“I have officially retired from the superhero business,” Hans Zimmer told BBC HARDtalk in March 2016, after working with Junkie XL on the score of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Only a year and 10 months later, however, we learned that Zimmer would compose the score to Dark Phoenix, a superhero film. (He even wrote new themes for Phoenix, Magneto and the X-Men.) This was quite a turnabout.
Zimmer later said that, while talking with director Ron Howard, he thought instead to avoid a “blanket” view and to look at the story instead of being averse to a whole genre. When Kinberg talked with Zimmer about Kinsberg’s view of Dark Phoenix, it came to Zimmer’s mind that he wanted to help tell the story and that the film marked a chance to do something he sought to do for a long time.
Zimmer lied. But do we care?
So, he lied. How many of us are just glad that he is once again making themes for some of our favorite heroes? Looking deeper though, it’s perhaps a bit too simple to say that Zimmer lied. Instead, beyond coming out of retirement, it seems that he just needed to have a change of heart. (Count on Howard to be the one to do it.)
(It’s also nice to see that Zimmer isn’t perfect – that he, too, has lessons to learn.)
Plus, it would have just been too sad had Zimmer left the superhero business – sad for the film industry.
This is the man who gave us the music of The Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel and, again, Batman v Superman. (Think what you will of the latter two, but the music is incredible, so much so that it is the highlight of the films.)
That’s besides escapist films, which have many similarities to superhero movies, in franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean (four out of five, at least) and Transformers. Zimmer has since scored the escapist movie No Time to Die and superhero film Wonder Woman 1984. I, for one, just said out loud “Wonder Woman is going to be great.”
It’s OK that he not-lied.
What do you think about Zimmer’s comments about retiring from the superhero industry? (Only to come back quickly and in full force?) Comment below!
Source: Collider