A recent trend that has been bothering me an awful lot lately is including modern rock power chords as soundtracks to fantasy or period peices. Its about as dislocated as seeing John Wayne with a southern drawl wearing a wrist watch in Sparticus. It just pulls me out of the film entirely.
I am not saying these scores are bad music. Just not right for these films in these settings. You can have powerful moving scores without falling back on modern music trends.
I still haven’t seen The Wolfman as it ranked lower on my anticipation list than other films last weekend. Dammit if after hearing this, I am happy that they turfed the Paul Haslinger score for the ever appropriate Danny Elfman.
Danny Elfman knows haunting, and he also knows what works. This is the score we ended up with:
