It would appear that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has found its go-to composer. Earlier this week, Brian Tyler was announced as the composer for the next Avengers. I’m not exactly surprised, but damn, am I happy about it.
Brian Tyler’s scores for Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World were some of my favorite action scores of last year, with the latter ending up on my Top 20 Soundtracks of 2013. Before the first Avengers, there wasn’t any musical thematic continuity between the MCU movies. Ramin Djawadi did Iron Man, John Debney did Iron Man 2, and while the two scores sounded similar, they shared no common themes. While fun and listenable, neither is terribly memorable. Craig Armstrong’s work on The Incredible Hulk wasn’t great, and Patrick Doyle’s music for Thor was good, but not very compelling.
It wasn’t until Alan Silvestri scored Captain America: The First Avenger that we got a rousing, hummable, stuck-in-your-head theme for a Marvel hero. Wisely, Joss Whedon kept Silvestri and his signature Captain America theme for The Avengers, a theme we also heard briefly in Thor: The Dark World. So far, only Tyler and Alan Silvestri have managed to create compelling and memorable themes for the MCU’s roster of heroes and villains, and now, we’re going to get the chance to here those themes again in Avengers: Age of Ultron, courtesy of Brian Tyler.
I couldn’t be more pleased with this choice. I still love Silvestri, and he’s doing AMAZING work on Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (it’s my favorite work of his since Back to the Future), but I think Brian Tyler brings a freshness, an immediacy, and a fun, epic feel that suits the MCU perfectly. Henry Jackman, whose work I adore, has scored Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I haven’t yet found out if he uses the Cap theme we’ve heard in three previous films. I’ll be a tad let down if he didn’t.
In other Marvel music news, Tyler Bates (Watchmen) will be scoring Guardians of the Galaxy, and Oscar winner Steven Price (Gravity, The World’s End) will be teaming up with Edgar Wright again to score Ant-Man. Tyler is hit-or-miss for me, but I’m already rubbing my hands together in anticipation for the Ant-Man soundtrack.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is currently in production, and will hit screens May 1, 2015.