DANNY ELFMAN: The 15 Best Non-Tim Burton Film Scores #15-11

Ever since 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, composer Danny Elfman has been the leading musical voice for director Tim Burton's vast filmography of Gothic goofiness and somber beauty.
From the spooky roller-coaster zaniness of 1988's Beetlejuice to the fairytale elegance of 1990's Edward Scissorhands to frightening old-fashioned grandeur of 1999's Sleepy Hollow and right up to the minimalistic pluckiness of 2014's Big Eyes, Elfman has scored all but a small handful of Burton's films.  Much akin to director/composers Steven Spielberg & John Williams, Alfred Hitchcock & Bernard Herrmann or Christopher Nolan & Hans Zimmer, the duo's working relationship is a match made in heaven.

However Elfman hasn't remained exclusive to just Burton and has worked with a vast array of other directors, including Sam Raimi, Gus Van Sant, Joss Whedon, Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro and many more.

I've selected fifteen of my favorite non-Tim Burton film scores, and included YouTube links to suites I edited together, so you might get a different taste of what the composer is capable of. 

Let's start with #15-11:

#15- CHARLOTTE'S WEB (2006)
Director: Gary Winick

Known for light-fare comedic films like Letters to Juliet and 13 Going on 30, director Gary Winick chose Elfman to compose his 2006 adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's novel Charlotte's Web.
A delightful mixture of childlike innocence and playful Americana, Charlotte's Web relies mostly on light strings and plucky pianos, with a soft layer of choir and highlights of a guitar & fiddle.  Fans of Elfman's lush early 90's work, such as Sommersby and Black Beauty will find this a wonderful companion, only here we get a style that's less dramatic and brimming more with joyful friskiness  It's not the sort of score to stir one's emotions with memorable themes but more so with constant inoffensive charm and confidence to never overwhelm with unnecessary flair.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB Suite

#14- THE WOLFMAN  (2010)
Director: Joe Johnston

The story behind Danny Elfman's score for director Joe Johnston's 2010 adaptation the 1941 horror classic The Wolfman is just as messy as the actual film itself.
Fortunately the composer's morbidly melodramatic oeuvre as a standalone listen is a delightfully vicious experience.  Elfman made it no secret that his primary influence on this assignment was Wojciech Kilar's deeply heavy operatic score for Bram Stoker's Dracula.  This is lush Gothic romanticism as some of it's best with it's bold bass-heavy strings almost overpowering the pounding brass and percussion.  While most film scores would assign individual themes for each character, setting and emotion, Elfman opts to cleverly reconstruct the leading theme into whatever sentiment it's coinciding moment in the film calls for.  Search no more for good ol' fashioned cinematic horror music at the top of it's game.

THE WOLFMAN Suite

#13- WANTED (2008)
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Being a big fan of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov's dark fantasy Night Watch duology, Danny Elfman jumped at the chance to work on the stylish comic book action-thriller Wanted.  

The composer brought a unique voice to the action scoring genre with a dense, bass-heavy, Eastern European flavored thrill-ride.  It's grungy electronic accents mesh so well with the adrenaline-fueled orchestra it never distracts from the actual compositions, unlike a few other modern composers who can't seem to get the balance right. Even though it's not your stereotypical action music, this cleverly textured score still manages to get the heart racing in all the right places.

WANTED Suite

#12- THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (2013)

Director: Errol Morris

Being the openly liberal minded composer that he is, Danny Elfman couldn't pass up scoring Errol Morris' scathing documentary on former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known.  

Utilizing the a string section, a piano and the occasional choir & marimba, Elfman juggles a dramatically solemn and playfully ominous score that reflects the shady yet chipper former Cabinet member to a tee.  A great deal of the score echoes that of Philp Glass' minimalistic rhythmic approach to scoring and that comes as no surprise, considering director Morris' number of collaborations with Glass in the past.  At first listen the music is sparse and overly serious but upon closer inspection you'll find a fascinating array of textures and techniques all done with a subtle scathing smirk.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN Suite

#11- JUSTICE LEAGUE (2017)

Director: Zack Snyder & Joss Whedon

After taking over for director Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon promptly let composer Junkie XL go from composing duties on Justice League.  In turn, he recruited his Avengers: Age of Ultron collaborator, Danny Elfman, who was no stranger to olde tyme orchestrated super-hero music.  Sadly none of this helped the quality of the film and still ended up being a complete stinker but fortunately we got a pretty damned fun score out of the bum deal.
It's your pretty standard superhero composing with bold brass, string ostinatos and muscular fanfares a plenty, however it's solid writing with good old orchestral power merging with a clever use of modern textures and rhythmic techniques.  What got me squealing like a child in a candy store was Elfman making use of John Williams' Superman theme, Hans Zimmer's Wonder Woman theme and of course his own 1989 Batman theme.  Whether or not it truly works for this incarnation of the characters is debatable but it sure makes for a highly entertaining stand alone listen.

JUSTICE LEAGUE Suite

See #10-6 HERE