Soundtrack

AS:...But even the Tesseract, which is kind of the energy underpinning the Marvel world, had its own theme. Which remained for The Avengers. It was established in Captain America. The way the world of scoring works is, they had that theme whether they had me or not. For instance, the Captain America theme. But I think it was because of the working relationship. They very definitely wanted thematic material for The Avengers, as you might imagine. So I think all things considered, it seemed to them to possibly be a good fit...

MP: That's what fascinates me: they've tried to fit all of these people in the same world and seemingly as a way of doing that, avoided developing themes for their heroes in individual movies. Captain America stands in opposition to that plan. I can hum the Cap theme. Not so for the rest of the Avengers. Was that a plan on Marvel's part to be able to bring them together? Was there ever pushback on introducing a theme for Captain America?

AS: Well, we had talked about the whole range. I think, just in theory, everyone agreed early on that the idea of everyone having their clearly definable theme would probably be more distracting than helpful. What we discovered in Captain America is that there is a blessing and a curse to a clearly definable theme. The blessing is, it's clearly definable. The curse is, it's clearly definable! And so, a little of it goes a long, long way.

You can grow tired very quickly of, every time you see someone, hearing, 'Ba ba-ba ba bum!' [Laughs] No. It's like, 'Oh my God I'll kill myself if I hear that again.' So, we kind of went through the experiment on Captain America. And we discovered that a little goes a long way. And you can reference the theme, you can be a little more abstract with it, and still retain a kind of presence with it. For instance, in The Avengers, the Captain America full-on theme really doesn't appear....

Read the full interview: 

http://whtc.com/news/articles/2012/may/11/avengers-composer-alan-silvestri-bringing-heroes-t/

If you’re looking for a composer whose genre soundtracks seem to be printed in four colors as opposed to written with musical notes, then Alan Silvestri’s scores would be equivalent to the bright hues that compose comic book art. From the brawny militarism of “Predator,” “Eraser” and “Judge Dredd” to the mythic exploits of “The Mummy Returns,” “Van Helsing” and “Beowulf,” Alan Silvestri’s talents have grown from the disco motorcycle beats of “CHiPs” to becoming the embodiment of do-gooding orchestral might. It’s music that captures any big kid’s dream of fighting cosmic evil, role-playing that’s accomplished with massive symphonic themes and melody, as well as the nobility of combining forces for the greater good.

A great Hollywood blockbuster score doesn't come around too often — after all, no one wants to spend $100 million or more then weave in a risky soundtrack that could derail an audiences reception. Thankfully, Marvel Studios went against the grain and let the legendary Alan Silvestri deliver a rousing, old school score for their 2011 period action adventure flick Captain America: The First Avenger. If there's anyone worth taking a gamble on, it's Silvestri, a two-time Oscar-nominated composer whose works can be heard in such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, The Abyss, The Quick and the Dead, Contact and the Back to the Future trilogy.