The massive task John Williams had before him when he set out to score 1978’s Superman cannot be overemphasized. He was on top of the world, having won Oscars for Jaws and Star Wars, and having given the world the most famous five-note theme of all time in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

John Williams, circa 1978

Superman would be uniquely challenging, however. It’s hard to imagine, but up to that point, nobody had made a superhero movie grounded in recognizable human emotion. Obviously, the film succeeded so spectacularly thanks to the contributions of director Richard Donner, the writers (particularly Tom Mankiewicz), and the iconic performances of the cast, especially career-making turns from Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder.

The Scores

Williams’s music is their equal in every way, though. His score is alternately majestic, romantic, and even goofy. It turns on a dime between emotions with astounding ease. It also gave the world one of the great heroic musical themes of all time – as well as one of the greatest love themes. It was recorded, as many of his scores at the time were, with the legendary London Symphony Orchestra, and has a scope that has rarely been equaled.

“Leaving Home” – John Williams – Superman

After the colossal success of Superman, most fans know that Superman II proved to be a profoundly troubled production. The original plan had been to film Superman and Superman II as one gargantuan production, as The Lord of the Rings films would later be shot.

Superman (1978)

Superman proved to be the most expensive film made up to that point, so when the first film was done and the second was about three-quarters done, the producers – the Salkinds – decided to shut the production down and finish the first film for release. The Salkinds and director Richard Donner had fought mightily throughout production, so Donner was fired when the first film was done.

After the spectacular financial success of Superman, the second film was handed to the brilliant director Richard Lester, who had won the Palme d’Or in 1965 for The Knack… and How to Get It. Lester had directed a previous mega-production for the Salkinds, The Three Musketeers, a couple of years earlier. That film was infamously split into two films only after it was completed, resulting in numerous lawsuits from cast members who had only been paid for one film.

Lester himself had sued the Salkinds over Musketeers and won, but he found himself unable to collect the money he was awarded. Not long after, the Salkinds approached Lester to serve as an uncredited producer on Donner’s Superman. They wanted Lester to be an intermediary with Donner, with whom they were no longer on speaking terms. Lester agreed, in order to recoup the money he was owed from Musketeers.

Superman II (1980)

Thus, when Donner was fired, the Salkinds found themselves with a director already on board who had been present for most of the first round of filming. It seemed natural to give Lester the reins to complete the sequel. The released version of Superman II is a mix of original material shot by Donner and new material shot or reshot by Lester, and his wry, iconoclastic tone and love of physical comedy gags is in evidence in many of his scenes.

When it came time to score Superman II, the plan was for Williams to return. Either because of scheduling difficulties (as Williams tells it) or because of personality differences between Williams and Lester (as Ilya Salkind tells it), that proved impossible.

Instead, it was decided that Lester’s regular composer, the exceptionally talented Ken Thorne, would take Williams’s score for the first film and rework it to serve as a score for the second. Thorne would adapt the existing Williams themes and musical cues and (where necessary) create his own new material, which would complement Williams’s work.

As Thorne describes it in the CD liner notes, “This assignment was exactly the same as Help!, where I was instructed to use Beatles melodies wherever possible. This time it was John Williams.”

Ken Thorne, 1974

The solo scores that Thorne composed for Lester’s other films are worlds away from Williams’s lush, melodic work. However, Thorne produced a score for Superman II that honors Williams’s iconic work, while reinterpreting it and expanding upon it in fascinating ways, especially with his development of the thematic material for the villains who dominate Superman II but are only seen in one brief scene in the original film.

Thorne managed to accomplish this despite working with a vastly smaller studio orchestra, due to budget constraints. The resulting score is poetically appropriate for a film that is also the vision of two men of different sensibilities.

“Gelignite Bangs / Superman Saves Lift” – Ken Thorne & John Williams – Superman II

After the enormous financial and critical success of Superman II, Lester and Thorne were both given more freedom to express their own voices on Superman III. Lester took the film down a more comedic path than the first two… to divided reactions from fans. Thorne, meanwhile, was less beholden to Williams’s existing material.

Unfortunately, they were also given less money to work with. For example, the exteriors were shot in Calgary, instead of New York, as a cost-saving measure. The resulting film and score both suffer a bit from these choices.

Superman III (1983)

In addition, Superman’s central relationship with Lois Lane, which generated most of the emotion in the first two films (and Williams’s gorgeous love theme), vanished, as actress Margot Kidder had her role reduced to a cameo. There are differing explanations for how this happened, but the impact on the film and the emotional resonance of the score is immense.

Thorne still works with Williams’s main theme and bits of his other material in Superman III. He reworks Williams’s Krypton melody into a theme for Superman’s battle with his evil alter-ego. However, the lack of any other connecting characters or elements from the self-contained first two films meant Thorne was free to create a musical world all his own.

“Preparing Balloons/Superman Coming” – Ken Thorne – Superman III

Thorne introduces new themes for the villains and their schemes. The composer felt that, because computers were central to the plot, it was organic to bring synthesizers into the musical palette of Superman. He also adds a new love theme for Clark and Lana (his high school sweetheart) based on a melody in one of the Giorgio Moroder source songs.

Thorne shines most, however, in the playful, joyfully brassy, quasi-cartoonish music for the frequent comedic interludes Lester added, starting with the opening titles. This is a very different score from Williams’s first one, but it rewards careful listening.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

After the financial disappointment of the third film, the Salkinds sold the Superman rights to the famous/infamous Cannon studio, which produced the final film in the cycle, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Having drifted away from John Williams’s style in the previous film, the original intention was to bring him back.

When Williams’s schedule didn’t allow that, a novel solution was found. Williams wrote brand-new themes for the film’s three major new characters. Composer Alexander Courage was then brought in to fashion a full score from those themes and Williams’s themes from the first film.

Thorne had moved away from using some of Williams’s themes by the third film, but he was also unable to use the themes for Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, because the actors and their characters had vanished. Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder were convinced to return for Superman IV, allowing their themes to reappear as well.

Alexander Courage

Courage is probably best known to genre fans for having composed the original Star Trek series theme, as well as having scored episodes of that show and others, including Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

However, Courage was also one of the most gifted orchestrators in the industry. He had known Williams since their early days in the 50s and had already orchestrated multiple scores for him, including Williams’s Oscar-winning Fiddler on the Roof. He would also go on to orchestrate many more, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Home Alone, and Jurassic Park. As a result, he was uniquely suited to fashion Williams’s thematic material into a coherent score.

Unlike Thorne on Superman II, who was asked to simply take entire musical cues from the original film and adjust them to fit the new movie, Courage was allowed to craft a score that would be his own yet still use the numerous Williams themes to maintain a musical continuity that Thorne had moved away from in Superman III.

Unfortunately, Superman IV was plagued by budgetary woes and creative problems. Courage scored a two-hour cut of the film, but when it was test screened, the results were disastrous. As a result, half an hour was hacked out of it, and much of Courage’s score was tossed out.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Williams’s new themes for Lacy (the love interest) and Jeremy (the innocent young boy who sets the plot in motion by asking Superman to rid the world of nuclear weapons) are both lovely and playful – classic 80s Williams themes. However, the highlight of the entire score is undoubtedly the introduction of Williams’s Nuclear Man theme. It is bold, brassy, and slightly ridiculous yet also genuinely menacing in how unstoppable it is. It’s an earworm and remains among the best themes Williams has ever written, even if it remains among his least known.

“Nuclear Man Theme” – John Williams & Alexander Courage – Superman IV

Courage fashioned a lovely, lyrical score that recaptures the goofy menace and 1940s screwball energy of the first film, while also giving layers of romance and genuine emotion that are lacking in Thorne’s more playful Superman III score. Courage was also unafraid to lean into the Williams themes in his toolbox, deploying them for maximum effect.

It’s heartbreaking to realize this gorgeous score was written for a film we’ll probably never see, as no complete print of the uncut film has been found. Still, heard in its entirety, as Courage intended, it is a marvelous score – a worthy successor to Williams’s. With Superman IV, Courage and Williams succeeded in giving Christopher Reeve’s Superman a stunning musical send off.

La-La Land’s New CD Releases

John Williams’s score for Superman has been released many times. There was a 16-track double LP when the film came out. That album was issued on CD in the US in 1989, cut down to 14 tracks due to the data limitations of early CDs. A rare Japanese CD from 1990 contained the full 16-track album.

The score was rereleased in expanded form by Rhino Records in 2000 on two  CDs with 35 tracks. That release, using the best sources then available, was produced by the brilliant and dearly missed Nick Redman and the man who has become the dean of John Williams restorations, Mike Matessino.

Film Score Monthly’s 2008 “Blue Box” Superman set.

The score was then released, with additional expansion, as part of Film Score Monthly’s legendary Superman “Blue Box” set in 2008. That legendary 8-disc release, produced by Lukas Kendall and Matessino, is long out of print and also contained expanded releases of Superman II and Superman III. They had both been released on LP in the States when the films came out but had only been released on CD in Japan. In addition, the Blue Box contained the first-ever commercial releases of Superman IV and Ron Jones’s scores for Superman: The Animated Series (1988). (Superman completists should note that the Blue Box remains the only source for the Jones TV scores.)

La-La Land’s recent releases of the scores for the feature films do collectors an enormous service by bringing them all back into print. Superman gets the most impressive upgrade of all the films. Earlier CDs all depended on the album master, along with the addition of various other audio elements, which were generations away from the original recordings. For this 3-disc CD set, Matessino was able to uncover the original 24-track masters. As the liner notes describe it, these tapes “actually turned in the recorder at Anvil Studios as the LSO played.”

La-La Land’s 2019 3-disc Superman set

The increase in quality is staggering. This is, without doubt, the definitive release of this epochal score. No self-respecting film score fan should be without it. Even if you own earlier versions – in fact, especially if you own earlier versions – this is one of the most essential film score albums of the last decade.

The first two discs of LLL’s Superman contain Williams’s complete score for the film, as recorded, along with reams of alternate versions filling out disc two. Disc three contains the original 1978 soundtrack album, remastered and released for the first time on CD in the United States in its complete form. Williams produced the album himself, choosing the selections and the order in which they appear. It is a unique work of musical art, distinct from the full score, and LLL is to be commended for including it. This album is currently sold out, but La-La Land expects to have it reprinted in early 2021.

La La Land’s 2018 3-disc Superman II and Superman III set

La-La Land’s release of Superman II and Superman III is a lavish three-disc affair. It includes Thorne’s adapted score for Superman II on disc one and the first half of disc two. Unlike Williams’s original score, Thorne’s score for Superman II was mastered from excellent quality materials for the 2008 Blue Box, so this release uses that same master.

The second half of disc two is filled out with source music from the first three films. Source music, unlike score, is any music coming from within the world of the movie – anything the characters can actually hear. This means pop songs on the radio, songs playing on loudspeakers in public places, and so on.

Williams’s source music for Superman is newly remastered, as was his score, and the LLL release also includes a few cues of previously unreleased Williams source. It’s a blast to hear Williams writing church music, 50s pop, 70s funk, country, and even luau music. Thorne’s source cues for II and III are also included. The disc closes with four pop songs that popular 80s Italian musician/composer Giorgio Moroder created for Superman III, performed by various artists, along with Moroder’s electronic version of Williams’s main theme.

The third disc of the set contains Thorne’s entire score for Superman III. Again, it uses the existing, excellent 2008 master.

La-La Land’s 2018 2-disc Superman IV: The Quest for Peace set

Finally, La-La Land has released Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in its own two-disc set. Courage’s score was severely compromised in the truncated film, so a planned soundtrack album at the time was scrapped. Quite movingly, just before he passed away in 2008, Courage was able to hear his majestic score restored in the Blue Box set, which contained the first-ever release of his work.

As with Superman II and III, La-La Land has brought the 2008 master, which was exquisite, back into print. The first CD contains the first portion of the score, while the second disc contains the remainder, along with numerous pop source cues created by musician Paul Fishman, most of which were intended for a deleted nightclub sequence.

As always, La-La Land has done heroic work here, giving us what seems to be the definitive presentation of John Williams’s score for the first film, one of the towering masterpieces of film composition. In addition, they have given film music fans a chance to explore the fascinating and beautifully shaded work Ken Thorne and Alexander Courage brought to the later films, with new CDs of those scores, which have been unavailable for many years. All three CD sets are essential listening for film score fans and have our highest recommendation.