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The Marvel Symphonic Universe

Every Frame a Painting · 8M views · 2016-09-12 · 13:35

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Overview

An Every Frame a Painting video essay asking why Marvel films lack memorable musical themes. It blames temp tracks and directors scoring to filler music.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as an insightful explanation of why modern film scores sound alike, with lessons beyond Marvel.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2017–2026

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What people said

testdelacc1 · 2026-06 · Strong recommendation

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.

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open-source-ux · 2022-03 · Strong recommendation

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] )

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Litost · 2022-06 · Recommendation

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.

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Sources

Video by Every Frame a Painting, played through YouTube.

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