John Williams’ iconic theme from the 1978 movie Superman, directed by Richard Donner, might be my favorite film composition from the maestro. That’s saying a lot. Williams obviously has magnificent titles on his resume, from Jaws and E.T. to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and the Harry Potter franchise. I asked Skeleton Crew co-star Jude Law to name his favorite, and it almost broke his brain. But there’s something about the heroic theme for Superman that helps it stand above the rest. And Superman 2025 director James Gunn agrees.
During a recent press event on behalf of the Superman trailer, which heavily references the John Williams theme in the score from John Murphy, I was lucky enough to ask Gunn about his use of the signature Williams composition. Before he elaborated on its use in the upcoming DC movie, Gunn admitted to CinemaBlend:
I knew from the beginning what I wanted to do with the music. I had thought about it a lot. Are we going to do something completely different? Are we going to use the Williams theme? The Williams theme, that soundtrack, is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. And when I was a kid, really, the thing that I loved the most about the (Donner) movie was the music. That was the thing I took home with me more than anything else. But I knew we were doing something that was harkening back to the past, and was also looking forward to the future. And so it was about finding that balance.
That has to be a real challenge. The Superman theme is so closely associated with the character. And other Superman movies have tried to hew close to the legacy that is Richard Donner’s film – notably, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, which probably tried too hard to match Donner, and never became its own movie.
James Gunn wants his Superman to stand on its own. So, as he continued to explain to CinemaBlend:
John Murphy is a composer who I love working with. He started working on the music before the script was even finished. He was one of the first people I gave the script to, along with Peter Safran and a couple of others, so that he could start writing music for it. And I said, ‘I want to use a version of the Williams score, but I want to do our own version of it.’ So that's what you hear. What's really amazing is how that leads into a lot of other pieces. Some of which harken back to the Williams theme, but some of which are purely John Murphy. It goes into that. It comes back out. It's used beautifully throughout the movie.
Gunn confirmed to us that John Murphy worked for two years on the Superman theme, a piece of which you can listen to right now.
Superman will be a continuation of the DCU, a universe that James Gunn officially launched with the animated series Creature Commandos, which will conclude in January. That series goes a long way toward setting up new characters that we expect to see in upcoming DC movies and shows, including Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr., an antagonist in Superman and Peacemaker Season 2. It’s a very exciting time to be a fan of DC, thanks to to work of James Gunn, Peter Safran, and their collaborators.
