Marvel Studios hires female composer

Except she's not the first, Shirley Walker was the fantastic composer who was responsible for the Batman, Mask of the phantasm score.

Still good news to get more female composers, but modern execs love to forget even recent history. I'm looking forward to see what Toprak produces.

Woodclaw wrote:

Kamelmann wrote: Except she's not the first, Shirley Walker was the fantastic composer who was responsible for the Batman, Mask of the phantasm score.

Still good news to get more female composers, but modern execs love to forget even recent history. I'm looking forward to see what Toprak produces.

Unfortunately, Mask of the Phantasm (which is a terrific movie) didn't have a theatrical release

yes, it did.   Though originally made for direct to video, it had a theatrical release.   It was the only DC animated film to have one until Killing Joke.

OTH the phrase is “major comic book movie”... which a $6M animated movie that was given a limited theatrical release is. not.  (It’s all in that spin.)  That’s.not a knock on the movie or the score, both are fantastic, it’s just reality.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Mask_of_the_Phantasm

20 years ago I wouldn't have known if music composed by Horner, Elfman, Shore or Zimmer was written by a man or a woman. I strongly suspect that the above mentioned group were not employed simply because they were male. 

Hiring a woman for the sake of hiring a woman?.....Ridiculous.

d_k_c wrote: 20 years ago I wouldn't have known if music composed by Horner, Elfman, Shore or Zimmer was written by a man or a woman. I strongly suspect that the above mentioned group were not employed simply because they were male. 

Hiring a woman for the sake of hiring a woman?.....Ridiculous.

I think you're projecting a bias from somewhere.

No where in the article did it say she was hired simply because she was a woman.

OTH, it did say she was fresh off scoring Krypton (another Super hero property) so gave evidence that she had the chops to get the job.

It DID say she was the first woman to score a major super-hero movie.  That's a simple statement of fact.

You might infer that since there was a female director, working on a female led movie they went out of their way to properly consider female composers, and that's why she got evaluated and chosen.  But no where does it indicate that she wasn't skilled for the job and that's why she was chosen.   Or rather her ability vs cost was favorable, so she was hired.

Esp for composing a Marvel movie. Marvel Original scores that aren't a pop hit (guardians and Iron Man) is bland to the point of not remembering it.  The previous male composers sucked, it's hard to think she could do any worse.

This is unlike Zimmer, Elfman or Wiliams for DC who made memorable tunes.  But that wasn't her compeition as Marvel's never hired them or anyone of their ability (for whatever reason).

We'll have to wait to see how well she does.  I'll actually be surprised if the music is kick-ass and memoriable as the WW-tune simply because that doesn't seem to be what marvel is looking for.

For me, the judgement towards the music being good or bad will be entirely separate from the plumbing of the person who made it.  Virtue signalling over the hire is just that and only relevant to those who care about such things.  Good for her, hope she does well.  Meritocracy beats fake equality every day and twice on Sunday.  Next....

For me, the best scores in the Marvel movies by far have been the hits they have taken from several genres and incorporated them into the movie (GoTG 1 did this the best IMO.)  The rest of the music has been mostly forgettable, which is fine.  The vast majority of movies don't have stand out scores (or maybe I'm just not a music fanatic.)

They are movies.  When the music in the movies makes the level of Mozart, then I'd be impressed.