Captain America: Civil War (2016) - Soundtrack

While this score for the third Captain America adventure does have its energetic moments, overall it is a formless, characterless assembly of orchestral background noise.

Filmtracks posted a scathing three star review dismissing the score as "a disloyal mess of scatterbrained ideas." Ouch. 

But I have to agree with their assessment that Jackman's work here is "procedural and businesslike." That it offers little that grabs or holds my interest. 

The little would be a momentary blip in the first minute of Track 12, Civil War. Which underplays, or punctuates, the airport fight and was what motivated me to purchase this album and add it to my collection.

That momentary blip returns and is nicely expanded in both Track 18, Clash - underscoring and punctuating Cap and Iron Man's fight over the fate of Bucky (The Winter Soldier) - and Track 19, Closure - where it serves as something akin to a dirge to lament the end of Steve and Tony's friendship.

Everything else is just generic orchestral soundscape. Musical filler with no thematic center to hold it together. Which is just saddening.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Soundtrack

The score to my favorite Captain America movie takes a far different approach than that for the first film. No surprise, really, considering that The First Avenger was a period piece, while The Winter Soldier is set in a modern era awash with all manner of science fiction infused gizmos and gadgets.

So composer Henry Jackman leaned heavy into electronics and pounding rhythms, rather than instrumentation that invokes a bygone era. Well, save for Track 3, The Smithsonian, when the film called for that very approach.

One flourish I quite like is a processed scream, which sounds something like a bird cry, used as a kind of auditory signature for The Winter Soldier.

When I did a search for information or interviews regarding the score, the former was sparse and the latter rather negative. There was a great deal of grumbling about repeating loops, banging and clanging industrial effects, and groaning electronics.

While I can and do understand the reasoning for those legitimate complaints and criticisms, I do not find listening to this soundtrack to be all that painful of an experience.

Big Hero 6 (2014) - Soundtrack

I have little to no comment to make about this collection entry, other than it is an energetic and peppy score that is fun to listen to.