all of the original Superman movie. Sorry. I guess that should’ve been a prerequisite for seeing the new one. I know I’ve seen PART of the original – I remember the end, where there was an earthquake and Superman had to reverse the rotation of the earth to save Lois Lane (which is just stupid, really – how does reversing the rotation of the earth change the course of time?? All that would do is make everyone really dizzy. But I’m probably thinking about it too much… it’s just a movie… just a movie…). And I vaguely remember a scene at Niagara Falls – wasn’t there a kid who fell over a railing and Superman had to save him from going over the falls? Maybe that wasn’t even the first movie… maybe it was the second one… I never saw all of the second one, either. Or the third. Was there a fourth? Because that’s another one I didn’t see…

Rick was saying that he thought Superman was a little TOO super – he can pretty much do anything without getting hurt, as long as he’s nowhere near kryptonite. But I think that’s what has made Superman such an iconic figure – the fantastic idea that some nearly-indestructible being is out there, ready to rescue us from mortal peril. You don’t want your superheroes to have TOO many weaknesses. And that’s what I was thinking as I watched the movie last night – how great would it be if there actually WAS a Superman out there, ready to swoop down and prevent so many bad things from happening? Perhaps that’s why superheroes seem to stand the test of time – because for two and a half hours, you can sit in a movie theater and forget about the outside world and pretend that just because the wings of a plane fall off, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll crash. You just need Superman there to help.

And hopefully, he’d show up accompanied by snazzy theme music…

Hey, isn't that-- ? Better take a picture, just in case...