Danny Elfman was the only man on most people's mind when the Sam Raimi-directed Spiderman was first announced, given both his previous relationship with the director and his work in the superhero genre. It was ironic, then, that when the movie came out, about the only aspect of it to receive mainstream criticism was the score - "no themes", "retreading old ground", etc. Like the last two high-profile scores to receive such widespread criticism, Mission to Mars and X-Men, Spiderman is simply wonderful.

Spiderman is a classic popcorn flick for teenage boys, an all-powerful superhero defeating a not-quite-so-powerful nemesis, a beautiful girl, and the rest of it. It never pretends to be any more than that, and it isn't (which makes one wonder quite how it became so staggeringly successful). It's no Batman or even X-Men but it is entertaining, well-made stuff.

When Tim Burton made his wonderful, modern retelling of Batman, Elfman wrote a vintage, old-fashioned score; so again it's ironic that for the conventional-as-they-come Spiderman he would choose to write a modern score, but it works terrifically well. With all the synth nonsense heard in so many films today it's a joy to hear a composer integrate modern elements into a traditional orchestral setting so well.

The score opens with the rousingly heroic theme for Spiderman and Peter Parker, a classic Elfman piece (those who bemoaned the lack of themes in the score clearly had their brains switched off). Elfman develops the theme very well through the score - surprisingly it also works very well as a love theme a couple of times. For the Goblin (the aforementioned nemesis) he wrote a percussion motif with descending synth tones ("Spectre of the Goblin") which recalls Planet of the Apes. There's some gorgeous romantic material too, in "Alone" and especially "Revelation".

It's amazing how much Elfman has developed as a composer. He wrote some wonderful scores at the start of his career and then went into a highly experimental phase during the mid-90s but now seems to have rested on a very modern style that isn't a million miles away from Elliot Goldenthal, with slightly less dense orchestration. He's currently producing more consistently good music than at any other point in his career, and is producing more high-quality work than most of his peers. Spiderman is one of his most complete scores to date and I look forward to each new project on which he works with an ever-heightened sense of anticipation.

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