“I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to John Williams; without his music, Superman’s powers are greatly diminished. Believe me, if you try to fly without that theme, you go nowhere.” —Christopher Reeve
The above statement, said at a 1993 celebration honouring the composer, applies not only to the actor playing him but also to the character of Superman. Since Reeve flew onto screens in 1978, John Williams’ theme has been synonymous with the most famous hero in DC Comics’ stable, and it continues that legacy in “Superman,” which opens this week. So perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves: Just what is it about that theme that keeps it going beyond the film that spawned it?
“One of the essential things about the film to me,” Williams said in the 2001 documentary “Making Superman: Filming the Legend,” “was that it was fun and didn’t take itself too seriously. The way Richard [Donner] had directed it, and particularly the way Chris and Margot [Kidder] played the parts, it had almost this kind of theatrical camp to it that didn’t take itself too seriously, and if one could strike a level of theatre and sleight of hand and tongue-in-cheek in the creation of the themes, that it might be the right idea.”
Williams wrote seven different themes for “Superman: The Movie,” including a beautiful love theme and a nostalgic Aaron Copland-esque theme for the sequences in Smallville. But it’s the Superman theme that’s appropriately dominant. It’s made up of two sections: a powerful fanfare acting as a precursor to action and a call to arms, and a big and bright main theme that uses a three-note phrasing that sounds like it says “Sup-er-man.”
So when Clark Kent has to become Superman to save Lois Lane from becoming a sidewalk Jackson Pollock, Williams plays a big rendition of the fanfare as he opens his shirt to reveal that big “S,” creating a truly iconic moment. Subsequently, the main theme plays with exuberance and vigour as Superman catches the falling helicopter, with the crowd beneath him doing the same thing the audience is doing: cheering. And it’s not just the selfless heroic act we react to, it’s the fist-pumping triumphant music underneath it.
“Like all of John Williams’ great themes,” says Tim Greiving, author of the forthcoming book John Williams: A Composer’s Life, “the Superman theme feels like it has existed since the dawn of time, and feels like it came here with Kal-el all the way from Krypton. A great fictional character theme, like a great pop song, feels inevitable and predetermined while also delighting our ears with a sense of surprise—and Superman’s theme does that in spades.”
Williams’ theme continued to soar across the three remaining Reeve “Superman” pictures and beyond. “Supergirl” came to screens in 1984, with the same producers behind it: the infamous Ilya and Alexander Salkind. Jerry Goldsmith scored the film and wrote mostly new material for the picture, but he also found space to include a brief but reverent quote of Williams’ theme, in a scene where the title character sees a dorm poster of Reeve’s Man of Steel. This continued in both live-action and animation, with Shirley Walker’s excellent theme to the 1996 cartoon “Superman: The Animated Series,” which also utilizes the “Sup-er-man” three-note device. Although, to be fair, that phrasing was first used by Sammy Timberg in the 1941 “Superman” cartoons as produced by Max and Dave Fleischer, so it’s not especially a new thing—Williams just gave it that added oomph.
2006 saw Williams’ theme return to cinema in a big way, courtesy of Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns.” A pseudo-sequel to the first two Reeve pictures, and featured a number of homages to the films, not least the adaptation of Williams’ themes by Singer’s regular scoring partner John Ottman, who reintroduced the theme in a big main title sequence very similar to the 1978 original. Even Zack Snyder was initially interested in using Williams’ music for 2013’s “Man of Steel.” In 2022, storyboard artist Jay Oliva posted on Twitter that Snyder wanted to use the theme, but Warner Bros. preferred a new approach, eventually hiring Hans Zimmer. “Zack and I loved that theme,” Oliva said, “but the studio wouldn’t let us use it because they wanted something new for this Superman. It turned out to be a good thing because Hanz’s [sic] theme was perfect.” Williams’ theme did appear briefly in “Justice League,” as scored by Danny Elfman, but this was reversed in “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” which featured music by Tom Holkenborg.
Zimmer’s approach to Superman was admirable, but it was doomed to fail as part of a film that didn’t seem interested in taking the character seriously. The dark and gritty tone that many fans admire is ill-fitting for Superman, and as much as they tell us his “S” is the symbol for “hope,” there seems to be very little of that in the actual picture. As a result, Zimmer’s music is much more enjoyable away from the film.
Gunn, however, didn’t hesitate to bring John Williams’ theme back. “That soundtrack,” he told Gizmodo in 2024, “was one of my favorite of all time. When I was a kid, the thing I loved the most about the movie was the music. That was the thing I took home with more than anyone else.” For “Superman,” Gunn recruited English composer John Murphy, who had scored “The Suicide Squad” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” But at the time, Gunn had not even finished writing. “He was one of the first people I gave the script to, along with Peter Safran and a couple of others, so that he could start writing music for it. And I said, ‘I want to use a version of the Williams theme, but I want to do our own version of it.’”
Murphy’s version of the theme debuted with the first teaser trailer in December—a more concise version of the melody played initially on electric guitar before being reprised with an orchestra and chorus. It feels fresh and unique, but still definitively John Williams, a Superman for a new generation, but one that respects where he’s come from.
“What’s really amazing is how that leads into a lot of other pieces,” Gunn said. “Some of which come back to the Williams theme, but some of which are purely John Murphy. It goes into that, comes back out, and it’s used beautifully throughout the movie. And John has worked almost non-stop for the past almost two years, putting the score together.”
It would appear that John Williams’ Superman theme is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps this is appropriate for a world in so much turmoil, where audiences still require the escapism and symbolism his heroic acts bring, as his comics did during the Great Depression. As George Lucas is so fond of saying, it’s like poetry. It rhymes.
“The Superman theme,” says Greiving, “became permanently glued to the character, not just because the movie was so popular or even because the tune was so catchy, but because it fit Superman like a bespoke blue suit. Williams so expertly forged the right melody for that character, the perfect melody, that we just can’t imagine him without it.”
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