"This city needs an enema!"
One of the projects that I had planned to dismantle was my Gotham Avenger: Screen Tales of the Dark Knight compilation. I worked on this project extensively yesterday; the relationship between that mix and the new one is roughly the same as that between Man of Steel: Screen Tales of the Last Son of Krypton and You'll Believe A Man Can Fly (down to a name change induced by similarity to the title of the new film in the franchise; the newer disc drops the subtitle and is just simply Gotham Avenger). I removed the music from the current incarnation of the franchise to allow for a future mix dedicated to that. As a result, all of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer's music from Batman Begins has been excised, thus allowing for more time to be devoted to the two Danny Elfman scores, two Elliot Goldenthal scores and one Shirley Walker score.
As with You'll Believe A Man Can Fly, the disc does lose a certain amount of gravitas without the newer score, but gains a greater unity of sound; Elfman was known at the time for his quirky musical style, but Goldenthal comes up with music that is completely insane. Walker's music anchors the whole; it isn't so stylistically different from the other two composer's work that it sticks out - there are moments when it veers into bizarre territory, but it is ultimately a very solid score. In fact, Walker's and both of Goldenthal's scores were the primary beneficiaries of the additional running time allotted to each score in the new assembly, although I found myself making some different decisions this time around. While the previous version had to concentrate on what these scores had in common, the ability to show different facets means that the new disc also essays how different they could be as well.
Most of the disc is completed, I just have to make a few more run-throughs before I post the track listing and liner notes, although I have already added the disc to the Film Series Compilations section of my mix list. It's a little less bombastic than the previous one, but it's still pretty damn loud, and it looks a little snazzier, too.
It is unfortunate that I only had a crappy sounding source for Batman & Robin. There is some really good music there that I wish I could make sound better; it's a shame Warner Brothers decided against releasing an album (although apparently Goldenthal did assemble one).
My Alien Quartet mix is probably next up.
Alphabet meme nudge.