The sound of a superhero: The musical evolution of Superman

The Hindu

a day ago

There are few things in cinema as unmistakable as John Williams' Superman theme. Since hitting the silver screen in 1978, the character had already flown through four decades of comic book pages, animated reels, and radio waves. But somehow, with just a brass fanfare and three commanding notes, the legendary composer gave the character a voice.
Not a literal voice, of course, but a sound. A sonic identity so perfectly fitted it may as well have been stitched into the suit. A melody that told you who's coming before you see the cape. That impossibly proud leitmotif made gravity feel a little more optional. It felt loud enough to shake heaven, yet hopeful enough to reassure Earth. It would go on to be borrowed by composers across decades, each trying in their own way to touch that same electric optimism.
What's often forgotten is how hard it is to pull that off. Williams composed not one, but seven thematic ideas for 1978's Superman. But it's the big one — the triumphant, three-note main theme ('Sup-er-man,' if you hum it right) — that embedded itself into our cultural muscle memory. Williams distilled the essence of Superman so perfectly into music, it almost feels discovered — as if the theme had always existed, waiting for a hero to claim it.
Before Williams came along, Superman had been bouncing around pop culture for decades, from comic-books to grainy television to the Saturday matinee serials of the 1940s. Sammy Timberg's 'Sup-er-man' triplet that would eventually be immortalised in the Williams score, first appeared in those early Max Fleischer cartoons. But Williams gave it bones, breath and somehow made it feel eternal. Like any good myth, it needed ceremony, so he gave Superman something regal, declarative, and built from the very instruments that history itself has used to signal kings and generals.
There's always been something mystical about the way Williams scores identity. His themes feel coded into the character's DNA. The magic here is in the construction: Copland-esque harmonies that call back to wide-open plains and honest labour, Sousa-like romantic rhythms that march with purpose, and orchestration that lets the French horns sing like they believe in something. It comes as close to the ideals of 'truth, justice and the 'American Way'' that Superman originally represented. Not the cynical, postmodern America, but the hopeful, mythic one, a country that wants to believe its heroes are kind.
That sense of musical certainty was baked into Superman itself, and a charming young Christopher Reeve wore that sincerity on his chest. Part of what made the project so enjoyable, Williams has said, was how little it took itself seriously, and the music reflected that unabashed grandeur. Reeve once joked that trying to fly without it would get you nowhere. And watching Superman today, it's hard not to agree.
But immortality is a complicated thing, and can become a shadow as much as a beacon. So when Man of Steel arrived in 2013, Hans Zimmer did what any seasoned composer would do when asked to reinvent a god and turned away from the sun.
This shift was existential, for this was not a theme you would whistle on the way home. In Richard Donner's 1978 vision, heroism was innate, bright and uncomplicated. In Zack Snyder's version, it's fraught, burdened, and deeply ambiguous. So, naturally, the music follows suit.
Zimmer introduces Superman with two almost embryonic notes being slowly drawn like a question mark. It's easy to miss them at first, buried in ambient textures, but over the course of the film, that two-note figure returns again and again, reshaped by context. On piano, it's wistful; on strings, it's determined; and on brass, it finally finds its wings.
Zimmer's score also avoided leitmotifs in the Wagnerian sense. There's no tight tether between character and phrase and no musical shorthand for the audience to cling to. Instead, Zimmer writes in movements of emotional atmosphere that shift and swirl, gaining intensity as the character does. His Superman score builds, like an argument being made. It asks us to wait. To believe, perhaps, in a new kind of saviour. Zimmer's Superman earns his theme.
It's beautiful, in its way. And yet, there's a sense of mourning running through it like an elegy for something more certain and melodic. As compelling as Zimmer's score is, it often feels like it's chasing something it refuses to name.
That something, of course, is John Williams. Zimmer once said he avoided referencing Williams out of respect — it would have been, in his words, 'like painting over the Mona Lisa.' And perhaps he was right. But the absence is felt. The Man of Tomorrow, it turned out, still needed the music of yesterday.
For all its remastered modernity, Zimmer's theme does still carry that same core idea of hope. However, some would argue that the film itself never fully earns the theme. The darkness of Man of Steel often feels at odds with the light Zimmer is striving to inject into its score. The music wants you to believe, and the film, less so. Ironically, Zimmer's score often works better when divorced from its source—as a sonic idea of Superman, even if the character on screen seems unsure of who he is.
Which brings us to now. James Gunn's Superman is already bending the arc back toward something closer to the light. And what do you know, Williams is coming back with him… in spirit at least.
Gunn, like many of us, grew up worshipping that soundtrack. He's called it his favourite, saying it was the one part of Superman he carried with him longest. When handed the keys to the DCEU and tasked with helming the new David Corenswet reboot, he asked composer John Murphy to go back to the well. The original melody appears, but on electric guitar, twanged like something out of a dusty American road trip. Then the orchestra steps in, reclaiming the theme with reverence and newness.
Williams' original leitmotif was crafted like an edifice built to last.Tim Greiving, Williams' biographer, put it best when he said the theme feels like it came with Superman from Krypton. And really, how could it not? There's a reason it still plays in PVR bathrooms nearly half a century later. It's lodged in the cultural imagination the way lullabies are. We hum it because it tells us who Superman is, and if we're honest, who we want to be.
It's a tricky thing, writing music for someone who can fly, but somehow, across decades and discographies, the message remains the same: Look up.
Superman is currently running in theatres