Buy it... if Hans Zimmer's stagnant sound design can be applied successfully to any concept in your universe, in which case this score will run the goose bumps straight from your subwoofers to your loins.

Avoid it... if you expect romance, patriotism, nobility, or even intelligence from a composition intentionally meant to bleed the Batman concept into the completely incongruent one for Superman, a stunning miscalculation by Zimmer.

Man of Steel: (Hans Zimmer/Various) Batman, Spider-Man, and now Superman. All of them rebooted. All of them darker, more sophisticated. Most of them battling nastier, less defined villains. Most of them with more fake muscles lining the costume fabric. Most of them claiming to be better, more modern and realistic representations. All of them existing because of a lack of intelligent new ideas in Hollywood. Immense profits don't hurt, especially when the viewers don't care about unoriginality. Instead of bemoaning the reboot culture of the movie industry, however, let's just face the truth that these famous comic book characters will be reinvented as long as people pay for them to be reinvented. Threats of a lawsuit over lost revenue from the rights-holders of Superman brought him back to the big screen in 2013, technically for the third generation of the character's cinematic existence. Doing the honors of adding the fake muscles and wholesale alien starship invasion to the history of Superman lore on screen is Zack Snyder of 300 fame, backed up by producer Christopher Nolan and a hefty budget from Warner Brothers. While the 2005 resurrection of Superman remained somewhat loyal to the various production values of the famed Christopher Reeve series of movies from a generation prior, the 2013 re-envisioning of the character in Man of Steel transforms him in the ways that modern superhero blockbusters mandate, travelling a darker, more menacing path than ever before. Man of Steel is an origin story, but one that essentially combines the narratives of the first two movies in the entire franchise and short-changing both stories as a result. The basics are all there, but the lengthy interpersonal interactions and the best elements of disguise have been replaced with outrageous action material to meet the demands of insatiable audiences with no tolerance for extended romance or existential contemplation. This version of Superman is a completely different animal as a result, one met with mixed reviews from critics who lament the lack of affable style and the abandonment of truly believable rural influence on what has essentially devolved into a franchise that requires huge ships destroying the planet to justify itself. Thirty years prior, General Zod did not need such instruments of fantasy; when Terence Stamp demanded that we kneel, his demeanor while doing so was entertaining enough to suffice.

Inevitably, the music for Superman's journey has traversed an expanse as great as that from Krypton to Earth, itself a casualty of diminished style as this franchise becomes yet another to succumb to Hans Zimmer's passion for the production of sound design. Zimmer is no doubt the most famous composer of the contemporary generation, reaching heights near where John Williams was in the late 1970's. Although Williams is still alive and productive at this time, his pencil-written mastery is no longer cool to a generation hell bent upon causing itself hearing loss courtesy film music that emphasizes its bass region without restriction. Zimmer's success has come about by a fair amount of luck, his lack of classical training in music steering him towards a career dominated by the production of music rather than the creation of it through the use of its many linguistic complexities. He has lived the ultimate life of a soundtrack fanboy, loving Williams, Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, and a host of his peers past and present, and remaining very humble in the respect he professes for them. But due to his knack for composing the right scores at the right times, teaming up with the right directors, and surrounding himself with an army of musicians (ghostwriters, some will say) at his own production house, he has landed himself in assignments not befitting his capabilities. Superman, like Batman before, is one such occasion. Zimmer admits as much. In fact, he fought his involvement with both franchises. In regards to Man of Steel, Zimmer confessed, "I was the reluctant bride on this one. I kept saying no. I turned down this one about three times." As anyone might expect, his desire not to step on the toes of the classic 1978 Williams score was a key concern. Never mind the fact that John Ottman walked the tightrope extraordinarily well for Superman Returns, proving that an adaptation of sorts was not only possible, but quite effective. Rather, Zimmer, as he had done with Elfman's iconic music for Batman, decided to completely sidestep the issue. "The master, John Williams, had done rather well by it, and it was part of my growing up and DNA loving John Williams' score," he said. "The inevitable comparisons are out there, but I couldn't care less about what anybody says. Find me a composer who isn't driven by paranoia and neurosis." In response, with the persistent encouragement of Snyder and Nolan, Zimmer simply did what he always does in such circumstances: force a franchise to meet him on his own terms.

As he has done with alarming frequency since his stardom was born, Zimmer indulges a tendency to get caught up in the hype generated for his music by the studios, filmmakers, and fans. As a result, he is a celebrity who accompanies every release of a major new score with countless rounds of interviews. This accessibility has always reaffirmed that Zimmer is a likable man who clearly loves playing with all the assets available to him. In many cases, however, it's also exposed him to be oddly bizarre in the decisions he makes about these blockbuster scores, and Man of Steel has yielded more head-scratchers than most. It's clear that the darker direction of this reboot, even down to the de-saturated colors of the lead's costume, required Zimmer to steer the franchise towards his brooding sound design universe. In his discussions about this direction, he admits, "One of the things Chris [Nolan] and I talked about was creating an autonomous sound landscape. I think we did that. I think if you forget the notes and just hear the ambience, you know this is The Dark Knight. In a funny way, we tried to do the same with Superman." It's no wonder, therefore that all the nobility associated with Superman is stripped from Zimmer's rendering of him. The same applies to the patriotism; there was always a presence of American pride in Superman's heroics, and all of that style of wholesome spirit is now gone. The brightness of the light has been extinguished as well. All of this despite Zimmer's claims about addressing the country's rural values. "Let's not make this Superman bombastic," he explains. "Let's make this a score which deals with and celebrates the farmers and the people in the heartland of America. Let's make this about those endless plains." And thus, a hybrid of Inception and The Dark Knight results. But how? How exactly does Zimmer's brain connect deep, broad sound design with a farm in Kansas? His answer in part was to try to address ever character moment in Man of Steel with a simple upright piano. But even these sequences, while relatively frequent, are drowned out by background layers of vaguely dissonant design. Not enough coolness in the piano, perhaps? Not a moment passes in this score during which Zimmer does not alter the soundscape to augment (or in many cases ruin) an organic performance with some totally unnecessary layer of bass manipulation or other accentuation that must inexplicably click in his brain during the production process. As a result, the softer, piano-led moments in this score lack a genuine sincerity necessary for the Kent family.

Much is always made about the ensembles that Zimmer collects for these high profile assignments, and the disconnect in Americana spirit is all the more evident because his choices for Man of Steel. For the atmosphere of the plains, Zimmer claims he was inspired by expanses of telephone wires to electrify the ambience. Likewise, he hired a steel drum ensemble to pound out the action sequences. Along with it was what he calls a "drum orchestra" with dozens of famed percussion musicians assembled to blast their way through a new identity for the work. What this sound has to do with the plains is an unanswered question. Instead, it seems like yet another situation in which Zimmer executed something for his music because he could, not because it was the right thing to do. The same could be said of many of his scores, the result of his endless tinkering with musical production toys rather that actually conjuring evocative melodic connections. Taking the challenging and rewarding route, the actual embrace of the treble region and all the typical representatives of nobility, patriotism, and heroism, was eliminated from consideration. "I was terrified of parody in any sense, even unwitting parody. Part of my very simple plan was to exorcise anything out of my orchestra, like the main instruments that I remember John Williams using, like the trumpet fanfare. I didn't use any of that. By narrowing my palette I felt I was doing something different." In reality, by narrowing that palette, Zimmer was actually simply allowing himself the license to regurgitate music he is comfortable producing. The same was true of Batman, and now there is Batman atmosphere in a Superman movie. There is not a trumpet to be heard in Man of Steel. No high chimes. No woodwinds. And with them, there is not only a lack of the aforementioned characteristics, but there is an absolute and total void in the area of romance. Just because Lois Lane no longer has that dark hair doesn't mean that there isn't any romance involved in the equation of this plot, and not even the most loyal Zimmer enthusiasts will be able to point to a single swell of romance in this score. Likewise, the action is afforded pounded drum rhythms without any sense of true malice or direction. General Zod certainly deserves more than brutish slapping of drums to accompany his menace. Both Lane and Zod are completely unaddressed in this score, Lane receiving only a continuation of the tepid family farm piano material and Zod's thematic and instrumental representations bleeding into Superman's without distinction. When you tackle major characters with sound design, perhaps that's the most to be expected.