BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES ORIGINAL TELEVISION SOUNDTRACK VOL. 4

Well, it's an even-numbered year, which apparently means it's time for a new BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES soundtrack album from La La Land Records.* (Though if I had my druthers, we'd be getting one of these sets every year rather than every other!)

After 2012's volume 2 and 2014's volume 3, this past week brings us the BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES Original Television Soundtrack, volume 4. Like volume 2, this album had pre-release availability at Comic-Con, but as I've noted here in recent weeks, I was unable to attend this year due to the birth of my son. So I pre-ordered the album straightaway when it went up on La La Land's site Tuesday at noon, and it arrived (autographed by composers Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis and Carlos Rodriguez) in the mail Friday.

Naturally, given the hectic nature of my life at the moment, I haven't had time to give this set a real in-depth listen, but I have given it one cursory run-through while the baby was sleeping (I think he liked the music!) and I wanted to jump on a post while the iron was hot -- so I found a bit of time to cobble this piece together during a subsequent naptime. Speaking of which -- note also that La La Land released a 4-disc soundtrack album for JUSTICE LEAGUE this past week, and I'll try to write something about that as things settle down within the next month or two. But for now, I really couldn't wait to cover BATMAN.

CAPTAIN AMERICA’S THEME

A well deserved, albeit long and meandering, tribute to the most ubiquitous musical motif in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

From my perspective, Marvel Studios doesn't have many failings so far. Not all their movies have been great (IRON MAN sequels, I’m looking at you), and yes, there are some things I think they could've implemented better -- but overall, even on the rare occasions they have a misfire, their output is generally still a lot of fun.

But there is one area where Marvel’s movies have mostly fallen very short in my estimation. I love strong recurring musical themes in my movies, especially across multiple films. Think of the STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES movies, the LORD OF THE RINGS and HOBBIT sagas, or the HARRY POTTER series. All these franchises feature numerous recognizable themes and motifs developed across all their installments.

Not so with the Marvel movies. IRON MAN 1, 2, and 3 all have completely different themes by three different composers for the main character. Likewise, THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD feature separate themes for the God of Thunder, as composed by two different men. AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON uses some of the main theme from the first AVENGERS film, but that’s a special case which we’ll get to shortly.

But somehow, through all of these, one character’s theme has stayed with him, popping up at least once in every one of the films featuring him: Captain America.