After a couple of fairly lacklustre efforts bearing the Spider-Man name, Marc Webb’s recent reboot The Amazing Spider-Man brought the franchise back to life.
After the underwhelming Spider-Man 3 film and rather atrocious Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark musical written by Bono and the Edge, Horner brings some much needed musical depth to proceedings.
Mind you, a 105 piece orchestra should certainly help on that particular path.
‘Becoming Spider-Man’ bristles with a wondrous delight, the lush instrumentation accompanied by bouts of electronic effects and beats. ‘Ben’s Death’ transitions from heavy crashes of electronic danger before falling down onto a sombre string-lined bed.
This moment is a cathartic point in both the film and the evolution of Peter Parker as Spider-Man and Horner’s score beautifully captures the evocations flowing through Peter’s mind at this period. The tribal beats that fill out the closing moments of this piece display the mixture of classical and electronic elements found throughout the score.
The action sequences are propelled by the urgent strains of ‘Lizard At School!’ and the sprawling ‘Saving New York’, which as the title suggests accompanies the final battle scene in the film and through the jarring deployment of chords, listening you feel as though you’re in the middle of a tense battle.
A movie soundtrack is often difficult to judge on its own merits away from the visual accompaniment, but Horner’s score displays the necessary vibrancy for the franchise’s reboot.
The soundtrack doesn’t carry an immediately recognisable main title theme that other franchises might typically have, but has certainly assisted the repositioning of the Spider-Man brand.
– Jake Robinson
