Here's how committed composer Hans Zimmer was to crafting a truly original score for the new Superman movie Man of Steel: He didn't listen to John Williams, one of his all-time favorites, for a year.
Man of Steel marks the first Superman feature film that has not used at least part of William's memorable Superman March from the 1978 movie Superman, one piece of music among many Williams classics that Zimmer actively avoided hearing while figuring out his own fanfare and themes.
Although he admits embarrassment about just now getting around to Williams' score for last year's Lincoln, it was worth it.
Zimmer's Man of Steel score for director Zack Snyder is powerful and dynamic, like Mahler with a synthesizer and the occasional pedal steel guitar, yet also modest in key musical sequences — to underscore the iconic superhero being an alien raised in the rural Midwest and becoming America's greatest champion.
"If we can find that one moment that's intensely personal for us, that's the dime we can turn on. That's what unleashes creativity," says the German-born Zimmer, 55.
The Oscar-winning composer — who received an Academy Award for The Lion King (1994) — has been scoring films in Hollywood since the mid-1980s, after a stint with the New Wave rock group The Buggles.
His tunes and style change for every project, he says. As Good as it Gets is very different from The Rock, and The Thin Red Line sounds unlike Crimson Tide. He feels Driving Miss Daisy and Man of Steel have more in common than you would at first glance think but at the same time they are different, too.
"I can't escape my style. I have an aesthetic," Zimmer says. "I don't know if I was born with it or raised with it. I have a German accent when I speak, and I suppose I have a German accent when I write music."
