2008 Movie News Archives

Superman II

April 9, 2008: Ken Thorne Talks Scoring “Superman II” and “III”

iF Magazine has published an exclusive E-notes interview with composer Ken Thorne, who talks about how he adaptated John Williams' SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE score for SUPERMAN II and III. Now that these complete soundtracks are part of Film Score Monthly's "blue box" of music from the Christopher Reeve superhero saga, Thorne's soaringly re-mastered work is at last receiving its heroic due. And in iFmagazine.com, Thorne reveals how he worked with longtime director Richard Lester (for whom he'd scored such films as HELP and FINDERS KEEPERS) to arrange Williams' famed music for the sequels, as well as adding his own muscular melodies to the Superman saga. Here's an excerpt from the interview...

    Q: It's pretty amazing how you essentially "tracked" SUPERMAN 2 with John Williams' original score. How did you pick and choose which music to segue in and out of, and yet make it musical?

    THORNE: I was provided with all the tapes and scores of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE. Richard Lester, John Victor Smith (editor), Bob Hathaway (my music editor) and I, discussed in detail where music should be used and came out pretty well in broad agreement! I only had to do one re-write, in fact, when Richard opted for a different direction to the way I had gone. (It was an easy fix.) I would also point out that ALL the music used in SUPERMAN 2 was recorded by me. No scores recorded for SUPERMAN were used in edited form in SUPERMAN 2.

    Q: Two big highlights of SUPERMAN 2 are the EiffelTower hostage-taking and Metropolis battle sequence. How did you approach these scenes?

    THORNE: The hostage taking was almost all my own original music. I only used the SUPERMAN theme on cuts to Superman flying to the rescue. (Glad you liked it!) The battle sequence cue consisted mainly of readjusted John Williams cues and a percentage of mine.

    Q: How much of your original music was in SUPERMAN 3?

    THORNE: I estimate that about one third of the score was mine but it's impossible to come up with a precise figure.

Read the complete interview at the IFmagazine.com website.



2008 Movie News

Listed below are all the Movie News items archived for 2008 organized into various categories:

“Superman Returns” & Sequel/Reboot Movie News:

“Justice League of America” Movie News: Christopher Reeve Movie News: Direct-to-DVD Animated Movie News: Other Movie News:

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